A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits and Solitaries

From St. Anthony to J.D. Salinger, hermits and recluses have helped the rest of us learn how to live in the bustle of the world. That paradox is the subject of A Pelican in the Wilderness, a sprawling exploration of solitariness by the novelist Isabel Colegate. The book contains a dazzling array of anecdotes and quotations drawn from sources including Howard Hughes, Lao Tzu, and Henry David Thoreau. Colegate's Merchant-Ivory prose gets a bit thick at times ("Autumn is a good time to see the gardens at Stourhead in Wiltshire"), a rankling reminder that willed exile is often made possible by economic privilege. But it's a great pleasure to ramble with the author through varied wisdom about a place that exists in everyone's heart, the small strip of territory between solitude and loneliness where peace is easily found, and easily lost. --Michael Joseph Gross