ONE MIGHT EXPECT WRITING A book about loneliness to be an isolating experience, but on the contrary it has been astonishingly connecting. I’ve been amazed at how many people have gone out of their way to support this project, and it underscores my sense that loneliness is something we share.
The first person I want to thank is my friend Matt Wolf, who introduced me to David Wojnarowicz’s work, thereby setting this book in motion, and who has been an endless source of ideas and contacts ever since.
Huge thanks are due to those who made The Lonely City possible, a list that must start with my beloved agents at Janklow & Nesbit, the wonderful Rebecca Carter and P. J. Mark, dream readers both, as well as Claire Conrad and Kirsty Gordon. I also want to thank my terrific editors, Jenny Lord at Canongate and Stephen Morrison at Picador, for their insightful and considered feedback and support. I’m indebted to the Arts Council, who funded a research trip to various American archives, and to the Corporation of Yaddo, who provided me with the ideal place to work. I’m also very grateful to the MacDowell Colony: this book really arose from friendships I made there.
Thanks too to all the teams at Canongate and Picador, especially Jamie Byng, Natasha Hodgson, Anna Frame, Annie Lee and Lorraine McCann on one side of the Atlantic, and P. J. Horoszko, Declan Taintor and James Meader on the other. And Nick Davies, too, who started it all rolling.
I’ve spent much of the last few years in artists’ archives. I’m very grateful to all at Fales Library at New York University, home of the Downtown Collection and the David Wojnarowicz Papers and an intensely inspiring place in its own right. Particular thanks to Lisa Darms, Marvin Taylor, Nicholas Martin and Brent Phillips, and also to Tom Rauffenbart, the exceptionally generous executor of the estate of David Wojnarowicz. The staff at the American Folk Art Museum, home of the Henry Darger Papers, likewise provided very generous support. Thanks to Valérie Rousseau, Karl Miller, Ann-Marie Reilly and Mimi Lester. I’m also grateful to INTUIT in Chicago for letting me view the Darger room. At the Whitney Museum of American Art, I’d like to thank curator Carter Foster and Carol Rusk, Librarian at the Edward and Josephine Hopper Research Collection. And I’d like to say a huge thank you to all the staff at the Warhol Museum, whose kindness, generosity and help went well beyond the call of duty, particularly Matt Wrbican, Cindy Lisica, Geralyn Huxley, Greg Pierce and Greg Burchard.
While I was working on this book, I was lucky enough to be awarded a year’s residency at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. I’d like to express my deep gratitude to Philip Davies, Catherine Eccles, Cara Rodway, Matthew Shaw and especially Carole Holden – it’s every writer’s dream to work with a curator who shares their interests and sensibilities and it was a joy to get such a passionate and knowledgeable guide to the BL’s contents.
People who generously gave up their time to be interviewed or answer queries include John Cacioppo at the University of Chicago, Cynthia Carr, Stephen Koch at the Peter Hujar Archive (who also generously provided the beautiful Hujar portrait of Wojnarowicz on p. 94), and Donald Warhola. Thank you all. I’m also deeply grateful to Sarah Schulman, whose own work is such a constant source of education and inspiration.
Thank you to my exceptionally lovely writerly support team of Elizabeth Day and Francesca Segal, without whom it would take a lot longer and be much less fun. To Elizabeth Tinsley, whose thinking has been stimulating mine for decades now. To the artists, too: Sarah Wood and Sherri Wasserman, thank you. And a very special thanks to the magnificent Ian Patterson, who read and commented on a multitude of early drafts with vast intelligence and patience.
Then there are the friends and colleagues who’ve discussed, read, edited, encouraged, fed and housed me. In the UK: Nick Blackburn, Stuart Croll, Clare Davies, Jon Day, Robert Dickinson, John Gallagher, Tony Gammidge, John Griffiths, Tom de Grunwald, Christina McLeish, Helen Macdonald, Leo Mellor, Tricia Murphy, James Purdon, Sigrid Rausing and Jordan Savage. In the USA: David Adjmi, Liz Duffy Adams, Kyle de Camp, Deb Chachra, Jean Hannah Edelstein, Andrew Ginzel, Scott Guild, Alex Halberstadt, Amber Hawk Swanson, Joseph Keckler, Larry Krone, Dan Levenson, Elizabeth McCracken, Jonathan Monaghan, John Pittman, the late Alastair Reid, Andrew Sempere, Daniel Smith, Schulyer Towne, Benjamen Walker and Carl Williamson.
For support with research materials: Brad Daly, Harko Kejzer, Heather Mallick, John Pittman, Cerys Matthews and Steven Abbott, Kio Stark and Eileen Storey, as well as several unknown but much appreciated benefactors.
Elements of this book first appeared in Granta, Aeon, The Junket, Guardian and New Statesman. Thanks too to all my editors there.
My deepest thanks go, as ever, to my family. My brilliant sister, Kitty Laing, who was on to some of the scenes on these pages long before me; my beloved father, Peter Laing; and my mother, Denise Laing, who has been reading since the beginning, and whose support I could not do without.