Don't Let Me Be Lonely - Claudia Rankine

The flow of this book was fast and smooth. Claudia Rankine refers to this as a lyric essay, with elements of poetry and essay combined. There were images , information and facts coming at you one way. The following are a few points I found interesting :



Reference to a London game show : the contestant answers yes or no to questions if you fail to answer correctly or tell the truth, you must step down. The question was "Where you upset when Princess Diana died ? The contestant answered - "No". She had to step down, yet she told the truth. In the contestants mind the question should have been - was Princess Diana ever really alive to anyone outside of her family or friends ? The author also suggest that in as much as there was mourning for the death of Princess Di , people were
probably mourning the random inevitability of their own deaths.



When the news comes on the author switches the channel and refers to this as "a new tendancy of a deepening personality flaw."



There were numerable references to sad , depressing events, with pictures included. The author presented this and remained emotionally detached. She says "The real sadness is that I write this without my heart breaking and without bursting."



Cornel West says - Black people are to nihilistic

To scared by hope to hope

To experienced to experience

To close to dead !

He says these are symptoms of IMH - the inability to maintain hope and it translates into no innate trust in the supreme laws that govern us.



Some of the details and pictures were graphic and sad or disgusting, the author says



"What alerts, alters!"

Make not mistake about it this book should be considered a deep thought provoking political and social statement , used to alert us to the crisis that we have reached a point of being desensitised.

She she relates to these troubling events as something physical / physically experienced - and says it is not something that "I discuss socially ". This is another example of the layers of detachment .



There was a constant and underlying current of drugs and anti depressents for another means of escape.



She says "Felt wasteful to cry. To sentimental or excessive. Certainly not intellectual. To value each life to that point. To feel loss to the point of being bent over."



The following is quoted from the book and it refers to lonliness:



I felt it too

The loneliness ?

I let it happen

By feeling ?

By not not feeling

Thats to much ....

Like dying ?

Maybe, or death is second

Second to what ?

To loneliness.

Define loneliness