That's the famous opening line of "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy and while clearly not strictly accurate, the notion contains a certain truth that encourages readers to tackle the remains of this very lengthy book: we are far more interested in things that go wrong than in things that run smoothly.
One of the former is human loneliness, far more pervasive, one might argue, than it ought to be given the fact that homo sapiens are fundamentally social animals.
To paraphrase Tolstoy, each lonely individual is lonely in his or her own way, which is fodder for fiction and for the arts more generally. Which brings me to a couple of entries in the Oct. 25, 2021 New Yorker.
First is an article by Paul McCartney explaining how the Beatles' hit song "Eleanor Rigby" came to be written. A masterpiece of minimalism, the chorus goes:
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
As for the article, it is more about how the Beatles came together than how the song came about, but, short in length by New Yorker standards, it is worth a read.
Second is "The Umbrella," the English translation of a short story by Danish author Tove Ditlevsen, who died in 1976. Yet another example of the New Yorker's role as an avenue for marketing by the publishing industry, the story is part of an anthology of translated works by Ditlevsen due out in March 2022. Instead of an author interview, this story is accompanied by an interview of the translator.
There is little about "The Umbrella," essentially the story of what might be called a vacant marriage, that is particularly interesting unless, perhaps one can relate to it on a personal level, By the end, one senses that the chief protagonist, a woman named Helga, is as responsible for her loneliness as anyone else. She seems as little interested in her husband as he is in her.
Each lonely individual is lonely in his or her own way, and this is one of them. In that sense, I suppose the story is in the nature of a collectible.
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