Once upon a time there was a man who sought escape from the prattle of his neighbors and went to live alone in a hut he had found in the forest. At first he was content, but the bitter winter led him to cut down the trees around his hut for firewood. The next summer he was hit and uncomfortable because his hut had no shade, and he complained bitterly of the harshness of the elements.
He made a little garden and kept some chickens, but the rabbits were attracted by the food in the garden and ate much of it. The man went into the forest and trapped a fox, which he tamed and taught to catch rabbits. But the fox ate up the man's chickens as well. The man shot the fox and cursed the perfidy of the creatures of the wild.
The man always threw his refuse on the floor of his hut and soon it swarmed with vermin. He then built an ingenious system of hooks and pulleys so that everything in the hut could be suspended from the ceiling. But the strain was too much for the flimsy hut and it soon collapsed. The man grumbled about the inferior construction of the hut and built himself a new one.
One day he boasted to a relative in his old village about the peaceful beauty and plentiful game surrounding his forest home. The relative was impressed and reported back to his neighbors, who began to use the area for picnics and hunting excursions. The man was upset by this and cursed the intrusiveness of mankind. He began posting signs, setting traps, and shooting at those who came near his dwelling. In revenge groups of boys would come at night from time to time to frighten him and steal things. The man took to sleeping every night in a chair by the window with a loaded shotgun across his knees. One night he turned in his sleep and shot off his foot. The villagers were chastened and saddened by this misfortune and thereafter stayed away from his part of the forest. The man became lonely and cursed the unfriendliness and indifference of his former neighbors. And in all this the man saw no agency except what lay outside himself, for which reason, and because of his ingenuity, the villagers called him the American.
- from The Pursuit of Loneliness by Philip Slater (1970)
Central to the argument of this frisky but intellectually gripping work of fiction is the idea of two oppositional human types - the idorrhythmics, who are solitaries, each moving to his own rhythm of life, unique, separate; and the cenobites, the solidaries, who join in brotherhood and live in common. And a person must be either the one or the other. Never both.
- from a review in Expletives Deleted by Angela Carter (1992)
