{"id":132243,"date":"2018-12-24T09:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-12-24T14:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=132243"},"modified":"2018-12-20T11:35:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-20T16:35:25","slug":"i-have-wasted-my-life-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/12\/24\/i-have-wasted-my-life-2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"I Have Wasted My Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>We\u2019re away until January 2, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2018. Enjoy your holiday!<\/i><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_124287\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/103347.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-124287\" class=\"size-large wp-image-124287\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/103347-1024x695.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"695\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/103347-1024x695.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/103347-300x204.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/103347-768x521.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/103347.jpg 1106w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-124287\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Winslow Homer, <em>Sunlight and Shadow<\/em>, 1872.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cI vant to be alone,\u201d my mother used to say distractedly, channeling Greta Garbo, when my brother and I were wrecking havoc at home. In fact, though Garbo\u2019s character said the line in the 1932 film <em>Grand Hotel,<\/em> Garbo herself never said it. What she said, when faced with a scrum of journalists at a press conference a few years later, was \u201cI want to be let alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But in our culture, the distinction between the two statements has been conflated. For us,\u00a0\u201cI vant to be alone\u201d means I want to be off the grid, no iPhone, no email, the 24-7 connectivity of our lot. I want to be let alone to <em>be<\/em> alone. No wonder that, to a writer\u2014to readers, to all overwhelmed people now\u2014solitude suggests not loneliness but serenity, that kissing cousin of sanity. We speak of being alone to recharge our batteries\u2014even in our reach for solitude, we seem unable to unplug from the metaphor of our connectivity.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/16\/i-have-wasted-my-life-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my early readings, I thought the final line of James Wright\u2019s poem was a statement of defeat. Now I\u2019ve come to understand it differently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1464,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44292],"tags":[11585,504,33661,33729,165],"class_list":["post-132243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2018","tag-james-wright","tag-literature","tag-national-poetry-month","tag-patricia-hampl","tag-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I Have Wasted My Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In my early readings, I thought the final line of James Wright\u2019s poem was a statement of defeat. 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