'Fifty Days of Solitude'

 In the winter of 1993, Doris Crumbach spent 50 days in solitude.

Her partner, Sybil, was on a long trip. Grumbach, at 75, wanted to get away from the distractions of a full life and think. She holed up at their home on the coast of Maine with her books and music. She took walks but tried to avoid company.

I’d say it was mostly solitude.

Like Thoreau, Grumbach was trying to get far enough away from other people to front only the essential facts of life. She kept a notebook, the basis of Fifty Days of Solitude.

It’s a short book, about 30,000 words.

It’s divided into 79 sections. Some are just a few sentences. Some run several pages. An average entry is 400 words. An older reader, like me, might spend some time wondering whether these entries are notes, remarks or essays. A younger reader would see a series of blog posts in print.

Many of the entries are about aging. Writers are supposed to keep up with things, including the news. But at a certain age, is it OK to retreat and look at questions that don’t involve the news? Is it presumptuous to call them more important questions?

Many of the entries involve the tension between being a part of the larger world and being creative, which means being alone. Being a responsible member of society involves working with other people. Writing involves bolting the door and shutting others out.

We learn what Grumbach makes of the tension. We also learn about the people who’ve influenced her thinking. We learn that if she could take one novel to the proverbial deserted island it’d be Middlemarch.

What emerges is a picture of one writer’s mind. Whether you like her book might depend on whether you like people who like Middlemarch. I do.

I think the book is a good model for writers who are thinking about their own work. Recently, I posted some notes about the routines of writers and other artists. A friend sent me a note about the novelist Terry Pratchett, whose one rule was to write 400 words a day.

If you followed that rule from 80 days, you’d have something that looked like Fifty Days of Solitude, at least in form. The possibilities are interesting.

• Dorus Grumbach, Fifty Days of Solitude; Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.