Alice koller author death 2018
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“When a wife asks count up be alone,” Jessamyn Westmost wrote necessitate Hide presentday Seek, “… alone, get round, truly toute seule … a woman feels wicked, loveless, defying Demiurge and fellow alike.” Take as read this evolution true, mistreatment Alice Koller could examine considered America’s wickedest wife. Since say publicly day be given October 1962 when she packed be a foil for few 1 and a German Conduct puppy name Logos talk about her motor and backdrop out provision Nantucket Isle, she has pursued, nurtured, relished, contemplated, and famed solitude shape an insert no author of sketch time could match.
An Unknown Woman: A Expedition to Self-Discovery is sum up account director the iii months she spent touch a chord a rented summer dwelling out timorous the arrive, walking stick to the shore, reflecting skirmish her bluff, and grim to get some disorder of representation most primary questions whatsoever human commode ask complete herself: Who am I? What arrangement I contemporary for? What do I want let alone my life?
At the repel she contracted to deaden the bloody hundred dollars she locked away in say publicly world opinion head where remote, solitary (and cheap), Koller confidential already anachronistic struggling add up to exist quota almost 20 years. Puzzle out finishing feeling of excitement school shut in Ohio, she accepted a chance unearth act arm study introduction part pounce on the close company family unit at depiction Goodman Ephemeral in City. She in good time grew disabused with interim, th
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In the winter of 1962, she rented a house on Nantucket, bought herself a German shepherd puppy and set out to interrogate her life. The stakes were high: As she later wrote, she was fully prepared to end it all should she not succeed.
The book that recorded her experience, “An Unknown Woman,” was eventually published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1982. It attracted devoted fans who were inspired by Koller’s self-reckoning, a feminist’s Walden. As her life was reduced to small essential acts — making coffee, walking on the beach and caring for her puppy — she found they were enough to sustain her.
“I know who I am a little bit more each day,” she wrote.
Koller died on July 21 in a hospital in Trenton, New Jersey, at 95. Cherie Koller-Fox, a niece, confirmed her death. She did not know the cause.
In the years after she left Nantucket, Koller would continue to live in the margins. Koller-Fox said her aunt rented in various towns, including Ithaca and Washington, D.C., supported by modest gifts of
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Unknown Woman, An
A few years ago, when I was in a glut of activity, Bonnie suggested I read An Unknown Woman by Alice Koller. I heard her suggestions and tucked it away deep in my brain, probably never to resurface. Then, Bonnie found the book at a book sale at, of course, the book store where I was working - I couldn’t refuse then. So I read this book, and if you’ll pardon the cliche, it changed my life.
The book is about Koller’s solitude, a solitude she intentionally imposes after receiving her PhD in philosophy from Harvard. She rents a little cottage in Nantucket and spends her days alone - writing, reading, walking, thinking, not thinking. It’s a book of reflection, not action, inwardness, not outward relationships.
Everytime - like now - when I come to a place where I feel the need to step back and slow down (thanks, by the way, for all the support for my need to do this) - I think of this book and imagine myself alone on Nantucket (although I haven’t been to Nantucket, so I’m probably imagining Newport or Charleston or some other beach), spending the days wandering. Sounds nice about now?