The Fantasy of a More Neighborly Past

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14-02-2025

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A Florida retirement community might be an unexpected setting for a novel written by a Finnish Swedish children's book author. But in 1976, Tove Jansson, who is best-known for her whimsical hippo-esque characters, the Moomins, published an adult novel set in the fictional Berkeley Arms in Florida. The book, Sun City, was inspired by a late-career trip to the Tampa Bay area and examines the isolation of older Americans—a part of stateside life that, as Lauren LeBlanc writes in her recent essay, 'often goes unseen.'
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Jansson's novel takes place during an era of profound social upheaval, which marked a shift in American patterns of socialization. The first half of the 20th century, as Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic's February cover story, was 'extraordinarily social.' Shared spaces—libraries, theaters, and playgrounds—were rapidly built across the U.S. People were gathering regularly in public, and participating in clubs and organizations with their peers. But in the 1970s, Americans started retreating from public life—a trend that the political scientist Robert D. Putnam attributed in part to the rise of cars and televisions. Today, we're living in what Thompson calls the 'anti-social century.' In contrast to the widespread notion that we may be experiencing a loneliness epidemic, he argues that Americans are now choosing isolation and solitude, and replacing real-life socialization with digital communication. Today, many Americans also lack contact with a 'village'—the circle of neighbors and acquaintances who live around us, and who teach us to broker disagreement civilly, a style of communication notably lacking on the internet.
The milieu of Jansson's book offers evidence that these changes began long before Americans became absorbed in their phones. Sun City follows a group of seniors who have come to Florida from around the country and now live in close quarters. Though they 'may share a pretty veranda lined with rocking chairs,' as LeBlanc writes, they 'occupy hermetically sealed worlds of their own' and choose individual pursuits rather than seeking community among their neighbors. Misunderstandings and cynicism are all too common, making their retirement home a place where 'distrust was a poison that made a person shrink up and lose all contact with real life.' When two sisters suddenly die, no one cares—as LeBlanc writes, 'no heartwarming community rises from these ashes.'
Jansson was, of course, writing about the U.S. from an outsider's perspective, and LeBlanc acknowledges that her view of American life could have been a 'product of extreme culture shock.' But her novel shows that even people who don't have digital distractions, and who are forced to commune with one another, can be as isolated as anyone today. It made me wonder if there's another way to address our growing anti-sociality: making people want to reestablish ties. We may need to lead by example and personally engage in face-to-face encounters—perhaps by throwing more parties, or talking with the person next to us in spin class. Doing so might encourage more neighbors to look up from their screens and seek out the sound of spontaneous laughter in a dark movie theater, or a shared evening that ends with an embrace.
The Outsider Who Captured American Loneliness
By Lauren LeBlanc
The Finnish writer Tove Jansson returned from a U.S. trip with a new perspective on home—and an enduring novel.
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, by Claire Keegan
Keegan's novella follows an Irishman, Bill Furlong, delivering coal throughout a small town during a lean 1980s winter. The story unfolds in the days before Christmas, a time when Bill finds himself particularly moved by the mundane, beautiful things in his life: a neighbor pouring warm milk over her children's cereal, the modest letters his five daughters send to Santa Claus, the kindness his mother was shown, years earlier, when she became pregnant out of wedlock. While bringing fuel to the local Catholic convent, however, Bill discovers that women and girls are being held there against their will, forced to work in one of the Church's infamous 'Magdalene laundries.' He knows well, in a town defined by the Church, why he might want to stay quiet about the open secret he's just learned, but it quickly becomes clear that his morals will make him unable to do so. Although the history of Ireland's treatment of unmarried women and their children is violent and bleak, the novella, like Bill's life, is characterized by ordinary, small moments of love. — Amanda Parrish Morgan
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I've known Charlie for as long as I can remember. He and my father met because of records. In the late 1980s, Charlie was at a crowded party in the Hollywood Hills when he heard someone greet my father by his full name. Charlie whipped around: 'You're Fred Walecki? I've been seeing your name on records.' Dad owned a rock-and-roll-instrument shop, and musicians thanked him on their albums for the gear (and emotional support) he provided during recording sessions. Charlie was a national sales manager at Warner Bros. Records and could rattle off the B-side of any record, so of course he'd clocked Walecki appearing over and over again. Growing up, I thought every song I'd ever heard could also be found on Charlie's shelves; his friend Jim Wagner, who once ran sales, merchandising, and advertising for Warner Bros. Records, called it the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame West.
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Article originally published at The Atlantic