A way of looking but not joining
I am reading Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion and in this essay titled Last Words, she has written about Hemingway:
The very grammar of a Hemingway sentence dictated, or was dictated by, a certain way of looking at the world, a way of looking but not joining, a way of moving through but not attaching, a kind of romantic individualism distinctly adapted to its time and source.
I am interested in this way of being—distanced but still within—it reminds me of monadism, and Tevfik Fikret, how he wouldn't leave his house but had an immense cultural and political influence.
But why did Didion categorize this as “romantic individualism”? Individualism because it's similar to monadism, the self being the unit. And romantic as in an idealized way of looking at the world?
