lines from Separate Rooms

 lines from the novel  by Tondelli    consonances going on with "solitude" in McGregor's book and other ones too 

In some ways he had managed to get by by remaining aloof, as he had in his boyish love affairs. The years of apprenticeship were important in this respect too. Because he did not achieve anything concrete, be it something accomplished, or some kind of a relationship. He did not realize that the suffering was enriching him and that he was developing in an inward direction as a person

He would rather have made love, had fun, and branched out into emotional experiences and political quests, but instead he ended up tense and repressed, working on the mystery of his own solitude and aloneness, unaware that in so doing he was getting closer to the most palpable seam of that other reality that we call art.

Leo realizes that his need for solitude cannot cut him off altogether

He is trying to find an answer to the need he feels to be with himself. He wants to carry on being generous and available and open, even if he is aware that it is not easy to reconcile such different demands. The fact is that solitude is changing him. He says: “You’re thirty-something, Leo. Your body does not react to things like it used to. You don’t have that constant desire to find things out any longer. You don’t have  

Pier Vittorio Tondelli  Separate Rooms   Fine Preface by André Aciman and soon to be a film

adaptation by Luca Guadagnino.  

Aciman's passages about writing letters, did I already post some passages from that?