Out of Nowhere into Nothing

In the afternoon, after her employer had gone for the day, she would stand again by the window. As she stood thus she faced westward and in the afternoon saw the sun fall down the sky. It was glorious to be there alone during the late hours of the afternoon. What a tremendous thing this city in which she had come to live! For some reason after she went to work for Walter Sayers the city seemed, like the room in which she worked, to have accepted her, taken her into itself.

Sherwood Anderson – Out of Nowhere into Nothing (1921)

Many of us will know what Anderson is describing here. A young woman has moved from a dreary village to Chicago where she works as a stenographer. Here she is savouring the simple pleasure of being alone in her employer’s office, looking out over the teeming city as the sun sets. Just beyond the office walls she is surrounded by people, by the ceaseless buzz of city life but she is also alone at her window. She is apart from it all until she chooses otherwise.

After growing up in the village she loves the impersonal acceptance of the city, the freedom it seems to offer. She loves it as an escape from the stultifying closeness of village life where she was never really alone apart from temporary escapes into surrounding woods and fields. Now she relishes the freedom of anonymity which Chicago offers. Everyone knows everyone else in the village. Chicago's anonymity is impossible.

Escaping back to the present we see much the same effect in Costa coffee shops. Anyone can be assured of impersonal Costa acceptance as soon as they walk through the door. It doesn’t matter if we have never set foot in the place before. Everything is familiar and predictable, but the most important thing of all is acceptance. Strolling into a Costa is not the same as venturing into Joe’s Cafe on an unfamiliar village High Street. Acceptance is what Costa guarantees and that matters more than the coffee ever could.

It is much the same with any major public brand from Tesco to M&S. As in Anderson’s novel, cities are more accepting than villages simply because they are so much bigger, so much more anonymous and anonymity is itself a form of acceptance. We don’t know you but it doesn’t matter because we don’t know each other either. Join us - we don’t care so there is no need for you to care.

This may be a powerful attraction of identity politics. With an approved identity comes anonymity and with that comes acceptance within the identity. Individuals need not apply. They must seek their freedom elsewhere. Social media for example.

We encounter this with celebrities who cloak their inner life with the anonymity of a politically correct identity. They become at the same time both famous and anonymous. As if an inner sense of politically correct anonymity offers a calming sense of freedom inside the febrile skin of celebrity.