Interestingly, one of its core postulates is that the essential sociality of us all, or the universal human impulse to relate to others. In so far as we are relationship-seeking beings, then, what is the connective tissue that actually binds people together, that gives effect to this relational striving? In contrast to the popular belief that knowledge precedes action, I argue that emotions are what prompt and sustain human interactions - and not emotions in the conventional sense, of private feeling states stored inside our heads, each with its own unique biochemical correlate. I regard emotions, instead, as intersubjective phenomena that can be said to exist between people. How else does one explain being moved by a piece of music, a spellbinding movie or a superb novel, if not that some mysterious element - an emotion - has connected to the heart of the composer, the director or the author to the heart of the listener, the watcher or the reader?

In Civilisation and its Discontents, Freud argues that the civilisational setup is antithetical to human happiness: the individual quest for freedom - specifically, the discharge of the sexual and aggressive drives - is thwarted repeatedly by societal demands for conformity. And yet, despite identifying easily with two sources of our suffering - the awesome power of the natural world and the hopeless fragility of the human constitution - we are less inclined to concede as the third, and main, source of that suffering the lockstep marching of state and society. In Freud’s view, “When we start considering this possibility, we come across a contention which is so astonishing that we must dwell on it. This contention holds that what we call our civilisation is largely responsible for our misery, and that we should be much happier if we gave it up and returned to primitive conditions. I call this contention astonishing because, in whatever way we may define the concept of civilisation, it is a certain fact that all the things with which we seek to protect ourselves against the threats that emanate from the sources of suffering are part of that very civilisation.

The reader realizes that the man who’s using turtles as a stand-in for human intimacy has been there from the very beginning. He tells us clearly enough: He had grown up loving all the animals, expecting to live in peace with his fellow creatures. But the developers had just kept coming. And the creature within had become entombed in the mud. Yet he, like the turtle, had survived: cold, quiet, alert. Containing within himself not multitudes but a sufficiency of response just large enough to avoid the charge of unnatural.

It is Hoagland’s complexity—the intentness of his observation coupled with the elegance of his withdrawal—that gives this essay its inner life. His mixed feelings provide the texture, and the drama. Patiently and “quietly,” they lead us into the starkness of solipsism. The turtles have taught the narrator that nothing outside himself is quite real to him.

The writing continues to dazzle while the structure falls apart. And rightly so. Because, after all, what difference does it really make—the second and third times around—which comes first? We are in the presence of a man in a trance of self-analysis: a man who will never act on what he knows and therefore is compelled to go on “knowing.

On a village or a town street, in an estate park or garden, on an expanse of beach or a landscaped something-or-other: hardly a living soul is ever to be seen. Casually these observations are inserted. Here or there. In a word, a sentence, a fragment. At what turns out to be just the right moment in just the right paragraph. The one that resembles a stone dropping straight to the subliminal bottom.

Every description of the visible world; every association past, present, future; every bit of memory, conjecture, or speculation implies a state of being destitute of human connection. On a small propeller plane that services the route from Amsterdam to Norwich the point is suddenly driven home:...

Clearly, the bleakness originates from within. It is the material condition of the narrator’s inner life, the walls that contain him, the prison of his own personality. It is from inside this prison that he is speaking.