Olivia Laing surveys the landscape of urban alienation in her new book, a work that is part-memoir and part-criticism. Critic Maureen Corrigan says The Lonely City is "absolutely one of a kind ...

It isn't hard to imagine yourself inside a Hopper painting (say, having a coffee at a late-night diner) and now, for $150 a night, you can sleep in a re-creation of his 1957 work, Western Motel.

The night before his Los Angeles interview, he was performing in Mexico City, and later that day he would be painting at home again — this time, ... The Lonely Art of Devendra Banhart. 3.