Plautus

Plautus is the narrator of one of the collection's longer stories, "Plautus: A Memoir". Plautus spends her life among literary figures: she begins her story by searching for Leo Tolstoy, but ends up with his daughter, Alexandra; she then finds herself in the company of Virginia Woolf; she then travels to live with George Orwell; and finally, she introduces herself to Russians scientists, so that she can go to space.

In her dying moments, Plautus realizes why she has always found companionship among writers. She says that writers "had recognized in [her] a matching contradictory desire never to be let go of, always to be let alone" (152). Here, Plautus defines her desire for solitude, a state which allows an individual to be "let alone" while having a companion. Of her owners, Alexandra most successfully embodies the solitude which Plautus desires. Alexandra recognizes "the immeasurable solitude of self," but...