In no other age can so many people have harboured such intense ambitions to become writers. The longing one day to turn out a book probably a novel or, less likely, an autobiography lies close to the center of contemporary aspirations. This is at one level a hugely welcome development, a consequence of widespread literacy, higher educational standards and a proper focus on the power of books to change lives. But looked at from another angle, it may also, in private, be the result of something rather more desultory: an epidemic of isolation and loneliness.