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Couch potatoes, goof-offs, freeloaders, good-for-nothings, loafers, and loungers: ever since the Industrial Revolution, when the work ethic as we know it was formed, there has been a chorus of slackers ridiculing and lampooning the pretensions of hardworking respectability. Whenever the world of labor changes in significant ways, the pulpits, politicians, and pedagogues ring with exhortations of the value of work, and the slackers answer with a strenuous call of their own: "To do nothing," as Oscar Wilde said, "is the most difficult thing in the world."
Moving with verve and wit through a series of case studies that illuminate the changing place of leisure in the American republic, Doing Nothing revises the way we understand slackers and work itself.
- Sales Rank: #738335 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Published on: 2007-05-15
- Released on: 2007-05-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .85" w x 5.50" l, 1.05 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780865477377
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Lutz eases readers into this sparkling cultural history of stylish American torpor with an anecdote about his 18-year-old son, Cody, moving into his house and bivouacking on the couch—perhaps indefinitely. Lutz himself spent a decade before college "wandering here and abroad," so his intense anger at Cody surprised him—and inspired him to write this book about the crashing fault lines between Anglo-America's vaunted Calvinist work ethic and its skulking, shrugging love of idling. An English professor who admits to being personally caught between these warring impulses, Lutz (Crying) has a gimlet eye for the ironies of modern loafing: that the "flaming youth" of the 1920s were intensely industrious; that our most celebrated slackers (Jack Kerouac, Richard Linklater) have been closet workaholics; that our most outspoken Puritans (Benjamin Franklin, George W. Bush) have been notorious layabouts. Lutz's diligent research on a range of lazy and slovenly subjects, from French flâneurs to New York bohos, ultimately leads him to side with the bums. Flying in the face of yuppie values and critics of the welfare state, his "slacker ethic" emerges over the course of this history as both a necessary corrective to—and an inevitable outgrowth of—the 80-hour work week. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Samuel Johnson identified literary loafers in his periodicalIdler (1758-60), and here Lutz lays sharp-eyed analysis on society's reaction toward those who repudiate regular work. Productively informing his appraisals of the Thoreaus and Kerouacs with his own youthful experiment in communal^B living, Lutz weaves no grand theory of the slacker because he finds that wastrels have been different in every generation. In the late 1700s, a disinclination to work was an aristocratic affectation. In reaction to industrialism, the back-to-nature primitivist appeared, embodied by Thoreau, while cultural vulgarity made the Gilded Age vulnerable to the effete cynicism of an Oscar Wilde. In Wilde and others, Lutz nails, with concise sophistication, the mix of anger and amusement such nonconformists provoked. Though a serious study of spongers, this wry book is fun to read. With layabouts such as Theodore Dreiser, the Beats, and our epoch's own Anna Nicole Simpson on offer, cultural-history mavens won't be able to pass Lutz up. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Highly intelligent, stimulatingly eclectic, and impressively learned.” ―Gary Kamiya, Salon
“Enjoyable and interesting . . . As much about the nature of work as it is about trying to avoid it.” ―Matthew Price, Los Angeles Times
“Incredibly engaging and offbeat meditation . . . A deliciously wild ride.” ―Elaine Margolin, The Denver Post
Most helpful customer reviews
86 of 90 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent, an entertaining read
By Amazon Customer
I got this book largely because I was curious as to how anyone could write a history of people who did nothing. Afterall, people who do nothing wouldn't do enough to leave a history behind (that follows, doesn't it?)
Well, Lutz surprised me. People who do nothing, or at the least strive to not work, are quite an interesting crew. I ran into a lot of famous people I had never thought of as loafers before: such as Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnson. Of course the usual suspects were also there: like Kerouac and Ginsberg (and the beats in general.)
The author seems to suggest that he is something of a slacker himself. But I found that hard to believe as clearly a great deal of work went into this book. The amount of digested reading, research, review of culutral materials such as films, etc., was impressive. The writing was also quite good. Either Lutz is a very good writer or he has an excellent editor. I say that because he wove a large amount of disparate material into a fascinating narrative about people and segments of society committed to doing nothing. The pace was never boring; while the amount of information presented was always informative and stimulating. And as I read, sprawled out on the couch, I found myself reflecting more deeply on just where I fit into the argument of, to work or not to work.... I guess I'd have to say that Doing Nothing proved to be an edifying read.
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
A true pleasure to read cover to cover, especially while the reader is allegedly at work
By Midwest Book Review
Doing Nothing: A History Of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, And Bums In America by Tom Lutz is the true story of the American anti-work ethic from Benjamin Franklin's "air baths" to Jack Kerouac's dharma bums to the notorious slackers of Generation X to doctors declaring the medical problems of overwork and much more. The history, philosophy, and justification of goofing off, supplemented with careful research and statistics, makes for engaging reading whether for expert sociologists researching the cultural phenomenon's of shirking or lay readers making the most of their own relaxation time. A true pleasure to read cover to cover, especially while the reader is allegedly at work.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Slackers of the World, Unite!
By Clary Antome
If you happen to be the kind of person who prefers week-long naps to making a career and winces every time somebody starts talking platitudes about the value of work, the need to "strive" or the immorality of idleness, here's a book for you.
In it you will find lots of references to more or less respectable intellectuals and artists who spent a great deal of their time celebrating the "slacker" ethos (before the term even existed) by advocating our inalienable right to do nothing. Of course, apart from gaining fame (or infamy) for their ideas, none of these people was actually able to overthrow the prevalent "work ethic", which proudly claims that "happiness" and "fulfilment" can only be achieved if you toil your life away.
So what IS it that makes the slacker such a nagging presence in Western culture? This is what Lutz tries to answer by looking at the development of this figure in America.
Not surprisingly, one of the first things we are told is that the "work ethic" and its converse, the "degenerate" idleness, can be traced back more or less to the Industrial Revolution. Apparently before this period humans wasted less time extolling the virtues of work. The hunter-gatherers, as we well know, were so "primitive" that they thought sleeping and playing around were just about the greatest luxuries one could enjoy - and they had plenty of that. The ancient Greeks even went so far to consider work a "curse". And we all remember how much Jesus praised the lilies in the field for... well, just standing there not doing much.
What has changed, then? Lutz's answer: "the nature of work".
As more and more people were dispossessed (i.e., lost their land or their own tools/craft) and became dependent on the continual development (and "whims") of a huge, impersonal factory system, the need to remind them of the "merits" of work (for others) increased. Nowhere has this transformation been more visible than in America - "the land of the free", whose population initially consisted mainly of indentured whites and enslaved blacks, - a country that has made such a swift transition from agriculture to factory to "service" society in only a couple of centuries. At each stage new bunches of people were chucked out of suddenly obsolescent activities and forced to adapt to the latest "economic demands". Those who were left hanging - either because they didn't find a place or actually refused to participate in the new work system - became known as idlers, loafers, tramps, bohemians, hobos, bums, beats, delinquents, etc. And were accordingly reviled by the defenders of dutifulness (usually - surprise, surprise - political/moral authorities, factory bosses, company managers, the mainstream media, etc).
Fortunately, not everyone considers his/her own obsolescence a drama. Instead, some people seem to revel in their newly (and often temporarily) acquired freedom to do anything BUT working for others in exchange for a (mostly) ludicrous salary. They even have the audacity to celebrate their pleasure. Which is what makes this book not only an enlightening but also pleasant experience: the ironic remarks and entertaining tales of those who have stepped out of the rat race remind us that deep inside we all resent this whole myth that working (or rather: wage-labour) is supposed to be such a fun, noble activity.
And as even the "service" society undergoes its transformations (by replacing ever more humans with - far more effective - machines), we can already expect the next wave of nothing-doers, who (as Douglas Coupland prophesied) "may not find a place in the new order". So maybe now more than ever the time is ripe to read this book and at least prepare yourself ideologically for the (quite likely) event that also YOU might be forced to join the slacker-species. Lutz has the good sense to quote (twice) a line from the film "Slacker", which can serve as a consolation for your idle future: you may live badly, but at least you won't have to work for it.
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