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Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America
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List Price:
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Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 174
EAN: 9780865477377
ISBN: 086547737X
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2007-05-15
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: 2007-05-15
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Well Researched Book
Comment: Whether you are a workaholic or a slacker, you will find out pretty much everything, probably even more than you might want to know about how work ethics and the ethics of idling are developed from Industrial Revolution to present days, and why they are inseparable from each other like a sweet bitter lover.
The book's greatest strength is also its biggest weakness. There are indeed, as other reviewers have said, many historical facts in the book. Many of the names are unknown to me and probably to general reader outside of literary circle. Quiet frankly, many pages I wished there is a fast forward button that allows me to know what Tom is trying to get across without reading the book word by word.
Another area that I wish he can elaborate upon is the difference between truly doing nothing and doing stuff outside of conventional notion of jobs. For example, one wouldn't equate Samuel Johnson to someone who does nothing. Even if Samuel Johnson is said to be the founding father of the ideals of doing nothing.
Overall, this book is a good read allowing one to understand the development of the idea of doing nothing and work ethics.
Customer Rating:
Summary: For History Buffs only
Comment: Sorry, but I could only recommend this book to someone who wants nothing, but dry history. The author managed to take a really fun and interesting subject and turn it into a lifeless thesis. I expected stories about actual loafers, not quotes about loafing from intellectuals.
Customer Rating:
Summary: eh
Comment: I don't know how Tom managed to take such a fun subject and just suck the life right out of it. The subject and people he covers are interesting despite his best efforts, but if you ever wondered why English teachers have a reputation for ruining great literature for youngsters world-wide, well, you won't after you read this. The book is not engaging in any way, but rather you feel like Tom is taking the extensive research he did for the book and whacking you in the face with it. It's essentially a very wordy list of people who at one time or another over the last 300 years had some sort of opinion on the nature of work. As you might imagine, this is a long list. If you find this book at a used book store or maybe sitting on a bench in a train station I'd say go for it, but otherwise your money would be better spent elsewhere.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slackers of the World, Unite!
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Complete Book of Slackers
Comment: It was fun finding out that there are so many loafers, including so many famous and accomplished people. But there were too many for me. And the apparent qualifications for getting into the book, I think, were too subjective. I would have prefered fewer slackers coverd in greater depth (the more famous ones). If Tom Lutz's goal was to smoothly and skillfully mention ever last slacker he uncoverd during his research -- he did a heck of a good job.
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