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A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
May 2006
384 pages
ISBN: 0865476500
EAN: 9780865476509
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Historical
From the author of Crying, a witty, wide-ranging
cultural history of our attitudes toward work--and getting
out of it
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. Reviled by many,
heroes to others, these layabouts stretch and yawn while the
rest of society worries and sweats. 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." From Benjamin Franklin's "air baths" to
Jack Kerouac's "dharma bums," Generation-X slackers, and
beyond, anti-work-ethic proponents have held a central place
in modern culture. Moving with verve and wit through a series of fascinating
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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