Doing Nothing or Nothing Doing?

“It’s a well-known fact that Europeans spend fewer hours at work a week than Americans,” says the publisher’s promo copy for this book. “So it’s only befitting that one of them—the very clever, extremely engaging, and quite hilarious Hodgkinson—should have the wittiest and most useful insights into the fun and nature of loafing.” Hodgkinson, editor of British journal, The Idler, is indeed clever, engaging, hilarious, and European, and promo copy naturally needs to market its subject. However, this reductionist take on How to be Idle diminishes its capacity for creating radical shifts of thought (as well as ignoring the fact that European countries are shifting towards a more Americanized workweek).

Hidden in American compliments of European better living, such as the one penned by HarperCollins’ PR person, is a smug satisfaction that they might have idleness down pat, but we’re the ones with the money. Our capital and our (usually shaky) world power prove that our relentless work ethic is superior, despite the toll it takes on our psyches. Even our own “simplicity” movement, as embodied in magazines like Organic Style and Real Simple, is time consuming and expensive to take part in.

Thankfully, you won’t find any Real Simple-style recommendations for how to make elaborate dried flower arrangements or stenciled place cards in Hodgkinson’s book. The beauty of How to be Idle is its realism, and its lack of puritanical zeal. The author’s prescription for a better life doesn’t assume that we’re going to go to yoga every day or maintain a distance from drugs and alcohol. In this, the book is very European, indeed, to a sometimes off-putting extent (the chapter on the true virtue of cigarettes, for example, is sometimes hard to stomach). But in general, the book is really all about forgiving yourself, and allowing yourself to live a life that’s more full of human enjoyment.

Hodgkinson splits How to Be Idle into chapters named after hours of the day, and addresses issues that each hour brings up. Nine in the morning, for example, introduces the concept of rejecting a nine to five job. One in the afternoon serves up a rant on the death of the business lunch tradition. Four pm extols the virtues of teatime. And so on.

The book is full of prescriptions for small and big things you can do to fit enjoyment into your days. Hodgkinson on reading poetry while still in bed in the morning, for example (covered in the 10am “Sleeping In” chapter):

Poetry is routinely shunned by sophisticated urbanites who think they simply don’t have the time to waste on such indulgences. But a poem can be read in a few minutes and have great effect. The horizontal idler, in bed at 10am, has the time to do this.

Or, another great idea: How about changing the way that you look at hangovers? Instead of stressing out all Saturday about how much you’re missing or what you’re not doing, says Hodgkinson, “abandon yourself completely to it… We need to embrace the hangover as a day off, time out from reality, a chance to live in the moment.”

Hodgkinson’s allegiance to the reduced-work idea, however, combined with his unafraid, brash voice, sometimes leads him down the garden path into seemingly blithe ignorance about the fate of those who are poor. “I have many friends who are long-term unemployed and are regularly subjected to patronizing ‘get you back to work’ sessions,” he writes. “A great deal of ingenuity is still being devoted to the problems of the work shy.” To an American audience, where unemployment payments and benefits from the government are much harder to come by, this might read as flippant. Or what about this passage, in regards to the problem of homelessness:

Maybe the homeless, the tramp, the vagabond has rejected those very values. They do not want a job. They do not want to become middle class, freighted with debt, worry, and a boss. They do not want to keep fixed hours and spend their surplus income in department stores and theme parks.

Well, maybe, or maybe they’re cold and sick and would rather be able to give their kids a roof over their heads?

Despite missteps like these, Hodgkinson’s book-length wake-up call to those obsessed with production, ambition and success is loud, clear, and effective. In the chapter on partying, Hodgkinson writes:

The true idler wants to live a good life all the time, not just on Saturday nights, and the real lesson of hedonism is that we should attempt to enjoy all moments, not just those ones when we are out of our heads. Time should be savored, not endured.

Truly words to live by.