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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, a chorus of slackers has held the pretensions of hardworking respectability up to scorn. Reviled by many, heroic to others, these layabouts stretch and yawn their way through life and literature while the rest of society sweats. Their history is the history of labor in negative. From Benjamin Franklin's "air baths" to Jack Kerouac's dharma bums to Generation X slackers and beyond, the case studies in Doing Nothing prove that anti-work ethic proponents have held a central but underrecognized place in modern culture." "Tom Lutz illuminates the changing place of leisure in America and, in doing so, shows us idleness (and work) in a new light."--Jacket.… (more)
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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. 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.