Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

The doctor of do-little

Idleness advocate Tom Hodgkinson says that in today's fast-paced, work-driven world, we could all benefit from more loafing and less laboring.

By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD
Published July 22, 2005

	Tom Hodgkinson managed to work some work into his idle time, spending about four hours every morning on his new book.

Sacked from a joyless job and on the dole, a subversive Englishman named Tom Hodgkinson launched The Idler in 1993. Since then, the twice-yearly U.K. magazine has featured regular paeans to skipping work, daydreaming and otherwise undoing the effects of the Industrial Revolution, which he believes has cost us all a lot of sleep.

Sadly, the magazine is not widely available in the work-ulcerated United States. You can, however, tunnel out of your wretched cubicle to find his new hardcover manifesto, How To Be Idle (HarperCollins), in your local bookstore.

Culling sources from Samuel Johnson to Bertrand Russell - and, yes, even Jesus Christ, who had that beautiful line about the untoiling lilies of the field - Hodgkinson presents an erudite defense of taking your ease in a world gone mad with hustle.

Portraying history as an epic struggle between irritating go-getters and noble idlers, the book reads like a ramble through the centuries with a languid, likable companion who has scoured the world's libraries to validate his obsession.

Far from a waste of time, he argues, idling can be a fount of creativity. Giants like Descartes, Voltaire, Milton, Mark Twain and Proust all worked in bed, and Einstein slept 10 hours a day. Even Thomas Edison slept a lot more than he let on, though Hodgkinson dislikes the inventor, for keeping us up all night with his light bulb.

Hodgkinson blames "the busy, restless, striving Americans" for ruining the leisurely lunch, noting that the Big Mac nicely satisfies the function of food in a fascist state: an injection of energy for the worker's body. Places like Starbucks, meanwhile, purvey "strong coffee and some bread to help you survive the day in a state of high anxiety and fear."

Hodgkinson, 37, who lives in the English countryside, admits he is useless and irritable without eight to 10 hours of sleep, which are not easy to come by as the father of three small children.

Called by the Times, Hodgkinson found a phone where he was able to talk for a few minutes before a wailing child required his attention. He describes his book as "a sort of plea for a more joyful way of living."

It came from thinking about my own feelings of laziness, and feeling guilty, feeling I ought to be working harder. I read these essays by Dr. Johnson. He was always resolving to get up earlier. He said the happiest part of a man's life is lying awake in bed in the morning. I thought, "Oh, this sounds like me."

I worked as a researcher for a magazine. It was pretty bad. That's when I had the idea for The Idler. Nothing happened for a couple years. Then I was sacked. I thought, "I've got all this free time, I may as well start this magazine I've been talking about."

I was quite disciplined. Essentially I worked every morning, 9 to 12:30 or 1. The first 20 minutes were agonizing (but) I was doing something I really loved. Suddenly I was reading all these fantastic books.

Sloth was the seventh deadly sin. The seventh deadly sin was originally sadness. It's from the Greek work "acedia," which means not caring, giving up. So sloth is sort of a spiritless giving up on life, whereas for me idleness is a spirited grabbing hold of life. Work for most people is antilife. That's why being lazy is a way of living more fully than being a work-slave.

There is another great American tradition. There is Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Henry Miller, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary. The forces of idleness and the forces of work have been battling it out for a long time.

When I was 18 I drove around the States with friends. It was brilliant. We had a fantastic time. I lost my virginity in Tampa, Florida.

(In England) we've definitely got an idea that hard work equals happiness with the Tony Blair government. Certainly the problem seems to be a lot worse in the States, where you get two weeks vacation, which people don't even take.

Our own selves, because we've internalized a lot of these things - the guilt. We're a bit scared to not have a job. The advertising industry, the idea that you need more and more money. It's quite anarchic, this way of thinking. Authority likes things to be in order.

One of the things that I realized is, the work ethic is not something innate. We're actually indoctrinated with it.

An idler is a thinking enemy of the state. Idlers were literally rounded up in Nazi Germany and put into work camps. People who don't work are called lazy and shiftless. Doing nothing is actually quite a subversive act, not getting swept up by the system. It makes the hard workers feel uncomfortable.

In Shakespeare, the fun and the low characters, none of them really seemed to have jobs. We had the idea of "merry England." I just think people were more alive. The factory system took people away from a more independent life. People say, "No, the peasants were dependent on the nobles." But they weren't as dependent as we are today on our employers. People had their own strips of lands, their own cows, their own pigs. They made their own things. They weren't so dependent on wages like we are. There weren't so many clocks and watches around. It was a sort of chaotic, spontaneous life. It was replaced by one that was less fun, more money-based.

It's a bit of a fantasy because we do live in the modern world. I like the idea of living in a world without jobs, before the job as we know it had come in. Living more rurally, more in tune with the seasons. In winter it's parsnips, in summer it's peas. I have other fancies about going around in a horse and cart.

It is possible to create our own idyll. It's not that difficult. You just have to bunk out of the whole consuming thing. I found it easier to live better on a much lower income. I'm doing my vegetable garden. It's a lot easier to go to bed earlier in the country, so we go to bed half-past ten.

We have a national health system. I don't have any insurance of any sort at all, other than that (required) by law. When you buy a camera, they try to sell you insurance. I say, "No, no." I think insurance is one of the enemies of the idle life. It's based on fear. They say for your own peace of mind, take out this insurance policy, but you start thinking of what can go wrong.

It's not supposed to be a prescriptive book. I don't really want to be a leader or prophet in that way. I've had very nice feedback from readers. People say, "It's just affirmed what I've always thought. Yeah. I'm an idler, I don't have to feel guilty."

It was a brilliant revelation to me, as an idler, that you're a better parent if you leave them alone. Let them fall back on their own resoures a bit more, rather than driving them to one activity and another. That's why they go straight into a job. You actually create more responsible people, less willing to rely on a big authority, if you let children off the leash. Even when they're fighting, which is difficult. I take them to tennis and ballet. I don't think they really enjoy tennis and ballet.

I'm really considering throwing the TV out of the window. We've been using the TV quite a lot. It's been brilliant for child care. Then my son said, "Daddy, what is car insurance? It's only $19.95." It's depressing.

I would fall asleep in lessons. Teachers would bang the desk. It was okay because I pulled it off later. My mom is very much sort of, "Work hard." My dad's much more of a idler. I've got the two things going on. I suppose in writing books and doing the magazine I'm a sort of ambitious idler. I found the solution.

I remember thinking, "My perfect day would be working in the morning, chopping logs in the afternoon, and drinking with my friends in the evening." We've sort of approximated that. We get up about 7, we get the kids up, have a nice breakfast, then I'll go into my study around 9 and read and write till 12 or 1. Then we all have lunch together. Then in the afternoon I'll nap, sometimes an hour, sometimes two, then wake up and have some tea, maybe do some gardening and play with my kids. We'll eat and drink together in the evening. I don't go out much, partly because I haven't got much money.

- Christopher Goffard can be reached at 727 893-8650 or goffard@sptimes.com

- Call in sick when you're sick.

- Call in sick when you're not.

- Ditch your alarm clock.

- Take long lunches.

- Drink tea, not coffee.

- Smoke.

- Consume beer every night, bacon every morning.

- Quit your job.

- Nap.

- Wander.

[Last modified July 21, 2005, 09:09:03]