Happy 10th! Mark Kingwell on Jailbreaks by Zach Wells

Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets is one of the best anthologies of poetry I know, and in my top five contemporary poetry books ever. Zach Wells selects sonnets from across the country, across generations, and across styles. For those who think sonnets all look the same, there is much to learn here about the range of poetic possibility within a single set of formal constraints. Among other clever things, Wells's introduction argues that the fourteen lines of the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet forms are poetry's finest vehicle for introducing, developing, and concluding a well-formed thought. These poems are thus phenomenological jailbreaks, consciousness busting out -- in good order -- from the buzzing prison-yard of our jumbled minds. A book to dip into or read cover to cover, with delight on every page.

Number 543 Never Looked Quite So Good.

Hey folks! A couple new publicity hits for Mark Kingwell, one from UWO's Gazette, and another from our dear friends at the National Post (who seem to have at long last gone completely round the bend). From their new compilation of Top 2,012 things for 2012, we're proud to announce that our very own Mr. Kingwell is number 543. Anyone else on there we should know about? We'd read the whole thing ourselves ... but that's 2012 seconds / 33 minutes / 0.543 hours we just don't have.

The Agenda with Steve Paiken: Mark Kingwell on Coarse Discourse and the Politics of Luck

Unruly Voices author Mark Kingwell has been chatting with TVO's Steve Paiken on The Agenda. The first segment aired Nov. 5th and is called "Coarse Discourse"; the second aired yesterday and is called "The Politics of Luck." They go handsomely together. Enjoy!

Nov. 5th: Mark Kingwell on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paiken ("Coarse Discourse")
Nov. 27th: Mark Kingwell on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paiken ("The Politics of Luck")

The Ups and Downs of the Uncanny Valley: An Interview with Mark Kingwell

For those of you who would like a preview of what you might get at our "All Saints and Fast Zombies" night with Mark Kingwell at Type Books this evening, I'm posting a little interview. On the title of Unruly Voices, the importance of the humanities, urban architecture, and more. See you tonight on Queen! For more information, visit our page on landoflastnight'szombieinstagrams.com. 

U of T Prof and Harper's Contributing Editor
Mark Kingwell.

“The Ups and Downs of the Uncanny Valley”: An Interview with Mark Kingwell.

1.      Tell us about the title of your book. To what does Unruly Voices refer?

The phrase has a layered meaning for me. One of the core essays is about the erosion of civility as a feature of public discourse, and as a virtue of political life. This goes back to my earliest interests in political theory, especially the virtues (or otherwise) of citizens. So that’s one kind of unruly voice, the one that disrupts politics for self-serving ends. But there is another, positive sense of the phrase that alludes to the mix of voices and tones that make up a single human consciousness—the unruly voices of personhood. The modern idea is that we gather these together, smooth them out, and call the result an ‘inner voice’ or some such. But the insights that dominate the later essays are about the impossibility of doing this, the enduring unruliness of the voices that are the texture of consciousness. So, finally, there is the sense that the collection itself is a matter of unruly voices, the different tones and pitches of the various essays, which range from popular to fairly scholarly, even as they all revolve around the basic question: Is democracy possible?

2.      You mention the range of tone in these essays, which deserves a question in itself. Not many writers can shift from strict philosophy to dramatic monologues in the voice of President Obama! What else did you hope to achieve by bringing these different modes of writing together?

Well, I wanted to highlight a range of approaches and styles of writing, all of them linked by themes—and by the fact of their authorship by this allegedly singular consciousness I am, or ‘have’, or ‘experience’. It happens that I routinely contribute to a variety of publications that expect different styles, so that is directly reflected here. All of the essays date from the period between 2008 and 2012, so obviously the dominant politics facts they are preoccupied with include Obama’s first term, the 2008 economic collapse, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy Wall Street movement. I don’t see them adding up to a single political theory so much as illustrating various facets of what it means to dwell critically on the world of democratic politics.

3.      Throughout Unruly Voices you emphasize the value of literature and the humanities to North American democracy, and you often will teach works of literature in philosophy classes. In your opinion what does literature bring to philosophy that straight-up philosophical writing doesn’t? And do you think literature is more relevant to democratic theory than to other lines of philosophical inquiry?

The emphasis on human imagination, once central to democratic theory, has been lost in recent years, and part of my purpose here is to try and bring it back. The cultivation of consciousness that is unique to the experience of literature is a necessary part of the ‘sympathy’ (as Adam Smith called it) that alone makes society possible. We have to see the other as an entity with the same mysterious qualities of desire and reason as we sense in ourselves. Literature is not the only way to accomplish this, but it remains the best—not least because, as Northrop Frye said, argument actually convinces few people, while narrative and imagination often do. And further, without imagination and vision, argument has no point or direction. To use the title of one of my previous books, we have to engage with the very idea of a world we want.

4.      In “Retouching the Void” you discuss an interview you conducted with Michael Arad, architect of the 9/11 Memorial Plaza. At this time you’d already published one book on consciousness and the city (Concrete Reveries), which focused especially on New York and Shanghai. What was it like to revisit your thoughts on public space with Arad? Did the idea of the memorial shift your thoughts on New York as a transglobal city?

I always love going back to New York since the days I lived there and drafted those parts of Concrete Reveries. And Arad is a passionate New Yorker as well as a talented architect. His task was almost impossible: to memorialize the most significant national, political disaster in recent American history. I don’t think he entirely succeeded, but the attempt is, like all the best architecture, an occasion for thought.

5.      You’ve been writing what we could call moral philosophy for a long time, and you’ve always had an interest in how we as people can create better lives, governments, and societies for ourselves. This is your seventeenth book. How has your approach to writing moral philosophy changed since you published your first book in 1994?

I think I’m less ambitious, in the sense that I no longer retain the full version of what might be called the Philosopher’s Fallacy, namely that argument and theory can save the day when it comes to ethics and politics. I believe more firmly than ever in the centrality of language, however—my version of Heidegger’s claim that “language speaks us”—and these essays from what I guess must be my ‘middle period’ reflect that instability. I’ve been writing more and more in a kaleidoscopic fashion, I think, using both argument and other discursive means to illuminate one facet after another of a basic idea, or problem. Here, of course, that idea is democracy.

6.      Do you feel your interest in popular culture separates your work from that of others working in the field of democratic theory or ethical philosophy? Why or why not?

Well, it does separate it as a matter of fact—most political theorists don’t think about zombies or sports or movies as much as I tend to do. But culture is culture, and the idea that there is ‘official’ culture on one side and ‘popular’ culture on the other is a relic of another historical moment. I follow people like Barthes and Bourdieu, Veblen and Galbraith, in thinking that you can’t understand politics without considering how people actually spend their time, what they consume, and what they care about.

7.      If you had to pick one thing for a reader to take away from Unruly Voices, what would it be?

A sense of possibility, even as the ground seems to be shifting beneath our feet. I finish with an essay that considers the idea of the uncanny, and surely we live in uncanny times, where meanings distort and double, revenants roam, and the repressed always returns. Unruly Voices is my attempt at providing a partial guide to the ups and downs of the uncanny valley that is 21st-century democratic politics.

The Weekend in Review; Sleeps till Zombies, Two!

Afternoon, folks, and happy Tuesday. It was a good if busy weekend here at HQ, what with BookFest Windsor blasting through town and a spate of new reviews to yap about. See them yet on our spiffy new Facebook page? Which you should like, if you haven't already? Yes? Yes. Go. Do it now.* 

So ... here we are. Two more hits (pow pow!) for Anakana Schofield, who was a knockout at IFOA and written up by her panel's moderator (Susan Cole of NOW). Since when does invoking Ulysses get you hopped up and down on? Find out here. And should you be curious as to why AK would claim that "Behind every vice president is a Canadian episodic novel"—which is to say, if you missed that THING in the VP debates—take a look at her IFOA questionnaire. 

It was also a good weekend for short story champ Nadine McInnis, who appeared at the Ottawa Book Festival on Sunday and was interviewed ("Confronting Mortality") in Saturday's Ottawa Citizen. Both the citizen and the Windsor Star also ran syndications of Emily Keeler's piece from the Post last week (hup hup)! Last but not least, Quill & Quire, stalwart as they are, had a few nice nicenesses to say about Craig Boyko's Psychology and Other Stories. 

Last but not least, she says with a tremor and a shiver and a quake, there are only TWO MORE SLEEPS till Mark Kingwell launches Unruly Voices at Type Books. (It's possible that zombies make me a little queasy.) RSVP on the you-know-where today! 

*I had to get that plea out of the way early before I talk about Mark's book, since, um, the third sentence of the jacket copy may or may not suggest that facebook-style 'likes' are eroding complex notions of personhood. Sigh. So 'like' us if you like us, and if not the latter, pretend.

Bookfest Windsor starts tonight ... along with the zombie countdown.

Morning, folks! Today's an exciting day for literature in Windsoria, as it's the kickoff to BookFest, where our very own Ray Robertson (Chathamite and UWindsor Writer-in-Residence candidate for 2013) will be reading with Maxine Gadd, Marty Gervais, Peter Hrastovec, John B. Lee, and Bruce Meyer. Tonight, 7:30, Capitol Theatre. 

Being Thursday October 25th also means we're only one week away from the Zombie Invasion of Toronto. My goodness. Get your shotguns and a copy of the constitution. Mark Kingwell's gonna put Simon Pegg to shame!

All Saints and Fast Zombies,
brought to you live (sort of)
by Biblioasis and Type Books.

New Manse News

"Fans of satirical fiction will love this book," the National Post said of C.P. Boyko's Psychology and Other Stories last weekend: "so will anyone who has reclined on a therapist’s couch, or taken a psychology course from a larger-than-life professor with obvious neuroses, or read a self-help book by an author whose biography reveals them to be a total mess."

Dan Wells and Chris Andrechek
wrestle the Counter of Death 

The BiblioManse Office in its
Final Hours

The New (Blue!) Office

First Books on the Shelves. Does
anyone else smell poetry?

We know something about total messes over here at the new Bibliomanse. Oh yes we do. That's why we've let a WHOLE WEEK go by without talking to you about the VERY EXCITING THINGS that are happening, will happen, HAVE happened, to our VERY EXCITING authors. We've had a spate of reviews and we have people at festivals and gosh darnit we've even had an award nod. And, of course (of course? really? is it real?), we've moved. Last Friday was the Great Migration. We've been phoneless and internetless to varying degrees over the past four days. Which is just my way of saying, er, if you've perhaps been trying to get in touch and found us slightly less responsive than usual, please do just give another poke and we'll get back to you as soon as we're able. It's been, er, zany. (Imagine steel desks with undersides like the death star and an old cash counter from the Bay [and then from the old shop on Ouellette, and most recently from the basement of Dan's house], an old cash counter made entirely of pressboard, glue and maybe some secretly of anvils—imagine all that good stuff being discombobulated and hauled around some staggering corners on steepish stairs, and then imagine something of the 10,000 books in said basement, and you've got an inkling of our week.)
In any event. I apologize for not giving each of these a proper write-up, but here are a few of the wonderful happenings that we've neglected in our boxish and internet-starved state. We'll have pictures of the new office-in-progress up soon. Till then!

Here's the little swooning-on-the-couch for Boyko that ran in the Post on Saturday (what a glower)! 

Here's an interview that David Helwig did with Seth for CBC PEI last week. 

Here are Mark Kingwell's "Seven Pathways to the Stars," which peeped out this Saturday in the Globe, and here is his upcoming IFOA interview with John Ralston Saul.

Here is Alice Petersen's All the Voices Cry reviewed in the Montreal Review of Books. And HERE—ding ding, exciting!—is the press release announcing that Alice Petersen has been shortlisted for the QWF's First Book Prize! Congratulations to Alice from all of us. 

Here are Rebecca Rosenblum's first and second appearances at the Vancouver International Writers Festival, starting today (the Human Carnival with Anne Fleming, AL Kennedy, and Jessica Westhead, then an Afternoon Tea with Steven Heighton, Linda Svendsen, Bill Gaston, Lorna Crozier and J. Jill Robinson);

Here is Anakana Schofield's appearance tonight at said VIWF, in the always-spectacular Literary Caberet (brought to you by Joe Biden—wait, what?—and for which she did an interview on CiTR); 

and here are her appearances at IFOA!

Tonight's an event night here at HQ, with Eugene McNamara reading from Dreaming of Lost America at 7 PM. RSVP on FaceBook today (now, always)—hope to see you soon!

A Wednesday Wrap-Up

Hello, Windsor. Hello, world. What's new? Well, for starters, BiblioPoet Alex Boyd has just returned from the marvellous UNB poetry weekend, which apparently was as fabulous as ever. Thanks to Ross Leckie & to UNB for hosting. Quoth Mr. Boyd, the readings at Memorial Hall—thanks in part to the lovely environs and stained glass—were a bit like Poetry Church. For those of you in Toronto who'd like a poesy experience of a different kind, you can check out Alex (and Sonia Di Placido, Josh Smith and Daniel Tysdal), at LiveWords tomorrow at the Black Swan. More deets here. 

And of course we can't forget our friends in the West, oh glorious West: C.P. Boyko is reading with Rae Spoon tomorrow at Pages on Kensington. Should be a good show. Rae will be playing some of their music and Craig will be opening with a little Psych work. And of the latter? We had a review come our way which will be running in Booklist on Oct. 16. "Readers will enjoy the author's versatility," they say, along with his "quirky (sometimes uproarious) sense of humor, sardonic view of the world, and fruitful imagination. He is also master of the ambiguous clue and unreliable narrator .... Libraries with any short-fiction readers should buy this book and keep an eye out for the next one."

Other reviews in brief: "Unruly Voices has insightful things to say about the corrupting influence of money on public discourse," said the National Post this weekend of Mark Kingwell's new essay collection (for which we'll be having a launch party at Type on November 1st): "The scourge of incivility might not be new, but it is more pervasive. And, as Kingwell warns, the cost to coherent debate is great." If you check out the Montreal Review of Books, you'll see Alice Petersen talking about books and Beckett. And (as a lead-in to Hallowe'en, perhaps?) the next issue of Prairie Fire begins their review of Laura Boudreau's Suitable Precautions with this: "There is nothing like good old gore to lift a short story out of the bland."
Indeed. Good gore. Love it. 

Anon!

The Wage Slave's Glossary on Marketplace

If you read the July issue of Harper's, where Mark Kingwell's introduction to the soon to be launched Wage Slave's Glossary appeared in excerpt, than you may well know that the follow-up to the Idler's Glossary was soon to hit bookshelves. With incredible foresight, we released The Idler's Glossary in October 2008, at the precise moment the world slipped into the worst recession since the Great Depression. We are releasing The Wage Slave's Glossary, at least according to the catalogue bumpf, as we strive to climb out of it. Truth be told, however, not much has changed since '08: on the BBC this evening a leading British economist predicted we're actually closer to entering a Great Depression than ever. One way or another, this glossary serves as useful function, as it continues its authors exploration of the various linkages between words and work, and how language continues to bind us in chains.

Over on American Public Radio's Marketplace, glossary-compiler Joshua Glenn gave a short interview about the book and its genesis, and some of the more interesting concepts it explores. Here's a taste of it:

KAI RYSSDAL: This next three-and-a-half minutes of the broadcast are for all you "clockless workers," grinding away in the countless "cube farms" out there.

If you need a translation, I direct you to a new book called "The Wage Slave's Glossary." It's a new collection of terms about work and the workplace. Joshua Glenn's one of the co-authors. Welcome to the program.

JOSHUA GLENN: Thank you.

RYSSDAL: Why write this book? I mean, we've got dictionaries all over the place.

GLENN: Our previous book was "The Idler's Glossary," and that was a collection of terms that were celebrating a certain style of life: the idler's way of life, where you don't let work define who you are and what you do. And this one is looking at the other side of that coin, which is the fact that so many of us work at jobs where we don't have very much control over how we do it or when we do it or what we're doing, even.

RYSSDAL: Run me through some of the definitions, some of your favorite key phrases in this dictionary, would you?

GLENN: I'm very interested in all these words that come from the workplace that people use to describe themselves. For example, the word "downtime." It was a mid-century term that meant time when a machine is out of action or unavailable for use. And today, of course, this means that human beings who aren't working are compared to machines that being serviced, or robots that are being recharged. And the worst thing of all, is that many of us now use "downtime" to describe our own weekends and vacations.

We look at a lot of corporate jargon, of course, things like the "clockless worker," "loyalty time," "flexibilization" -- these kind of sinister euphemisms for bad things that corporations like to do. "Clockless worker" being somebody's who's willing to ignore what the clock says and just keep working; "loyalty time" being another word for unpaid overtime. Even the word "boss" actually comes from Dutch plantations; a work boss was somebody who was in charge of, the overseer of the slaves on the plantation. So the fact that we've now come to use that in a completely, almost admiring way -- it's no longer a pejorative -- says a lot about how much we've forgotten about how work has developed over the years.

For the full interview, please go here. You can also listen to it at the same link. For a short excerpt from the glossary, please go here.

An Idle Self-Interview: Mark Kingwell

From this Saturday's Globe & Mail:

Mark 1: So what's with the interview?

Mark 2: Well, I wanted to write something about why the idle life is the best life, especially now that we're spiralling headlong into an economic meltdown. It's also the natural time of year to think about the direction of your life, to take stock. But the thought of structuring a formal essay, arguing the position, made me feel tried. And no wonder: "Essay" is from the French essai, for try; an essay on idling seemed like a contradiction in terms.

Mark 1: So now I have to do the work of thinking up questions for you? And transcribing the answers?

Mark 2: Don't think of it as work! One of the common mistakes people make about idling is assuming that it's always inactive. On the contrary, there are lots of idle activities. Thinking and writing about ideas like this is a perfect example.

Mark 1: So what makes that idling rather than work?

Mark 2: Enjoying it for its own sake, for one thing. The reason idling is often closely associated with aestheticism or even dandyism - Baudelaire, Huysmans, Stevenson and Wilde were all accomplished idlers - is that idling sees the possibilities of life being lived as a work of art.

Mark 1: Hmm. Is that what distinguishes idling from slacking?

Mark 2: Yes, exactly! The problem with the slacker is that he is, in the very act of resisting them, wedded to the norms of work. In avoiding work, or pretending to work, or hiding from the supervisor in the mailroom, the slacker is implicitly granting the world of work a dominant position. He gives work power as that which he should be doing even as he does not do it.

Mark 1: And idling?

Mark 2: Idling establishes an independent scale of value. It's like the difference between dozing - falling asleep from overwork - and napping, which we all know is an art form. The true idler enters the moment of not-working and takes it into a new realm of not even thinking about work, of strolling away from that collective addiction of the past 2,000 years.

Mark 1: I sense a philosophical reference coming.

Mark 2: Well, yes. Aristotle's claim of the contemplative life as the most divine life, as well as his idea of peripatesis - philosophy done while walking - suggests an idle disciple. The issue of gait is essential, actually: strolling, ambling, dawdling, flânerie - these are all an idler's actions. Aristotle also emphasizes political activity, but this is not work; it is action in the service of friendship and justice. Entirely consistent with idling.

Mark 1: What about the Eastern traditions?

Mark 2: Absolutely. I think Lao Tzu is perhaps the greatest idler of the ancient world. "Move along old ruts," he advises us in Tao Te Ching. "Blunt the sharpness." We know he's right - we still talk about "taking the edge off" after a hard day's work. Typically, we do it with temporary self-medication - a sitcom, a martini. Not that I have anything against martinis, but diversions like these just serve to recharge the batteries for the next bout of work. Addiction reinforced.

Mark 1: You make it sound easy. What about making ends meet, now that unemployment is spiking so high? Aristotle, after all, had slaves to do work for him. Lots of people are simply out of work, not not-working. Isn't idling revealed as an elitist pursuit, an aristocrat's indulgence?

Mark 2: It's true Aristotle had slaves. He saw them as the bearers of repetitive actions, the boring features of the realm of necessity. My point is that nowadays, most of us are self-enslaved. And each one of us, jobless or otherwise, has some portion of what the Germans call Freizeit, free time. The real issue is how we use that time. Or rather, whether we see that it should not be used at all.

Mark 1: You're saying we should live for the weekend?

Mark 2: No, no, on the contrary! The weekend was created, through collective action and forward-looking legislation, to ease the burden of work. But look what's happened to it. It has annexed leisure - what the Greeks called skholé, the root for school - into a form of consumption. We have reduced forms of play, like sports, to mass spectacles that offer reward for the past week's work and rest for the coming one. Everything entails the production of consumption, with ourselves as the final product, consumed by our desires under the sign of the consumer. Not only is it obvious now that we can't go on this way, it has been obvious all along.

Mark 1: What? Give me an example.

Mark 2: Well, notice the etymological traces contained in the English words "negotiate" and "otiose." Otiose means redundant or useless. Negotiate means to transact affairs, to conduct business. But the shared Latin root tells the story. Neg-otium, the negation of that which lies beyond use, is the origin of business. Business is an obliteration, a nulling, not a positive value in its own right. And what is negated? The very thing, idling, which we now condemn as useless. We have got it exactly backward.

Mark 1: Suppose everyone was idle, though. How would society function?

Mark 2: Think of it this way. Any market economy is a failed attempt to distribute goods and services exactly where they are needed or desired, as and when they are needed and desired. That's all markets are, despite the pathological excrescences that nowadays attach to them: derivatives funds, advertising, shopping as leisure. If we had a perfect market, idling would be the norm, not the exception, because distribution would be frictionless. Most work is the result of inefficiency, not genuine need. In other words, idling is consistent with capitalism's own internal logic, which of course implies, even if it never realizes, the end of capitalism.

Mark 1: Huh. But surely idle hands are the devil's work. You don't have to be a hard-line Calvinist to appreciate that people need things to occupy them, limits and purposes. Otherwise they fall into ennui or worse.

Mark 2: True, all art is about the tension between constraint and possibility, between discipline and freedom. But work is too often deadening rather than purposeful; that's why it cycles with boredom. We should get over this perverse need to locate people in work terms, to fix them under occupations, the way English proper names make identities: Smith, Cooper, Fletcher. When you meet someone at a party, don't ask "What do you do?" Instead ask, "What are you thinking about?"

Mark 1: You keep using words like "should" and "backward" and "can't." Aren't you ensnared in a performative contradiction, enjoining this normative change of attitude, while talking about idling?

Mark 2: In philosophy, we prefer to call these "tensions" or "aporias" rather than "contradictions." Still, you've put your finger on a real problem. It has two distinct aspects.

Mark 1: That is exactly what I'm talking about! Distinction, the lever of philosophy. A lever is a machine, a tool for work! You're working right now!

Mark 2: Take it easy. You need to relax. This is supposed to be fun.

Mark 1: Fun? Ha.

Mark 2: As I was saying, two aspects. The first is what we can call The Idler's Conundrum. That's when idling, pursued too normatively, becomes a form of work. Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, was described in one biography as "having a talent for organized leisure." It was meant as a compliment, but it makes my blood curdle. The sort of person who herds you from one "pleasant" activity to another, chivvying you along.

Mark 1: Yeah, I get it. The second?

Mark 2: The second follows from the first. Let's call it Positional Goods Creep. That's when your idling becomes a form of conspicuous consumption, the sort of thing Veblen analyzes so brilliantly in The Theory of the Leisure Class. Here leisure is not only a form of work, but, disguised - even to oneself - as not-work, it becomes a form of publicly exhibited wealth. And we're right back into the false value system.

Mark 1: Okay, I get that, too. But still - "false value system"? Seems as though a basic contradiction is still there. This idling business looks like a program, an ethical system.

Mark 2: It's a program in a sense - a recovery program. I once composed an 11-Step Recovery Program for Idlers, because I was too lazy for 12. That was an intentional paradox, because you can't really program idling. But maybe these steps will make you start thinking about what matters most in life.

Mark 1: Meaning?

Mark 2: Meaning you must change your life. But no pressure. Take your time.

Rich Fare for Lean Times

A short review of The Idler's Glossary from The Boston Globe.

"The Idler's Glossary," by Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell, illustrated by Seth (Biblioasis, paperback, $12.95), could not be more timely. Both writers take pains to distinguish idling from laziness, sloth, or acedia - to use three words for not quite the same thing. According to Kingwell in the book's introduction, "Lingering is what the idler excels at." That point nailed down, Glenn takes over, defining and exploring 300 words, from "absentminded" to "working-class hero," each shedding light on the condition and varieties of idleness and, in general, helping to free it from the odium of being defined against work. I like this, in particular - "Intellectual: A man whose wife has a job" - but shall leave you with these words of reassurance on "Unemployment": "To be unemployed doesn't simply mean 'not engaged in gainful occupation'; etymologically, it means 'not being used.' Keep that in mind!"

Time Out Chicago on The Idler's Glossary

It’s no accident that the people most ardently advocating for idleness are philosophers. Søren Kierkegaard was for it. Bertrand Russell was all about it, even going so far as to write a book called In Praise of Idleness. In fact, a philosopher requires idleness—defined here as not acknowledging the worthiness of the standard idea of work. The philosopher needs to be free from the idea of work as a means to making money, to investigate things like, well, idleness.

So now come Kingwell and Glenn— respectively, a University of Toronto philosophy professor and a former editor of the philosophy zine Hermenaut— to offer a contemporary defense of idling. In his opening essay, Kingwell writes, “The idler is not lazy…. [T]he genius of idling is not its avoidance of work but rather its construction of a value system entirely independent of work.” And then Glenn gets to work creating a glossary that defends the space cadet and condemns the workaday routine. In the entry for “Asleep at the Switch,” Glenn writes, “Why demonize those unfortunate souls who lose focus and zone out while on the job? No matter how focused their caffeinated colleagues may be, aren’t they sleepwalking through life?”

Etymology is certainly an amusing way to defend a lifestyle, and Glenn has fun with both everyday and arcane slang. So if the book proves one thing, it’s that idling is good for the wit.

Idleness as a Point of Conscience: Nice Not Work if You Can Get It

from Crooked Timber. by John Holbo.

My friend Josh Glenn has a new book, The Idler’s Glossary [amazon]. An acquaintance of mine, Mark Kingwell, wrote the introductory essay. And Seth did the illustrations. (I love Seth.) The whole svelte, 3.7×6 in. unit would slip snugly into someone’s X-Mas stocking, mayhap.

It’s a glossary: entries on absentmindedness and acedia through to working-class hero. (Shouldn’t there be an entry for ‘zzzzzz’? With no gloss? I think that might have been an elegant way to end the book.)

Right, the philosophy of idleness. First, I will note that Kingwell and Glenn have diametrically opposed theories of boredom. Kingwell quotes a passage from a Kingsley Amis novel: “My wife accuse me of thinking her boring. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that this might be because she’s boring … To her mind, her being boring is a thing I do.” Kingwell takes the husband’s side, but Glenn goes on to take the wife’s: “Go ahead and blame your dull companions, but being bored [a slang term that appeared among London’s smart set in the late 18th century, perhaps derived from the French for ‘triviality’] is your own fault. It’s the state of being too restless to concentrate, while too apathetic to bust a move.” Which, come to think of it, is a pretty stable Kinglsey Amis formula.

So who’s right: Kingwell or Glenn? In philosophical terms, if a tree is boring in the forest, and there is no one there to be bored by how dull Nature is … ? In Humean terms, is boringness a matter of (we shouldn’t say ‘gilding and staining Nature with our sentiments’) dulling and drearing Nature with our sentiments. Or was existence already dull and drear when we lay down on it?

Let us proceed to our second topic, which is of even greater significance: idleness, per se. Kingwell wants to distinguish Idleness, as a positive spiritual condition, from mere laziness and slackerdom. The latter, he correctly notes, are cases of second-order desire failure. You want to want to do something, but nothing happens. Idleness, by contrast, makes a virtue of not-doing. As he says, there is a world of difference between not working and not-working. But it seems to me we need to take another step at this point. To explain: Kingwell quotes Russell, from In Praise of Idleness, about the two kinds of work: moving stuff around on or near the surface of the earth; or ordering/advising other people to do it. But then he faults Russell for ultimately being trapped on the gerbil wheel (if you will) of work ethic talk. ‘Idleness’ just becomes another word for not working. It does not escape into some proper value sphere of its own, not-working. And so Russell ends up confusing idleness with laziness. And yet: is not Kingwell himself making the same mistake. (!!) The trouble with ‘idleness’ is that it, too, still sees from the point of view of work. Idlers – from Socrates asking annoying questions, to Nerval, walking his lobster, to that fellow sleeping on the bench – are all the same from the point of view of work. These people are not working. What is missed is the distinction between doing nothing and doing something that is, from the point of view of work, conspicuously profitless – like philosophy, or walking a lobster. ‘Idleness’, applied to Socrates or Nerval, is a careless, inaccurate term of abuse, a tactical refusal to acknowledge what distinguishes the doer of nothing from the doer of something seemingly pointless. It seems to me that, when we shave off mere laziness, on one side, and various forms of active strangeness, on the other, you reduce the category of true Idleness, positive not-working, to a relatively small, hard core of soft indolence. You have to limit your cases to philosophers of Idleness. I think there should be an entry for ‘Taoism’, some quotes from Chuang Tzu. (On the other hand, there is an entry for ‘Cunctation’, which is a word I like.)

Now, contemporary public policy implications. The LA Times reports:

Reporting from Washington – The outgoing Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new “right of conscience” rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control.

For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion.

It also seeks to cover more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to “an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments,” the draft rule said.

An older NY Times article adds another significant element to the picture:

The Ohio Health Department said the rule “could force family planning providers to hire employees who may refuse to do their jobs” — a concern echoed by Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Under the Civil Rights Act, an employer must make reasonable accommodations for an employee’s religious practices, unless the employer can show that doing so would cause “unduehardship on the conduct of its business.”

In a letter commenting on the proposed rule, Mr. Ishimaru and Ms. Griffin, from the employment commission, said that 40 years of court decisions had carefully balanced “employees’ rights to religious freedom and employers’ business needs.”

The proposed rule, they said, “would throw this entire body of law into question.”

I think we see here a chance, in the waning days of the Bush administration, for a massive embiggening of the Republican Big Tent. A coalition of the Unwilling, if you will. Nihilcons – or Taocons, or Dronecons if you prefer. Republicans can pivot from being the party of Emersonian self-reliance to the Bartlebyan party of ‘I would prefer not to’. (Think how much clearer things would be if that had been FEMA’s official, rather than unofficial, motto. ‘Heckuva not-job, Brownie’ and all that.)

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. You may reasonably say: this is all well and good, and obviously I should buy The Idler’s Glossary for anyone in my family who is planning on going to medical school, or working at or near a hospital or pharmacy. But what about the rest of us? What about Main Street, to say nothing of Wall Street? Can the denizens of these alternative avenues cultivate Idleness as an obscure point of positive philosophical conscience, to the point where – by the terms of this new HHS rule – one could simply refuse to work, without being fired?

At this point I suggest coming up with some hoo-ha about how the whole economy is all intertwined – making sandwiches for doctors, teaching the children of doctors, to say nothing of the Interstate Commerce Clause, etc. etc. If a butterfly idly refuses to flap its wings, and this causes a storm half a world away, or causes the aftermath of a storm to not be cleaned up, then … stuff from Chuang Tzu:

‘Caves and dells of hill and forest, hollows in huge trees of many a span in girth; ‹ these are like nostrils, like mouths, like ears, like beam-sockets, like goblets, like mortars, like ditches, like bogs. And the wind goes rushing through them, sniffing, snoring, singing, soughing, puffing, purling, whistling, whirring, now shrilly treble, now deeply bass, now soft, now loud; until, with a lull, silence reigns supreme. Have you never witnessed among the trees such a disturbance as this?’

‘Well, then’, enquired Tzu Yu, ‘since the music of earth consists of nothing more than holes, and the music of man of pipes and flutes, ‹ of what consists the music of Heaven?’

‘The effect of the wind upon these various apertures’, replied Tzu Ch’i, ‘is not uniform. But what is it that gives to each the individuality, to all the potentiality, of sound?

‘Great knowledge embraces the whole: small knowledge, a part only. Great speech is universal: small speech is particular.

‘For whether the mind is locked in sleep or whether in waking hours the body is released, we are subject to daily mental perturbations, ‹ indecision, want of penetration, concealment, fretting fear, and trembling terror. Now like a javelin the mind flies forth, the arbiter of right and wrong. Now like a solemn covenanter it remains firm, the guardian of rights secured. Then, as under autumn and winter’s blight, comes gradual decay, a passing away, like the flow of water, never to return. Finally, the block when all is choked up like an old drain ‹ the failing mind which shall not see light again.

‘Joy and anger, sorrow and happiness, caution and remorse, come upon us by turns, with everchanging mood. They come like music from hollowness, like mushrooms from damp. Daily and nightly they alternate within us, but we cannot tell whence they spring. Can we then hope in a moment to our lay our finger upon their very Cause?

And if not, can we be unjustified in our Idleness? CAN WE!?

Then make sure to nod off again, abruptly, while your earnestly work-favoring interlocutor clutches vainly for any objection.

And so it turns out Kingwell speaks nothing but the sober truth when he write, in his introduction: “Henceforth all further glossaries are superfluous because everything you need to know about how to conduct a life lies within these covers.” Just show your employer the book and claim a ‘right of conscience’ to pure Idleness.

The Ideal Idler: from Concordia's Link

IN AN IDEAL WORLD WE'D ALL BE IDLE
by Christopher Olson

One of the perks of being your own boss is not having to deal with deadlines. On that note, I confess to handing this review in late, but doing anything else would be going against the spirit of everything that is The Idler’s Glossary.

Born from a cocktail column in a men's magazine, The Idler’s Glossary is a collection of slang speech and words meaning lazy, inactive, non-committal, and generally slow to action.

Usually a glossary comes with a text, but “this is a glossary without a text,” says Mark Kingwell, a columnist for the National Post who teaches philosophy at the University of Toronto. “In a sense, the text is life itself.”

When Kingwell was asked to write the book's introduction by long-time colleague Joshua Glenn, “these thoughts that had been in mind for so many years just crystallized,” says Kingwell. “It wrote itself. There was no work in making it. [Doing so] would have been contrary to the spirit of the book.”

Kingwell makes a strong distinction between idleness and procrastination, which he describes as feeling compelled to do something, but not desiring to do it. For an idler, however, “doing nothing is what he’s not doing.” In essence, idleness is being free from the expectations set upon us to do something with our lives.

“We’re not defending idleness as a route to productivity,” says Kingwell, although some statistics have shown that added leisure time can have positive effects on our output, just as a lack of leisure time can have its adverse effects. The word “death,” notes Kingwell, is implied in words like “deadline.”

“An idler’s utopia would be a place where you only did things that were beautiful and that really mattered,” claims Kingwell. Like all utopias, true idleness is an illusion brought on by the desire to escape the grit of the daily grind. In reality, affirms Kingwell, “Idleness can only exist as an aberration, as an opposition to some other form of activity.”

As a professor of philosophy, Kingwell is paid to ponder the ineffability's of life, and claims to live the ideal of comfort espoused by The Idler’s Glossary. But if he had it his way, grading his student's papers would be a simple matter of pass or fail. Grades are another example, says Kingwell, of the “relentless quantifications of people's lives.”

Like an erudite Tyler Durden, Kingwell believes the “way we live nowadays is sick,” and that the true path to happiness is finding ways to let go of the things that demand so much of our time.

As a connoisseur of popular culture, Kingwell points to an episode of “The Simpsons” as an indication of what's wrong with forcing idleness onto a world that demands responsibilities from each of us as a whole.

“It’s the episode where Springfield announces a “Do What You Feel Day” which of course, replaces “Do What We Say Day.” On the one hand, it seems like an obvious message, but what happens is everything collapses.”

However, “there's a danger that creeps up when you turn idleness into work,” warns Kingwell. “We spend so much time keeping thought at bay, that even the weekend becomes another kind of work.”

With students buried in exams and research papers stacking up, the upcoming holidays will be a welcome reprieve, what with all the endless shopping and accruing of financial debt, followed by the emotional exhaustion that’s synonymous with the season. The transformation of the holidays into the busiest time of the year is a telling sign that idleness is missing from our lives. The Idler’s Glossary was published in pocket-sized form for “small moments of openness,” says Kingwell, but would also make a welcome stocking stuffer.

Like most procrastinators, Kingwell’s work is never done, as he hints at the ongoing evolution of The Idler’s Glossary: “People have sent us recommendations for new words, which means a new edition could be done relatively fast.”

Idling: The Windsor View

The Lance, a paper I penned some of my first reviews for a decade or so ago, has featured the Idler's Glossary in its current edition. See below.

Glenn, Boston-based journalist and scholar, examines the etymology and history of hundreds of terms and phrases used to describe idlers and the act of idling in his new work, The Idler’s Glossary. In doing this, Glenn looks to clarify the misconceptions about idling and introduce a new way of thinking about working and not working.

Glenn examines why work time—slaving away in a cubicle, factory, or elsewhere—is more valued than free time in today’s society.

Alongside Glenn is Mark Kingwell who contributes an introductory essay to the glossary.

Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and also well known for his appearance in The Corporation. His involvement in the project stemmed from a longstanding online friendship with Glenn, who had edited a magazine called Hermenaut out of Boston, MI. Kingwell became interested in the magazine and donated money when it was strapped for cash. The two became long distance friends that only met offline for the first time earlier this year.

An early version of The Idler’s Glossary, which appeared in The Idler Magazine in the U.K., caught Kingwell’s eye.

“I thought it would be a great standalone book. Around the same time I had been talking to Dan Wells at Biblioasis who was looking to start a pamphlet series, and I thought this is the perfect kick-off project for that series,” said Kingwell.

Seth, the pen name of Gregory Gallant, a Canadian comic book artist and writer, has a keen sense of design that contributed greatly to the look and feel of The Idler’s Glossary. The raised print on the cover accented in gold along with the old-timey feel of the graphics gives the reference guide a unique look.

“As soon as we had the package together we knew that if Seth could make time to be a part of it, it could really bring it to another level,” said Kingwell.

As for what Idler terms he can best be described with, Kingwell opts for flâneur. “I like to spend a lot of time walking and specifically walking in cities and the flâneur is an indication of that sort of idling where you’re not going anywhere particular you’re just kind of drifting through the streets and experiencing the variety of stimulants a city has to offer,” explained Kingwell.

Recently, Kingwell released a collection of essays called Opening Gambits, which he says is kind of related to The Idler’s Glossary because “it looks at art and philosophy as forms of play. A lot of what we talk about in Idler is really a kind of play.”

Furthering the concept of The Idler’s Glossary, Kingwell and Glenn are currently in talks of possibly working on a sequel.

“We’ve found so many words even since this book came out that are interesting and relevant,” said Kingwell.

The focus of the glossary this time around would be more on the words that characterize the working world.

“Some of them are already in this glossary, but there are a lot of terms on the edges of the working world that we didn’t really think about, and that could make another book,” Kingwell explained.

The big misconception about idling is that the term is interchangeable with slacking. Not so, according to Kingwell.

“Slacking is avoiding work and it’s closely related to procrastinating. True idling is to set yourself free from all those worries about what you should be doing instead and live in the moment of not doing anything in particular,” he said.

The definitions are funny, but only because they’re true. One of the definitions that sum up the idlers versus slackers debate pretty well is Asleep at the Switch: “Why demonize those unfortunate souls who lose focus and zone out while on the job? No matter how focused their caffeinated colleagues may be, aren’t they sleepwalking through life?”

A Very Bad Cell Phone picture of the Brooklyn Launch for the Idler's Glossary

Cabinet Magazine hosted the Brooklyn launch of The Idler's Glossary this past Saturday, an event that was, by all accounts, fantastic. No real cameras, alas, so this is the best image we can provide you.

There's another Boston event with Josh Glenn this week, and on December 2nd he'll take part in the Bookslut reading series in Chicago. In late January we are hoping to bring Mark, Josh and Seth together for the long-awaited Windsor launch. Stay tuned for more details.

More Idle Coverage

Idler's Glossary coverage is coming fast and furious. There's a good interview with Mark Kingwell on CBC's The Point, (check out the Part Two section, first 7 or so minutes) which can be found here.

The Walrus blog has posted on the Idler's Glossary, with a list of Kingwell's favourite terms. Jared Bland writes, "To celebrate the publication of Josh Glenn and Mark Kingwell’s excellent small book, The Idler’s Glossary, I asked Mark to offer glosses on a few of his favourite entries. His response is below. I urge everyone to buy this book; there’ll be nothing more curious and delightful published this fall. (Nor many as beautiful—Seth’s design work is lovely.)" the rest of the post can be found here.

The LA Times Book Jacket also weighs in here.

Dwell Magazine weighs in here, saying, in part: "While it's perhaps difficult to sit down and read the book from cover to cover, The Idler's Glossary is a fun–and beautifully produced– book to set aside some time to flip through, as these gray autumn days turn cold and we're all faced with slumberous (Slumberous: "To be slumberous [from the Middle English word for 'doze'] is to be tired in the sense of lethargic, torpid.") winter."

The Atlantic Monthly has confirmed that they will be reviewing it as well. And more is sure to follow, so stay tuned.

Idler's Glossary: the Boston (Harvard, no less) Launch

Brainiac, the Boston Globe blog, highlights the Glossary in anticipation of tomorrow's Boston launch.

A conundrum: How to encourage people interested in the concept of idling to rouse themselves to come to an event … honoring idling?

Joshua Glenn, my predecessor as Brainiac's author, has certainly not been slacking since his departure from the blogosphere a few months ago -- although he has been assiduously idling. The distinction between the two lies at the heart of his new book, co-written with the philosopher Mark Kingwell: "The Idler's Glossary." Tomorrow night (Thursday, October 23), the Harvard Advocate is hosting a release party for the book, from 5 to 8 p.m. Its offices are at 21 South Street, in Harvard Square. Bestir yourselves, fellow lubbers, shirkers and scrimshankers! (9-to-5'ers will not be turned away from the door, either, even content ones.)

This book, it must be said, is no joke. Kingwell's introduction begins with a Kierkegaard quote, and carves up concepts with true philosophical rigor. "A slacker is not a true idler," Kingwell writes, "because he is engaged in the project of avoiding work, and as long as that remains the case, work's dominion remains unchallenged …"

The "genius of idling," he continues, "is not its avoidance of work but rather its construction of a value system entirely independent of work."

The glossary, a sequel of sorts to Bertrand Russell's small book of 1932 titled "In Praise of Idleness," explains exactly what it means to cabbage, and parses the distinctions among cadgers, clock-watchers, and couch potatoes -- just to touch on the C's.

The rest of the post can be found here.

Glossaries: An Idle Pleasure

Over at the Washington Post Book Blog SHORT STACK, book editor Rachel Shea writes about the Idler's Glossary.

Glossaries: An Idle Pleasure

Surely, one must be nearly paralyzed with boredom to idly flip through the pages of a glossary. And yet, there's something strangely compelling about a compendium of definitions, especially those clustered around a specific subject. Last year, I reviewed the delightfully informative 'Isms and Ologies: All the Movements, Ideologies, and Doctrines That Have Shaped Our World, by Arthur Goldwag. Now, across my desk comes the diminutive The Idler's Glossary, by Joshua Glenn* and Mark Kingwell (with nifty illustrations from the cartoon hero Seth). This little book explains -- nay, argues -- for the moral superiority (over work, slacking and even leisure time) of idleness.

Kingwell, in an introduction that quickly shifts in tone from erudite to evangelical, parses the meaning of idleness: First of all, idleness is not not working. That implies that work is the positive, and idleness is only its opposite.

Glenn, who provides the actual glossary of all things idle-related (for instance, "good-for-nothing," "loiter," "moocher"), defines the term thusly:

"Idleness [from the Old English word for "worthless, useless"] may look to the untrained eye like laziness, slacking, killing time. Unlike slacking, though, idling is not the opposite of working hard, but is instead a rare, hard-won mode in which your art is your work and your work is your art. See: FREE TIME, LEISURE, USELESSNESS"

Following Glenn's instructions, let's turn to the entry for "free time":

"Free time, in the sense of 'freedom to,' is electrifying and beautiful. But free time, in the sense of "freedom from," is merely restful and relaxing. Freedom-to time is what all idlers seek; it is a true state of leisure, in which actions are performed entirely for their own sake. Freedom-from time, on the other hand, is merely a vacation or a recess; i.e., it's a scheduled (and mandated) period during which we androidized humans can recharge our batteries."

Doesn't the idea of "freedom to" time fill you with longing?

Uo fT's Varsity on "the Idle Handbook

Kingwell detailed how idling differs from simple leisure. “It’s not production of the kind that is sanctioned by the capital economy,” he said. “It’s not the production of consumption. It’s activity for its own sake and its own beauty.”

While some may argue current economic conditions necessitate a day job, Kingwell argued that a book on idling is relevant now more than ever. “It was greed and growth that drove us to that boom and bust cycle that we’re now witnessing the latest pathology of,” he said. “This is the counter argument; this is the other way of thinking about what life is about.”

...

Those seeking to learn the way of the idler without sliding into slacker territory should follow Kingwell’s oft-quoted line about the “great Daoist Yoda.” “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try. That’s idling.”

The full article can be found here: thevarsity.ca/article/5153