An Apology for Idlers

florian.jpg
Untitled, Florian Maier-Aichen

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. It seems a pity to sit, like the Lady of Shalott, peering into a mirror, with your back turned on all the bustle and glamour of reality. And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought.

If you look back on your own education, I am sure it will not be the full, vivid, instructive hours of truantry that you regret; you would rather cancel some lack-lustre periods between sleep and waking in the class. For my own part, I have attended a good many lectures in my time. I still remember that the spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide a crime. But though I would not willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing truant. - Robert Louis Stevenson, An Apology for Idlers

Most people regard The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde like Frankenstein: a genius concept but a bother to actually read (21 adaptations are listed on IMDB, including the new TV series.) And that’s a shame. Robert Louis Stevenson’s proto-Cronenbergian dark obsessions and tight prose defied 19th century trends. He deserves a cult audience if not a wider one (I am especially fond of The Suicide Club.)

Going back to Mikita Brottman’s argument for a broader definition of literacy, finding and replacing “Internet” for “Books” gives his essay An Apology for Idlers a very modern relevance. Stevenson goes so far as to say, “suppose Shakespeare had been knocked on the head some dark night in Sir Thomas Lucy’s preserves, the world would have wagged on better or worse…the services of no single individual are indispensable”

twocyp.jpgTwo Cypresses, Louisiana, Josef Hoflehner

Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill.

Why do we say we are busy as if it were an accomplishment? Limited free time signifies poor time management and at a great cost — most of us would pay for more time off. Step away from the Internet this weekend, and save those emails for another day. Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend!

Previously:

Why Read at All?

Related links:

Posted by Joanne on May. 23, 2008 Tagged: , , , , ,

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