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Tom Lutz is not a slacker.
Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America has a 33-page bibliography -- solid proof of the author's work ethic.
Lutz has immersed himself in the topic of loafing largely through books, movies, TV and music.
Consider this gem: In 1938's Holiday, Cary Grant enrages his future father-in-law by deciding to not join his financial firm. "I have been working since I was 10," he explains. "I want to find out why I'm working."
*Other movies: Easy Rider (1969), Slacker (1991) and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986).
*TV: Seinfeld, South Park.
*Writing: Samuel Johnson's Idler essays in 1758 give the workers vs. slackers debate historical context. Others: Ben Franklin's The Way to Wealth (1758), Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), Jack Kerouac's On The Road (1957) and Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002).
But "anti-work attitudes are unreliable," theorizes Lutz. "The famous or almost famous idlers, loafers, loungers and slackers through history had to produce work about not working in order for us to know them. And many of them, it turns out, were closet workaholics or reformed slackers."
Eggers, for example, in his mid-30s, has published and edited several books, started and edited a couple of magazines and founded a publishing company.
The crux of Lutz's book is the relentless quest to find out why we work or don't, and if work can be "hedonistic," as Ernest Hemingway viewed it.
The work ethic has little to do with reality, in Lutz's view:
"It's simply an attitude or feeling about how we and others spend our days the way we do."
His search to understand the meaning of "doing nothing" was spurred by his son, Cody, who moved in with him after high school.
Lutz is infused with anger at seeing his son on the couch day after day. He fumes inside: "Didn't the kid have any get-up-and-go? Life is short! Let's move it!"
That sets him on his course of self-examination. Why does his son's lack of motivation shake him to the core?
He wistfully remembers himself at that age. In 1971, when he graduated from high school, he, too, took time off and floated about trying to find what he wanted to be when he grew up. But he prides himself on the fact that he at least spent time as a carpenter, factory hand, landscaper, piano tuner and so forth while "doing the period's allotment of drugs (or maybe a little more)."
Lutz fumbles to grasp what all the angst is about. "Everyone I know is in the same boat," he states. "We work way too hard and not nearly enough."
The two sides of a coin: "One's own slacking can cause guilt or pleasure over the idea of getting something for nothing, while the slacking of others can excite laughter, envy or rage," he writes. "Most of us tend to believe both that others work harder than we do and that we work harder than others."
What causes someone to lounge? One theory: "From the eighteenth century, when the slacker figure first appears as a response to the Industrial Revolution, to the recent slacker response to the Information Revolution, slackers make big news whenever the world of work undergoes serious structural change."
Lutz refers to Old Testament teachings "against sloth and sluggardliness."
By contrast, he writes: "Work, in classical culture, was the curse of mortals in a fallen world, the province of slaves, or punishment for decadence or debt." Aristotle saw workers as "merely 'human tools,' some of which are sharper or more efficient than others."
In a more recent era, work is honored. "Work is a crucial element in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) -- or rather its conspicuous near absence is," he writes. Because they don't work enough, the characters are nervous and bored.
"The rich slackers Tom and Daisy spout nonsense and leave casualties in their wake." This is a "nostalgic novel, and what it is most nostalgic for is honest work."
In the end, Lutz's son gets going and finds meaningful work as a screenwriter.
"So I shouldn't have worried so much. No one, except the dead, can do nothing forever."
Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America
By Tom Lutz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
384 pages, $25
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