Posted 1:26 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023
On the Virtues of Idleness--Rhetorical Analysis
In the 19th Century, Henry David Thoreau noticed that “this world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle!” Indeed, it is. And American novelist, Mark Slouka, born over a century later, agreed with him. His essay published in 2004, “Quitting the Paint Factory,” he critiques America’s idealization of work and constant busy-ness (and business), as well the disapproval of idleness in such a society. He claims that we aren’t thinking, and we are becoming impatient because of the everyday bustle. Because we are trapped in such a busy cycle, we don’t have enough time for what’s most important: ourselves and thinking about the injustices of the world. Slouka criticizes America’s work culture and argues that idleness, which is the main threat to business, is a necessity both for the self and society.
Throughout his essay Slouka critiques the business of America in a condemnatory and sarcastic manner, emphasizing how the glorification of the ethos of business is flawed. One of the first examples of this is when he quotes American poet James Russell Lowell, who he describes as “that nineteenth-century workhorse.” According to Lowell, “There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.” In other words, what a steady mind needs, at least according to Lowell, is to stay busy, just as a ship needs stability to keep the hull upright. Slouka refutes Lowell’s claim and suggests that the mind of an individual is not like a boat; it doesn’t need ballast and “steadiness, alas, can be a synonym for stupidity.” Rather, what the mind needs is time to think. He further criticizes this claim by taking a chance to “sail along with Lowell’s leaky metaphor” and says that time – or idleness, is needed to “ponder the course our unelected captains have so generously set for us, and to consider mutiny when the iceberg looms.” Slouka uses language here such as “stupidity” and “leaky metaphor” to paint an image of Lowell in a negative way, and even reduces Lowell down to a “workhorse” to show that he is just another servant of business. He makes Lowell’s metaphor that compares a boat to the mind look weak by describing it as “leaky.” Slouka then offers his own thoughts by playing along with the same boat analogy Lowell used, which essentially says that we need time to think for ourselves instead of going along with the expected (and potentially dangerous) path that has “so generously” been set out for us. His use of sarcasm in his own claim here and mocking language also gives some personality to his writing, which helps clarify his stance in this section without explicitly declaring it. The time for idleness opens our minds to new (and better) possibilities for how our lives can go about instead of accepting the inevitable obstacles that will come in the future. This ends up restating that time, or idleness, is crucial for both the psychological self and for a democracy.
Slouka then takes a moment to connect with the reader by telling them about a time when he attended a dinner party. He “made the mistake of admitting” that he liked to sleep and would like to try to get at least 8 hours of it every night whenever possible. The reactions, instead of agreeing with him, were “expressions of disbelief and condescension” and his "transgression had been, on some level, a political one.” People were astonished that someone would want to try to get sufficient sleep instead of staying awake to get as much work done as they can. We’ve been taught that there is something wrong with sleeping too much - an entire 8 hours we are wasting a day doing absolutely nothing! It reinforces the idea to the reader that many of us, as servants of business, have been brainwashed to believe that constant work is admirable and taking breaks (which is necessary for our health in all aspects) is frowned upon. Slouka uses this story to show just how much the romanticization of work is enforced around us, because even our peers are advocating for it.
One of Slouka’s favorite anecdotes, from which the title of this essay comes from, describes Sherwood Anderson’s experience of being the general manager at a paint factory. In the year 1912, when he was 36 years old, Anderson realizes that, despite all the progress he has made to become a businessman, “the work he was doing was patently absurd, undignified; that it amounted to a kind of prison sentence.” One day he simply leaves his work, walks out, and keeps walking. It's not quite clear if this was a nervous breakdown or something else, but a few days later he was recognized and taken to a hospital. Many people suspect that Anderson pretended to have his breakdown to escape, but Slouka says that it doesn’t really matter because either way, “nothing short of madness would do for an excuse.” This introduces a new, quite frightening situation; if feigning madness is what one must do to, what Slouka says “take a stab at ‘aliveness’”, what would one have to do today in America to escape? Is it even possible to escape this kind of life we’re forced to live? As soon as the hospital releases us, we’re expected to go back to work. Anderson was smart, but also lucky enough to pursue his own endeavors after his escape. Though Slouka stresses that time and idleness is crucial psychologically and politically, it’s important for the reader to understand the reality of the situation. It doesn’t mean that we simply give up and give in to the busy-ness; rather, it makes idleness and contemplation all the more important, because the institutions of business are trying to repress it.
Soon after his analysis of this anecdote, Slouka recalls a time when he was sitting on a bench surrounded by overgrown grass in a quiet, scenic park in London, which “had clearly been placed there to encourage one thing – solitary contemplation.” He then suddenly imagines how George W. Bush would react to sitting on this bench, because there’s kind of an oxymoron to it. He imagines that “Bush would be clearing brush. He’d be stomping it into submission with his pointy boots. He’d be making the world a better place,” using more sarcasm here. This kind of behavior “was the classically American and increasingly Republican cult of movement, of busyness; of doing, not thinking," which is the opposite of solitary contemplation. Slouka describes this charming bench in a few sentences to create a clear picture for his audience to imagine and uses words such as “delightfully overgrown” to make everyone appreciate this bench. Then, he paints an image, which is quite frustrating to imagine, of Bush stomping all the beauty of this bench away to show his impatience. This bench is no longer meant to be a place to rest, to imagine, to embrace the inner life. His disdain for Bush, and probably Republicans like him in general, is rubbed off onto the reader through this imagery and further leads them to realize how frustrating anti-thinking and impatience looks to the observer.
Though it’s never explicitly stated, Slouka worries that anti-intellectualism will become a result of this busy-ness, especially toward the end of the essay when he talks about the (probably fascist) Futurism art movement from Italy. He says that “its practitioners had advocated a cult of restlessness, of speed, of dy-namism; had rejected the past in all its forms; had glorified busi-ness and war and patriotism,” which, by now, to the reader, should seem oddly similar to the business in America. Slouka quotes one of the many bizarre writings of a spokesman of the movement, Filippo Marinetti, “We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind.” Marinetti also describes the ideal “new man” as someone who will “despise subtleties and nuances of language”, and his thinking would be marked by a “dread of slowness, pettiness, analysis, and detailed explanation.” This may be the most crucial part of Slouka’s essay, because this is where he really highlights why idleness is so important to his audience, if they haven’t figured it out already. He quotes some of Marinetti’s other absurd ideas from his manifesto, which shows the parallels to work culture in America and what could eventually result from that. Everything that gives life meaning and exemplifies human intellect would be destroyed. What’s worse, is that because America is a slightly more subtle model of the extremist Futurist movement, we are already demonstrating some of these consequences.
Throughout his piece Slouka utilizes sarcastic and condemnatory language as well as several historical examples to develop his argument regarding the business of America. He stresses that idleness is important both psychologically and politically, and that it endangers the everyday bustle we experience. We all need to slow down in life sometimes to think about how we can improve both ourselves and the world around us. We need time to be idle, which gives us time to be in touch with the inner life. Otherwise, we are nothing more than moving product in the cult of work.
Works Cited
Slouka, Mark. “Quitting the Paint Factory: On the Virtues of Idleness.” Harper’s Magazine, Nov. 2004.