Unapologetic Slacker
Written byPosted on April 29, 2005
Filed Under Slackers
I’ve become such an effective slacker in the past week that, after some conversations with friends and family, I’ve decided to sequester myself from the Internet for the next three days. I apologize if I haven’t answered your email. But then I haven’t had the opportunity to slack like this for sometime. And I’m enjoying it immensely.
Will get to the next Tanenhaus Brownie Watch sometime on Monday evening. In the meantime, visit the fine folks on the left.
Meanwhile, here’s a guide for effective slackdom:
- Lie in bed as much as possible. If you can find a slacker companion, spend at least one day of your Period of Slack not moving from your bed — ideally building pillow forts.
- Naps are okay at any time of the day.
- Disregard personal drinking rules. You can have a margarita at 11 AM if you want to.
- If it’s sunny outside, do try and get outside with a book.
- It’s okay if the apartment goes to hell. You can clean it at the end of the Period of Slack. If your Period of Slack lasts longer than a week, then be sure to pick up your shit at weekly intervals.
- Be sure to inform friends that you’re going through a Period of Slack. They may be shocked by how relaxed and easy-going you’ve become.
- If losing track of the days bothers you, be sure to keep a calendar in easy display. But don’t concentrate on what day it is until near the end of your Period of Slack. You’ll need to acclimatize yourself back to regular life again.
- Contrary to what anti-slacker neoconservatives tell you, a vacation can be very exhausting. Pace yourself.
- An active slacker is better than a passive slacker. Active slackdom may require a bit more effort, but do try and get yourself accustomed to getting out of the house and checking out interesting expositions.
- You may be shocked by how your neighborhood looks during a weekday afternoon. It may very well be more populated than you expect. Prepare yourself for something of a sensation as you see your immediate surroundings with newfound eyes.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
