Why Does the Couch Potato Make Us So Angry?
A review by Larry Sears “Everyman is, or hopes to be, an idler.” With these words of Samuel Johnson, Tom Lutz begins his latest effort, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America. This book is a fascinating — although at times also frustrating — analysis of both workers and slackers throughout the past 250 years of Anglo-American history. It begins as a small family story and then expands into a complex examination of the duality of work and leisure, including commentary from a variety of writers and intellectuals. When Cody, Tom Lutz’s son, graduates from high school in 2001, he asks his father if he can live with him while he plans his post-high school life. Remembering his own journey of self-discovery, working at odd jobs, hitchhiking and “doing the period’s allotment of drugs,” Lutz, who teaches English at the University of Iowa, eagerly welcomes his son. Early on, he expects that the young man might explore his interest in music by joining an a
