Ever wonder if you’re wasting your time with stressful and time-consuming work, even if you do earn more each year? Ever feel like you’re missing the benefits of a contemplative life? Can you admit that the desire to be idle has taken control of your life?
We have a book for you.
The Idler’s Glossary, launching tonight, is an illustrated dictionary of all the words ever applied to layabouts – indolents, dawdlers, hedonists, sh**-heels – with unconventional definitions written by U.S. thinker Joshua Glenn. There is an introductory essay by University of Toronto’s Mark Kingwell, which turns the question of why not to work so hard into something deeply philosophical: He argues that the genuine idler is not lazy, but an enlightened citizen of the world.
The true pleasure of the book is in the illustrations by Seth – the same Canadian cartoonist who did the amusingly retro pictures for Kingwell’s book on cocktails. The drawings are at their best when caricaturing the everyday horrors endured by the vast majority of those leading lives of quiet desperation.
Tonight’s your chance to meet the authors of The Idler’s Glossary at a public interview and launch at the Gladstone Hotel. Illustrator Seth will be there too – presumably doing no work. 7:30 pm, 1214 Queen Street West, free.
Image Courtesy of quinnanya on Flickr.
