Customer Reviews

Sloth: The Seven Deadly Sins

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I almost never give a book just one star in my reviews. If a book is so bad that it rates no more than a single star, I generally leave it unreviewed. The only times I violate this rule are when I run across books that not only are bad but also, in my judgment, harmfully bad. Wendy Wasserstein's little volume on sloth fits that description.

Wasserstein (who, since this book, unfortunately has died) was a brilliant comic playwright. On stage, her satiric wit in plays such as "The Heidi Chronicles" is wonderful. But why she was asked (or allowed) by the 7 Deadly Sins series editors to write on the vice of sloth is a mystery. She's clearly out of her depth. Alone of all the other authors, she has no obvious qualifications.

Instead of thinking deeply and writing cogently about sloth, Wasserstein shoots for the easy laugh. Her approach to sloth is to write a mock-manual on how to cultivate it, filled with faux easy-steps-to-laziness advice. Given that contemporary American culture is so obsessed with busyness and careerism that fewer and fewer of us actually know how to enjoy leisure time, Wasserstein's jabs at the fast-paced and frenetic life are well-taken.

The problem is that you get the point in the first five pages, and after that you look, without success, for substance. Even worse, Wasserstein mischaracterizes sloth from the get-go. Sloth isn't merely laziness; in fact, it's not clear that sloth is laziness at all. Sloth, as commentators from the desert fathers in the first centuries of the Christian era to psychologists and philosophers today maintain, is a form of despair, the inability to feel joy or gratitude. Sloth can lead to a dispirited lack of energy that leads to behavior frequently thought of as lazy. But lazyiness connotes a relaxed internal state that the person suffering from sloth simply doesn't enjoy. Neither is sloth leisured, nonbusy time. The latter is an opportunity, as Aristotle noted, for enrichment. The former is always a state of alienation and interior impoverishment. Wasserstein's failure to make these sorts of distinctions leads to a caricature rather than an analysis of sloth.

Sloth, when understood as despair, may be the single one of the 7 deadlies that most characterizes American culture. How doubly unfortunate, then, that the volume on sloth in the 7 Deadly Sins series is so inadequate. Its easy conflation of sloth with laziness only legitimizes our present-day tendency not to take it seriously. And this is where Wasserstein's bad book graduates into the harmful book category.

The New York Public Library and Oxford University Press conspired to develop a lecture series in which some of the most interesting modern minds ponder the most ancient human foibles: the Seven Deadly Sins. The lectures were given at the New York Public Library and the authors were permitted (encouraged?) to rework them for publication. Wasserstein's SLOTH and Robert Thurman's ANGER are the latest titles to join the series (ENVY and GLUTTONY were published in 2003; LUST and GREED in 2004; PRIDE is promised for this spring and hopefully will come before the fall).

Although I've bought all of the available titles, I chose to read SLOTH first (always having had a soft spot for this sin). It is not surprising that Wasserstein, an accomplished playwright, chose to adopt a persona to convey her message-that of a sloth guru, the author of a anti-self-help book entitled "Sloth: And How to Get It." The guru is so slothful s/he hasn't gotten around to forming a clear or specific sexual identity (At college, "I played sports on both men's and women's teams, and I had also danced the young male and female lead in the New York City Ballet's Nutcracker"; p. 19) Anyone who has tried all the new diet books, attended a 12-step group, guiltily read PEOPLE at the supermarket check-out line, or gotten caught up in church/synagogue, school, or office politics, will enjoy the many jabs Wasserstein delivers to institutions and champions advocating perfectability. SLOTH has the potential to become a modern satirical classic like C.S. Lewis's THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS or Ambrose Bierce's THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY. However, unlike Lewis's great work, the jokes are mostly superficial, univalent, and very repetitive. It is, in the end, a one-joke book, and you could certainly accuse Wasserstein of taking enough trope to hang herself.

My disappointment (why I only gave this very funny book only four stars), is that Wasserstein only occassionally reveals a serious concern with the nature and history of her chosen "sin." When I got to chapter three ("The Concise History of Sloth"), I thought that Wasserstein at last was going to start taking her subject seriously. And she does--for four pages (pp. 24 to 28), where she gives a very brief description of how "accedia" (originally understood as "sadness") was usurped in the seventeenth century by "sloth" on the Church's list of the Big Seven Sins. But wisdom can be found among the book's many flippancies. For instance, in her chapter on "Uberslothdom" she asserts, "True sloths are not revolutionaries...Sloths are the lazy guardians at the gate of the status quo" (p. 104). Hmmm.

Sloth, ah yes, sloth. (By the way, both pronunciations, sloth with a long "o" to rhyme with "both," and sloth with a short "o" to rhyme with "moth" are correct.) It's one of the seven deadly sins and this is one of seven books on them commissioned by the Oxford University Press and the New York Public Library. The books are all short and neat and beautifully presented. Each grew out of lectures sponsored by Oxford and the library.

Here we have Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein championing the cause of sloth as she parodies self-help tomes (she has apparently read a few) while satirizing the mass culture (and of course herself) to the reader's delight.

Wasserstein is not so much knockdown funny as she is entertaining. There are a few belly laughs and a number of chuckles, but mostly there is the sense that she is actually saying something of value about who we are and where we're going.

Clearly Wasserstein knows human foibles and she knows the seduction of the mass culture and especially that nasty admonition from others (especially your parents) to "make something of yourself." Ironically, while Wasserstein has indeed made something of herself, here--tongue only partially in cheek--she strongly advises you to just hang out on the couch. She has an "Activity Gram Counter" that limits you to 50 grams of activity a day. Eating a Krispy Kreme donut along with Sleepytime tea costs you 5 grams, the same as watching the Cartoon Network on TV, while reading the New York Times will set you back 30 grams. Not to worry, reading People Magazine rates a minus 5 grams, but watch out for those "Great turn-of-the-century Russian novels," the reading of which costs you a whopping 100 grams a session. In essence this is a celebration of sloth as the way to health and happiness, a stress-free life, a better world, and most importantly, a better YOU.

I think the book was mostly successful and I enjoyed reading it. However Wendy's assumption of a male self-help guru persona was not consistently maintained and should never have been employed since (1) it added nothing; (2) could not in any way disguise Wasserstein's unique voice; and (3) made for some confusion since it was obvious that the most telling observations came from a femme point of view. And this despite the fact that some of the humor revolves around an ambiguous sexual orientation; e.g., her persona claims that in high school he dated both men and women and believed that he "was going to be a father and a mother" and as president of the US "would have a charming First Lady" by his side "and be escorted by a poet laureate husband." (Random thought: if either Hillary Clinton or Condi Rice becomes the first woman president of the United States, will either's husband be the "First Gentleman"?)

Accompanying the text is some charming artwork by Serge Bloch, most of it line drawings, one of which appears on the cover, that of an amazingly relaxed and blissful stick-figure man in a hammock.

Wasserstein claims that reading this book only costs two activity grams and that rereading it is a "Sloth Zone Activity" resulting in a negative 25 grams. I hate to tell her but I read it while peddling my exercise bike.

I've enjoyed Wendy Wasserstein's work, so I expected more from her. I THOUGHT I'd find some real humor. This little book is boring. A 300-word article would have been more than enough. It's not funny, not interesting, not entertaining, nor does it offer any real point. These "books" will probably be the sort of thing you give as a joke birthday/retirement gift, or "collect" yourself, just to have a "set," thinking they might be "worth something" or "meaningful" someday. I kept hoping for the book to go from a dwaddle to a trot, but it was the same yawn. A cursory read, 10 minutes tops, is about all you'll need-- it continues as it begins, so no need to read more than a few pages. I doubt I'd follow-up with the other 6 sins if they lack the depth and wit of this one.

This is the first book I've read of the Seven Deadly Sins series. Apparently some of the other books actually go into the history of the sin and some background. This book is mostly tongue-in-cheek and is written in the form of a self-help book. It is designed for you to become slothful yourself. I found it very amusing and witty. I especially like the digs Wasserstein gets in at self-help books, play-writing, and even the Oxford University Press. Some of the humor is over-the-top, but the best gems are the sly ones, of which there are many.

I look forward to reading the rest of the books in the series.

I found this book by chance at the library and I am now considering purchasing it for some folks. I kept reading parts to my husband (he was forced to listen)and I was howling and doubled over with laughter. I have read tons of self-help books and found this satirical book FABULOUS! What a fun read.

Thanks Ms. Wasserstein, I plan on looking up your other books.

Not much room seems to exist for sloth in today's twenty four hour society where a rest can equal lost income. Today sloth comes at a cost. Not only that, a simple message gets drilled into all of our heads at a very early age: WORK AND DON'T STOP! Of course if you can earn money without actually working, then you've got it made (in much the same way that those with high metabolisms can bask in gluttony with no social consquences). Regardless, though we live in a breathless world of double jobs and twenty four hour yogurt stands, sloth still seems prevalent. America faces a very troubling obesity problem. Much of it due to inactivity. Former professional football player turned Chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, Lynn Swann, recently told America's youth to simply "do something, anything". Many of us live in a shockingly sedentary culture. And many of us have a hard time walking to the bathroom much less engaging in a rousing game of Jai Lai. So sloth seems alive and well in the twenty first century, though it has lost much of its medieval sinful stigma.

Given that, the approach this book uses towards its subject, a very different approach from the other books of the Seven Deadly Sins Series, may seem odd. Here satire prevails. Wendy Wasserstein (author of "The Heidi Chronicles") lampoons the instantaneous self-help culture by creating a satirical book that encourages readers to openly embrace sloth. Along the way it touches on many themes (and gets some digs on "In Style" magazine). Not only does it satire the lazy, but those who work too hard, and those who whine that the world is unfair also receive their share of the roasting. But the book doesn't seem to know sometimes just who should get most of the impact of the satire.

The sloth self-improvement method utilizes all of the best known clichés of that genre. "Sloth will change your life", "Welcome your inner sloth", a point system (based on inactivity), a daily sloth planner, and a step by step program that teaches one to embrace "Lethargiosis". By these processes readers learn to become hopelessly - and happily - disengaged. At one point the book says "WARNING: Do not fall in love!" presumably because love requires effort. So does sex, and health, and thinking. The sloth lifestyle presents a stress free life by simply avoiding any form of stress, mental or physical.

So what exactly is being parodied here? The book's target sometimes seems to shift around. At times Wasserstein parodies the downright lazy person who has completely given up on life because of a raw deal or two. Other times those who actually work too much seem to be targeted. And some of the arguments for sloth actually ring as good advice for workaholics. Some of us really could use some sloth in our lives. Some of us need a good long nap, or to turn off our blaring competitive natures for a moment or two and forget about the current Dow Jones average. So sloth has a positive side too. This subtheme worms in and out of the text. But mostly the exaggerated and overextended side of mainstream American society seems to be the target here. The final chapter on Überslothdom focuses on those who do in fact keep themselves so busy that they accomplish nothing of value whatsoever. They run an endless hamster wheel to nowhere. They're subsequently christened "the new sloths". And the cumulative effects of thier lives equals the effects of the inactive. This final chapter provides a good wrap up to this 114 page book. Wasserstein makes some very interesting points here. Don't miss this chapter.

In the end this book represents a fairly entertaining but not an indepth look at the subject of the sin of sloth. Those looking to find a historical perspective of the sin will be disappointed (chapter 3 does contain a very cursory history that ends with a funny story about an "eager beaver"). It does read very quickly and delivers a few good laughs, nonetheless. The final chapter contains most of the juiciest morsels of the book. So if you want to embrace true slothdom, just read this chapter and call it quits.

I read this book on the heels of Gluttony in the same series, and so was looking forward a serious treatment of the subject. The self-help book parody was amusing, but it went on a little long. I don't feel I know much more about sloth than I did before I read this book.

I had already read the book on gluttony that gave a witty little history of this deadly sin. Seeing that Wasserstein (who I always considered very funny) was writing about Sloth, this was the next book I would want to read. While the book is very witty, Wasserstein never really goes into a nonfiction mode. When she does for a few pages, you aren't really sure if she is serious or not. If I had not already read a book from this series, I would have given this book a higher rating, but once I got some history from one of the other books, I expected the same from Wasserstein.

I hope someone responsible for accepting Ms. Wasserstein manuscript for publication had more good sense or maybe courage to spell the facts to the author: it's horribly unfunny and mildly disgusting.

It begs for the laughs so pathetically, it wants to be liked so desperately one is tempted to go on, not to insult the lady by quitting after the first 10-12 pages. After all the book is tiny, you can read it in a couple hours.

But I could not finish it. Some books are just not to be published, but if they ARE published everyone can see it was a bad mistake.