Friend of Mutable Sound, Joshua Glenn, has recently released a book entitled, The Idler’s Glossary, with Canadian publisher, Biblioasis, in which he explores idleness from every angle, with a comment concerning The Situationists here and Hannah Arendt there, he runs the gamut from playful to informative. Throughout, within the confines of his premise, that what he’s offering us here is an amusing glossary of arcane and everyday terms to denote the idle, he has created a very powerful critique of the work-a-day world. From Aestivate and Flazy, to Labor and Dissolute.
Glenn made his name as editor-in-chief of Hermenaut, a subversive magazine of ideas couched in readable and engaging prose. It was inspired by the teen magazine phenomenon, full of intriguing profiles and wry correspondence, and a distinctive world-view cultivated during his time at the Utne Reader. Having surrounded himself with a close circle of editors and authors often groomed by himself into maturity, Glenn went on to capture the imaginations of burgeoning elite everywhere. He rose from the zine culture of the early nineties (along with The Idler and The Baffler, among others) to achieve national reknown at the cusp of the new millenium, going on to develop the Ideas section of the Boston Globe, and continue his forays into the effluvium of culture as a freelance writer, pumping out some truly inspired pieces for N+1, a periodical itself inspired by Hermenaut. As well as continuing his cultural discourse on hermenaut.org, a blog aggregator he runs, he has put out Taking Things Seriously with Princeton Architectural Press, and of course, The Idler’s Glossary.
Mark Kingwell’s introductory essay offers a playful defence of the idler as homo superior, and it is here in this alternate universe, that Glenn has always soared. Idleness is the cornerstone from which this cultural critic has spun a collage-like discourse, his prickly critiques into everything from fake authenticity to camp, all stem from the bedrock of a simple ideology, that there is nothing more revolutionary than doing nothing. Much of his kaleidescopic learning is apparent in miniature within this book, perhaps the nicest example of which being his note about Joe Bousquet in his definition for Beautiful Loser. “My life is externally the life of a reject, and I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Bousquet is famous for saying, his own idea of the homo superior being one in which persons are excellent at what they are born to do, but failures at everything else.
Mr. Glenn paints an amusing, poignant picture, that I personally find proves more emotionally charged than Ambrose Bierce’s classic, The Devil’s Dictionary. More enlightened, less Child of the Enlightenment.
