Does Our Work Define Us? Should It? Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing & Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude
Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing & Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude
Join us for a two-session class where we will explore essential questions about work, identity, and how we choose to spend our time. Premise students will use Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing & Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude as the context for a conversation about the varied purposes of work. What is a valuable use of time? Valuable to who? Who decides?
Session 1: Sunday, December 19, 2021. 4:00-5:30 PM (PST)
First, we’ll read and discuss Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal’s short novel Too Loud a Solitude. The novel centers on the indestructability––against censorship and political oppression––of the written word.
Synopsis: Too Loud a Solitude is a tender and funny story of Hanta––a man who has lived in a Czech police state––for 35 years, working as compactor of wastepaper and books. In the process of compacting, he has acquired an education so unwitting he can't quite tell which of his thoughts are his own and which come from his books. He has rescued many from jaws of hydraulic press and now his house is filled to the rooftops. But when a new automatic press makes his job redundant there's only one thing he can do––go down with his ship.
Session 2: Sunday, January 9, 2022 4:00-5:30 PM (PST)
Next, we’ll discuss Jenny Odell’s 2021 non-fiction work How to Do Nothing. The book was named one of the best books of 2021 by Time • The New Yorker • NPR • GQ • Elle • Vulture • Fortune • Boing Boing • The Irish Times • The New York Public Library • The Brooklyn Public Library
Synopsis: In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives.
Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. We might not spend it on things that capitalism has deemed important … but once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.