Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture Number 5 Collecting, Archiving, Publishing Article 14 November 2015 In Praise of Slacking: Richard Linklater’s Slacker and Kevin Smith’s Clerks as Hallmarks of 1990s American Independent Cinema Counterculture Katarzyna Małecka University of Social Sciences, Łódź Follow this and additional works at: https://digijournals.uni.lodz.pl/textmatters Recommended Citation Małecka, Katarzyna. "In Praise of Slacking: Richard Linklater’s Slacker and Kevin Smith’s Clerks as Hallmarks of 1990s American Independent Cinema Counterculture." Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, no.5, 2020, pp. 189-204, doi:10.1515/texmat-2015-0014 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Humanities Journals at University of Lodz Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture by an authorized editor of University of Lodz Research Online. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Text Matters, Volume 5, Number 5, 2015 https://doi.org/10.1515/texmat-2015-0014 Katarzyna Małecka University of Social Sciences, Łódź In Praise of Slacking: Richard Linklater’s Slacker and Kevin Smith’s Clerks as Hallmarks of 1990s American Independent Cinema Counterculture A BSTR A CT Some people live to work, others work to live, while still others prefer to live lives of leisure. Since the Puritans, American culture and literature have been dominated by individuals who have valued hard work. However, shortly after its founding, America managed to produce the leisurely Rip Van Winkle, who, over time, has been followed by kindred spirits such as, for instance, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Twain’s Huck Finn, Melville’s Bartleby, Jack Kerouac, Diane di Prima, the Hippies, and Christopher McCandless.