THE IDLER'S COMPANION An Anthology of Lazy Literature Edited by Tom Hodgkinson & Matthew De Abaitua FOURTH ESTATE • London CONTENTS Introduction 9 Acknowledgements 11 THE COURTIER The Idler No. 1, Samuel Johnson 12 Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov 14 Cain's Book, Alexander Trocchi 15 On Being Idle, Jerome K. Jerome 17 Enemies of Promise, Cyril Connolly 23 The Idler No. 31, Samuel Johnson 23 Bartleby, Herman Melville 2.6 On Idleness, Michel de Montaigne 33 Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young, Oscar Wilde 35 An Apology for Idlers, Robert Louis Stevenson 35 The Idler No.30, Samuel Johnson 44 Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov 46 On Presumption, Michel de Montaigne 52 On Lying In Bed, G.K. Chesterton 55 THE EPICUREAN Be You Drunken! Charles Baudelaire 60 Miles: The Autobiography Miles Davis 60 Barthes on Barthes, Roland Barthes 64 Against Nature, J.-K. Huysmans 65 Eight Miles High, Will Self 68 A Season in Hell, Rimbaud 73 The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam 75 Labour of Love, Suzanne Moore 80 Don Juan, Lord Byron 83 Dr Faustus, Christopher Marlowe 84 The Critic As Artist, Oscar Wilde 85 THE MONK Lao Tzu 94 Swann's Way, Marcel Proust 94 The Importance of Loafing, Lin Yutang 95 Pensees, Blaise Pascal 109 Ode On Indolence, John Keats 112 Opium, Jean Cocteau 115 Provoked Life, Gottfried Benn 115 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake 116 On Experience, Michel de Montaigne 117 Ethics, Aristotle 118 Pensees, Blaise Pascal 122 Walden, Henry David Thoreau 122 Poems, Wang Wei 126 Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young, Oscar Wilde 127 Forest Notes: Idle Hours, Robert Louis Stevenson 127 Damien Hirst Interview, The Idler No. 10 130 Lost Horizon, James Hilton 131 THE UNEMPLOYED Wages, D.H. Lawrence 134 Utopia, Sir Thomas More 134 The Right to be Lazy, Paul Lafargue 135 Who Will Do The Dirty Work, Tony Gibson 138 The Right to Useful Unemployment, Ivan Illich 139 Interview with Charles Handy, The Idler No.3 142 In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell 144 Interview with Terence McKenna, The Idler No.l 155 The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Oscar Wilde 155 Grand National Holiday, William Benbow 157 Future Work, James Robertson 167 The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche 170 The Right To Be Lazy, Paul Lafargue 172 Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, Andre Gorz 175 Pansies, D.H. Lawrence 175.