Reader's Digest: January 12, 2023

Over the break, I read books and essays. Some were essays about books, like this one by Jonathan Drummond, reviewing Jody Rosen on bicycles in the TLS. Here is a passage from Rosen’s book:

When you ride a bicycle, you’re airborne. The wheels that spin beneath you slip a continuous band of compressed air between the bike and the road, holding you aloft. Your bicycle will not take you on a voyage to the moon, but it is not quite earthbound either.

Some were essays repackaged as books, like The Right to Be Lazy by Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx’s son-in-law, whose profession of Marxism allegedly caused Marx to exclaim: “One thing is certain: I am not a Marxist!”

I was hoping for a philosophical defense of idleness, a rejoinder or riposte to the seeming redemption of work in Marx’s Grundrisse: under communism, “[what] appears as a sacrifice of rest may also be called a sacrifice of idleness, of unfreedom, of unhappiness.” Instead, Lafargue objects to the French declaration of the “right to work,” …