Theme Essay by Jeremiah Horrigan
Why We Prefer Not To
Sloth is slow. It’s dumb. It’s sooooo fourth century.
Sloth is a sin so dangerous, so deadly, that it gave its name to a slow-moving tree-hugger with a bulldoggy, pushed-in snout and big brown eyes.
So how did sloth make it to the church’s top seven? It hardly seems robust enough, or nasty enough, to stand next to sweaty, heavy-breathing favorites of the confessional like lust, greed, and envy.
Say this for the early church fathers: They knew their sins, and they knew sloth belonged in The Bigs. Consider the following passage on sloth (a.k.a. "the noonday devil”) from the long-forgotten Evagrius Ponticus (345-399 A.D.). Note that I've substituted the word "writer" for "monk":
First of all he makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long. Then he constrains the writer to look constantly out the window, to walk outside the cell, to gaze carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from lunchtime….
Sound familiar?
Still, you say, what’s so awful about stalling out at the keyboard? About falling into a daydream? Surely, a little effort-sapping apathy is hardly a sin.
I disagree. What better camouflage could a sin ask for than to be thought as quaint as a corset, as deadly as a peashooter?
Its churchly definition as spiritual or emotional apathy hints at why sloth is more than just an invitation to couch potatohood, especially for writers. It truly does have a spiritual—or psychological, if you prefer—dimension that’s both more modern and more deadly than most of us freethinkers would like to believe.
In his 1993 New York Times essay "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee,” novelist Thomas Pynchon not only acknowledges the existence of sloth but locates its first appearance in the Western literary canon—in Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,” originally published in 1853.
While Pynchon seems at first to be citing the title character, Bartleby, as a supreme example of sloth, his discussion soon takes an unexpected turn:
Bartleby just sits there in an office on Wall Street repeating, ‘I would prefer not to.’ While his options go rapidly narrowing, his employer, a man of affairs and substance, is actually brought to question the assumptions of his own life by this miserable scrivener—this writer!—who, though among the lowest of the low in the bilges of capitalism, nevertheless refuses to go on interacting anymore with the daily order, thus bringing up the interesting question: who is more guilty of sloth, a person who collaborates with the root of all evil, accepting things-as-they-are in return for a paycheck and a hassle-free life, or one who does nothing, finally, but persist in sorrow?
An interesting question, indeed. Perhaps Bartleby’s refusal to perform the meaningless writing of a law office copyist is not sloth, but the despair of a man frozen in an existential dilemma. He has stared into the abyss, and what he’s seen there haunts him.
The story’s narrator, Bartleby’s employer, is not afflicted by Bartleby’s insight. This man, who describes himself as “filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best,” would prefer not to look seriously or deeply at his own life or the banal life around him. While Bartleby has the courage to turn his gaze inward, the narrator turns away, choosing the comfortable life over the examined one.
Turning one’s attention away is the quintessence of sloth—and it’s the opposite of what writers need to do. The writer’s task is this: to look at the world cleanly and clearly, inside and out, and report back to anyone who is willing to listen.
But it’s a task that requires determined effort. And with sloth curling up on one’s shoulders and whispering invitingly of other, easier options, that effort can be hard to come by.
I write newspaper stories for a living. I’ve done so for most of my life. And, while I love journalism, I’ve too often let it become just a job. For too many days, I’ve been content to crank out the sort of writing that’s been demanded of me, rarely venturing outside the boundaries of the craft. The young reporter, eager to make a career for himself, was only too happy to set himself on fire for his job. The old reporter threw the matchbook away years ago, the better to make it home in time for dinner.
And it’s the voice of sloth that welcomes me home.
I don’t have to be told that writing—real writing—is hard work. I know that in my bones. If I sometimes find ways to avoid that truth at work, I can. But it’s harder to justify after work, when the evening’s quiet promise spreads out before me and the need to write beckons. If the day has been one of cop calls and fender benders, boilerplate rewrites and meeting summaries, if I’ve been stymied creatively at work by time and circumstance and custom, what’s to keep me from letting loose at home? What’s to keep me from reporting the joys and discoveries and questions of my own life?
Sloth, of course.
Sloth knows that when it comes to the work of writing, I’d really prefer not to. It’s his voice that tells me I’ve had a rough day. That I need to chill. That there’s no point in getting crazy here. Hey, doesn’t the new Breaking Bad season start tonight?
Sloth kills the impulse to work with a yearning for comfort. I sit down at my laptop—if I get that far—and I settle. I shrug. I fail to push past the usual, the ordinary, the clichéd, because I don’t see the need. I turn away. Or I turn to Netflix.
Normally, I don’t even see sloth coming, but now, writing about it, I’m beginning to feel his presence: that stealthiest of sins, dangling from the rafters, just waiting to drop and pounce. No cutesy-pooh teddy bear, sloth has hung there all my life, waiting. Making me a collaborator in my own imprisonment.
This time, I’ll surprise him. The story you’re reading is due in three days. Sloth fully expects me to put it off so that I end up doing a rush job right before it’s due; that’s my usual MO. But tonight, I’m going to dive in and do it right—right now. Step out of my typical way of doing business and even beat my deadline.
I know this radical action won’t knock sloth out of my life. He’ll continue to hang around. But this time, I’ll give the bastard pause. Slow him down.
Instead of the other way around.
Editor’s Note: Jeremiah did turn in his first and second and third drafts of this piece ahead of schedule, in a most unsloth-like way.
Publication Information
- The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer by Evagrius Ponticus, translated by John Eudes Bamberger (Cistercian Publications, 2006).
- “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” by Herman Melville (originally published in two parts in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, 1853).
- “Nearer, My Couch, To Thee” by Thomas Pynchon, New York Times Book Review, June 6, 1993.
Art Information
- “Her Majesty Buttercup” © Jenny Jozwiak; Creative Commons license
- “Sloth” © Sarah and Iain; Creative Commons license
Jeremiah Horrigan is a contributing writer at Talking Writing.
He is no stranger to the seven deadly sins. In volunteering to write about sloth, he felt he might give credit—and blame—where it was due. Put another way, he wanted to rat the damn thing out.
”It’s easy to spot hypocrisy in others, not so easy to spot it in oneself. To be confronted by one’s own posturing is to be presented with an ominously ticking package, delivered unbidden by a stranger whom you know doesn’t really have your best interests in mind.” — “Singed by the Flames”
