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Aimlessness

Series: No Limits
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( 39 ratings, 8 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Aimlessness challenges the cultural emphasis on constant striving and purpose, celebrating instead the virtues of wandering, lingering, and open-ended exploration. Tom Lutz collects stories and ideas from diverse traditions that value meandering and indirection as sources of creativity and deeper human connection. Structured as a spiral of short, lyrical passages, the book invites readers to embrace chaos and possibility through a collage of narrative, anecdote, and reflection.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$3799
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Ideal for readers interested in philosophy, cultural critique, and the celebration of creativity through non-linear thinking. Suitable for those who enjoy reflective essays and appreciate open-ended explorations of human experience beyond productivity and efficiency.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

Aimlessness collects ideas and stories from around the world that value indirection, wandering, getting lost, waiting, meandering, lingering, sitting, laying about, daydreaming, and other ways to be open to possibility, chaos, and multiplicity.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Our culture values striving, purpose, achievement, and accumulation. This book asks us to get sidetracked along the way. It praises aimlessness as a source of creativity and an alternative to the demand for linear, efficient, instrumentalist thinking and productivity.

Aimlessness collects ideas and stories from around the world that value indirection, wandering, getting lost, waiting, meandering, lingering, sitting, laying about, daydreaming, and other ways to be open to possibility, chaos, and multiplicity. Tom Lutz considers aimlessness as a fundamental human proclivity and method, one that has been vilified by modern industrial societies but celebrated by many religious traditions, philosophers, writers, and artists.

He roams a circular path that snakes and forks down sideroads, traipsing through modernist art, nomadic life, slacker comedies, drugs, travel, nirvana, and oblivion. The book is structured as a recursive, disjunctive spiral of short sections, a collage of narrative, anecdotal, analytic, and lyrical passagesβ€”intended to be read aimlessly, to wind up someplace unexpected.

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  • Aimlessness
    Our culture values striving, purpose, achievement, and accumulation. This book asks us to get sidetracked along the way. It praises aimlessness as a source of creativity and an alternative to the demand for linear, efficient, instrumentalist thinking and productivity. Aimlessness collects ideas and stories from around the world that value indirection, wandering, getting lost, waiting, meandering, lingering, sitting, laying about,...
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

A breeze to read, this book is a treat for anyone who enjoys both mindful and mindless wandering. Los Angeles Review of Books calls it engaging and accessible, while Mindful praises it as a lovely little book. Critics appreciate Lutz's widespread and masterful discussion of literature and philosophy, with one reviewer celebrating his effortless, flΓ’neur-like style that evokes sudden pleasures in ideas and an appreciation for the unexpected.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780231199353

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 26 January 2021

Country: United States

Imprint: Columbia University Press

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 184

About the Author

Tom Lutz is the founding editor and publisher of the Los Angeles Review of Books and Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at University of California at Riverside. His many books include Born Slippy: A Novel (2020) and Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums (2008), which won the American Book Award.

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