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We live in the age of speed. We strain to be more efficient, to cram more into each minute, each hour, each day. Since the Industrial Revolution shifted the world into high gear, the cult of speed has pushed us to a breaking point. Consider these facts: Americans on average spend seventy-two minutes of every day behind the wheel of a car, a typical business executive now loses sixty-eight hours a year to being put on hold, and American adults currently devote on average a mere half hour per week to making love.

Living on the edge of exhaustion, we are constantly reminded by our bodies and minds that the pace of life is spinning out of control. In Praise of Slowness traces the history of our increasingly breathless relationship with time and tackles the consequences of living in this accelerated culture of our own creation. Why are we always in such a rush? What is the cure for time sickness? Is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down? Realizing the price we pay for unrelenting speed, people all over the world are reclaiming their time and slowing down the pace -- and living happier, healthier, and more productive lives as a result. A Slow revolution is taking place.

Here you will find no Luddite calls to overthrow technology and seek a preindustrial utopia. This is a modern revolution, championed by cell-phone using, e-mailing lovers of sanity. The Slow philosophy can be summed up in a single word -- balance. People are discovering energy and efficiency where they may have been least expected -- in slowing down.

In this engaging and entertaining exploration, award-winning journalist and rehabilitated speedaholic Carl Honoré details our perennial love affair with efficiency and speed in a perfect blend of anecdotal reportage, history, and intellectual inquiry. In Praise of Slowness is the first comprehensive look at the worldwide Slow movements making their way into the mainstream -- in offices, factories, neighborhoods, kitchens, hospitals, concert halls, bedrooms, gyms, and schools. Defining a movement that is here to stay, this spirited manifesto will make you completely rethink your relationship with time.

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After the gravity of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality, Slowness comes as a surprise: it is certainly Kundera's lightest novel, a divertimento, with, as the author himself says, "not a single serious word in it."

Disconcerted and enchanted, the reader follows the narrator through a midsummer's night in which two tales of seduction, sperated by more than two-hundred years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and the comic, finally culminating in poignant cross-century encounter sure to linger in the reader's mind

Despite Kundera's disclaimer about the novel's seriousness, Slowness resonates with a profound meditation on contemporary life, the secret bond between slowness and memory, the connection between our era's desire to forget and the way we have given ourselves over to the demon of speed. .
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The Discovery of Slowness--a huge commercial and critical success across Europe, where it is considered the popular author's master piece--recounts the life of the nineteenth-century British explorer Sir John Franklin (1786-1847).

Through the author's acute reading of history and his marvelous storytelling prowess, the reader follows John Franklin's development from awkward schoolboy and ridiculed teenager to expedition leader, governor of Tasmania, and icon of adventure. Slow and deliberate from boyhood, Franklin appeared destined to be a misfit. But he escaped from the ever-expanding world of industry and Empire to the sea's silent landscape, where the universe seemed more manageable. At age fourteen he joined the navy. After surviving the harrowing battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar, he embarked on several voyages of discovery into the Canadian North, and served as governor of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania). Everyone with whom he came into contact sensed that Franklin was a rare man, one who was "out of his time" and who moved to a different, grander beat. That beat eventually led Franklin to sail once more-on his final, fateful voyage-into the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage.

The Discovery of Slowness is a riveting account of a remarkable and varied life. And it is also a profound and thought-provoking meditation on time. The result is an unforgettable and deeply moving reading experience that justifies the novel's reputation as one of the classics of contemporary world literature.

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Edited by Helmut Friedel .
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This digital document is an article from The Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by Review of Contemporary Fiction on September 22, 1996. The length of the article is 737 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Slowness.
Author: Joseph Allen O'Rear
Publication:The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 1996
Publisher: Review of Contemporary Fiction
Volume: v16 Issue: n3 Page: p182(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale.
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