On Doing Nothing

   On Doing Nothing

 By J.B. Priestly

 

About the Author:

John Boynton Priestley, (13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984) was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and social commentator.

Birth : 13 September 1894, Manningham, Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

Parentage:  Father-Jonathan Priestley (1868–1924) was a headmaster. 

                     mother-  Emma (nee Holt) (1865–1896) died when he was just two years old, and    his father remarried four years later.

Education : *Priestley was educated at Belle Vue Grammar School, which he left at sixteen to work as a junior clerk at Helm & Co., a wool firm in the Swan Arcade. 

*Priestley served in the British army during the First World War, volunteering to join the 10th Battalion, the Duke of Wellington's Regiment on 7 September 1914, and being posted to France as a Lance-Corporal on 26 August 1915

His Literary Career: During his years at Helm & Co. (1910–1914), he started writing at night and had articles published in local and London newspapers. 

His Works: 

Novels:

• Adam in Moonshine (1927)
• Benighted (1927) (filmed as The Old Dark House)
• The Good Companions (1929)
• Angel Pavement (1930)
• Faraway (1932)
• The Image Men Vol. 1: Out of Town (1968)
• The Image Men Vol. 2: London End (1968)
• Found, Lost, Found (1976)

Plays:

• The Good Companions (1931)
• Dangerous Corner (1932)
• Laburnum Grove (1933)
• Eden End (1934)
• Cornelius (1935)
• People at Sea (1936)
• Bees on the Boat Deck (1936)
• Time and the Conways (1937)
• I Have Been Here Before (1937)
• When We Are Married (1938)
• Johnson Over Jordan (1939)
• Mr. Kettle and Mrs. Moon (1955)
• The Glass Cage (1957)

 Films

• Sing As We Go (1934)
• The Princess Comes Across (1936)
• Jamaica Inn (1939)
• Britain at Bay (1940, Short)
• The Foreman Went to France (1942)
• Last Holiday (1950, wrote story, screenplay and produced the film

Literary criticism

• The English Comic Characters (1925)
• The English Novel (1927)
• Literature and Western Man (1960)
• Charles Dickens and his world (1969)

Autobiography and essays

• Essays of To-day and Yesterday (1926)
• Apes and Angels (1928)
• The Balconinny (1931)

Death:

Priestley died of pneumonia on 14 August 1984 (aged 89)

Alveston, Warwickshire, England

Introduction of the Story:

"On Doing Nothing” is a short story by J.B.Priestley debating over the idea of work and relaxation. He talks of the idea of unwinding oneself and the benefits we would enjoy from doing nothing. He, thus, stresses on the idea of doing nothing and spending time in leisurely activities which is as necessary and beneficial to human life as work. The life of man is fraught with work and all of us are involved in that rat race directly or indirectly. Such a life is necessary and can also make us prosperous. But it isn’t the be all and the end all of all matters. There, thus exists a world outside work-the world of leisurely activities and past times. We are all to spend sometimes consciously in such matters. Nature is beautiful and it, not only soothes the mind, but also a teacher and a nourisher. Nature only regains our mental health and achieves a position where we can work better and more efficiently.

            However, the irony is that not many people realize this value. They spend most of their lives at break-neck speed and pass away without even looking at nature. The author does not conform to such an idea of life. However, the author does not instruct us against work. Work is important and necessary and absolute, no work would only mean laziness couple with aimlessness. He only wants us to blend our work with the perfect mixture of rest and pastimes. These things done in moderation only helps us to perform better. Thus, we should make conscious efforts to enjoy nature and relax. It is only then, that, our lives become a complete circle.

This is the reason why he enjoys his outing with his artist friend at Yorkshire Falls. Such communion with nature helps him to retain his sanity intact. On the other hand, he denounces the likes of Mr. Gordon Selfridge who curse the waste of time. Such people work only for profit motives and in reality miss out a considerable portion of life. The tragedy, however, is that many of us don’t’ even realize the value of past times. This makes the author suggest instances in our history, who would uphold the author’s notion of life and its’ value. Thus, William Wordsworth would only be happy to vouch for such a kind of life. Priestley goes on to say that a devil is usually busiest being and majority of the world’s fuss is created by overwork and impatience. A break from the usual, monotonous and humdrum affairs of life only helps us to avoid such irritation. In short, the author tries to hold before us a way of life and its’ intrinsic value. There is more to life than just working ceaselessly. Work and leisure, if blended properly not only helps us to go a long way, but also in a better and more fruitful way.

Text: 

I had been staying with a friend of mine, an artist and delightfully lazy fellow, at his cottage among the Yorkshire fells, some ten miles from a railway-station; and as we had been fortunate enough to encounter a sudden spell of really warm weather, day after day we had set off in the morning, taken the nearest moonland track, climbed leisurely until we had reached somewhere about two thousand feet above sea-level, and had then spent long golden afternoon lying flat on our backs – doing nothing.

There is no better lounging place than a moor. It is a kind of clean bare antechamber to heaven. Beneath its apparent monotony that offers no immediate excitement, no absorbing drama of sound and colour, there is subtle variety in its slowly changing patterns of cloud and shadow and tinted horizons, sufficient to keep up a flicker of interest in the mind all day. With its velvety patches, no bigger than a drawing-room carpet, of fine moorland grass, its surfaces invite repose. Its remoteness, its permanence, its old and sprawling indifference to man and his concerns, rest and cleanse the mind. All the noises of the world are drowned in the one monotonous cry of the curlew.

Day after day, then, found us full-stretched upon the moor, looking up at the sky or gazing dreamily at the distant horizon. It is not strictly true, of course, to say that we did absolutely nothing, for we smoked great quantities of tobacco, ate sandwiches and little sticks of chocolate, drank from the cold bubbling streams that spring up 

from nowhere, gurgle for a few score yards, then disappear again. Occasionally we exchanged a remark to two. But we probably came as close to doing nothing as it is possible for two members of our race. We made nothing, not even any plans; not a single idea entered our heads; we did not even indulge in that genial boasting which is the usual pastime of two friendly males in conference. Somewhere, far away, our friends and relatives were humming and bustling, shaping and contriving, planning, disputing, getting, spending; but we were gods, solidly occupied in doing nothing, our minds immaculate vacancies. But when our little hour of idling was done and we descended for the last time, as flushed as sunsets, we came down into this world of men and newspaper owners only to discover that we had just been denounced by Mr Gordon Selfridge.....

....Unfortunately, Mr Selfridge had probably already made up his mind about the sin, as would call it, of laziness, and so was not open to conviction, was not ready to be pleased. It is a pity, and all the more so because his views seem to me to be wrong and quite definitely harmful...

....The devil, I take it, is still the busiest creature in the universe, and I can quite imagine him denouncing laziness and becoming angry at the smallest waste of time. 

..at the very first stopping-place Dean Inge gave them an address on the modern love of pleasure. But whether Mr Selfridge had been addressing a crowd of holiday-makers or a solemn conference of emporium owners, I do not know, but I do know that he said that he hated laziness more than anything else and held it the greatest of sins. I believe too that he delivered some judgment on persons who waste time, but I have forgotten his reasons and instances and, to be frank, would count it a disgraceful waste of time to discover again what they were. Mr Selfridge did not mention us by name, but it is hardly possible to doubt that he had us in mind throughout his attack on idleness. Perhaps he had had a frantic vision of the pair of us lying flat on our backs on the moor, wasting time royally while the world’s work waited to be done, and, incidentally, to be afterwards bought and sold in Mr Selfridge’s store.....

....The idea that laziness is the primary sin and the accompanying doctrine of the strenuous life are very prevalent in America, and we cannot escape the fact that America is an amazingly prosperous country. But neither can we escape the fact that society there is in such condition that all its best contemporary writers are satirists. Curiously enough, most of the great American writers have not hesitated to praise idleness, and it has often been their faculty for doing nothing and praising themselves for doing it, that has been their salvation. Thus, Thoreay, without his capacity for idling and doing nothing more than appreciate the Milky Way, would be a cold prig; and Whitman robbed if his habit of lounging round with his hands in his pockets and his innocent delight in this pastime, would be merely a large-sized ass. Any fool can be fussy and rid himself of energy all over the place, but a man has to have something in him before he can settle down to do nothing. He must have reserves to draw upon, must be at heart a poet.

Wordsworth, to whom we go when most other poets fail us, knew the value of doing nothing; nobody, you may say, could do it better; and you may discover in his work the best account of the matter. He lived long enough to retract most of his youthful opinions, but I do not think that he ever went back on his youthful notion that a man could have no healthier and more spiritualizing employment than idling about and starting at Nature. (It is true that he is very angry in one poem with some gypsies because they had apparently done absolutely nothing from the time he passed them at the beginning of his walk to the time when he passed them again, twelve hours later. But this is racial prejudice, tinged, I suspect, with envy, for though he had not done much, they had done even less.) If he were alive to-day I have no doubt he would preach his doctrine more frequently and more frequently than ever, and he would probably attack Mr Selfridge and defend us (beginning ‘Last week they loitered on a love wide moor’) in a series of capital sonnets, which would not, by the way, attract the slightest attention. He would tell us that the whole world would be better off if it spent every possible moment it could, these next ten years, lying flat on its back on a moor, doing nothing. And he would be right.

Themes of the story:

In On Doing Nothing by J.B. Priestley we have the theme of peace of mind, laziness, envy, desire and very early on in the essay the reader realises that Priestley may be exploring the theme of peace of mind.

The last sentence of the essay ‘And he would be right’ might also be significant as it suggests that Priestley is totally dedicated to the idea of being idle for a period of time. That there are proven benefits to being so. As to whether the reader themselves agrees is really left to each individual reader to decide. Some might suggest that laziness is indeed the primary sin while others may very well be exponents of the idea of having periods of idleness......