In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed
By Carl Honoré
HarperSanFrancisco
320 pp $24.95

In Praise of Slowness is hardly a book to rush through. You'd feel like a fool as you sped through scenario after scenario, each one chronicling the woes we've created by going too fast.

Canadian journalist Carl Honoré began with an interesting idea: first to look into all the ways that modern life seems to have spun out of control, and then to profile various efforts around the globe aimed at slowing things down -- in realms from eating to making love, raising children to working.

The idea of a "hurry-sick" society isn't new: Author James Glieck, in his 2000 book Faster, chronicled the ways in which supposed time-saving devices perilously accelerate the pace of our lives. But Honoré focuses on their damage to the family. The London-based author begins by treating the reader to numerous catchy and horrifying statistics: The average working parent today spends twice as long each day dealing with e-mail, for instance, as playing with his or her children. Or this one: While we as a culture devote only a half an hour a week, on average, to making love, we spend twice that much time on hold on the telephone. Whether we are in school, at work, in the doctor's office, "enjoying" our leisure time, or reading to our children, we tend to do it all way too fast.

It isn't hard to make the case that we've become a "time-sick" society -- a term coined by maverick holistic physician Larry Dossey -- nor is it an entirely recent ailment. The book begins with the quote "People are born and married, and live and die, in the midst of an uproar so frantic that you would think they should go mad of it," penned by William Dean Howells -- in 1907.

One can hardly imagine what Howells would say today, were he to encounter contemporary humans multitasking on cell phones while they rush along freeways, gobbling fast-food lunches while they are at it.

As most of us are painfully aware, it gets worse: overscheduled, exhausted children; burnout hitting workers at a younger and younger age; the impossibility of seeing friends without setting a date months in advance.

Beneath this long-building frantic uproar, though, Honoré has uncovered a silver lining -- a Slow Movement, little pockets of people trying to buck the rushing tide. And in his very readable and provocative book, he sets out to profile the fast-growing trend to slow down. From the behavior of growers and cooks in Italy who indulge themselves in long, sensuous sessions at the table, to the views of Tantric sex adherents, the author gamely samples it all and pronounces it a vast improvement on being shackled to the clock.

Chapter by chapter, he examines such challenges as how to help children recover the lost art of loafing, or how to use our leisure in more meditative ways -- knitting, for instance. Julia Roberts and Gwyneth Paltrow do it! Other people profiled in the book have found peace by slowing down enough to home-school their kids, make their own soap, or take up Chi Kung and meditation.

The author is ambitious in his search for the slowed-down life, and sometimes his quest for calm can stray far afield. But even when it does, he uncovers some fascinating, if esoteric, rebellions. A concert by avant-garde composer John Cage, titled "As Slow As Possible," is being played in Germany at such a snail's pace -- just a few notes each year -- that it should last 600 years!

Most of the book is aimed at more practical situations. What's most important for each of us is to find our own best speed, says the author, our personal "tempo giusto." Some of us may do it by picking up the garden hoe rather than the TV remote, others by trying to remove the phrase, "Hurry up!" from their vocabularies. "The secret," says Honoré, "is balance; instead of doing everything faster, do everything at the right speed. Being slow means never rushing, never striving to save time just for the sake of it. It means remaining calm and unflustered even when circumstances force us to speed up."

The way the author frames it, slowing down can't help but sound good. But just how much of an impact the Slow Movement will have is open to question. In the discussion of work, for instance, Honoré at one point puts forth a broad statistic, then proffers a probably less-than-realistic solution: "According to US research, employees with marital problems lose on average of 15 workdays a year, costing American companies nearly $7 billion dollars a year in lost productivity. The solution put forward by the Slow Movement is as simple as it is appealing: Spend less time working and more time indulging in slow sex."

Of the medical realm, he writes, "Mainstream medicine is making room for Slowness in many ways," and "Doctors everywhere are pushing for more time with their patients," which probably overstates the case. He goes on to cite numerous anecdotal accounts of slowed-down alternative and complementary approaches, quoting patients on the efficacy and popularity of such things as reiki healing, acupuncture, or the installation of gardens in hospital settings.

Yet to assess whether "Slowness" is truly making serious inroads in the mainstream practice of medicine would be a book in itself. This one covers too much territory to provide adequate depth on the subject. But if the author's point of view sometimes appears overly optimistic, it nonetheless makes readers take a close look at the speed traps of our own lives -- and possibly find ways to put on the brakes.

In the final analysis, Honoré has come up with a witty and illuminating collection of information on the perils of fast-paced modern life and an intriguing look at myriad ways people are trying to slow the hands of time, both in the US and abroad. Perhaps ironically, the book provides a relatively quick look at it all. But it's enough to provoke a good discussion and inspire anyone to figure out at least a few ways to slow down and smell the roses. The author himself, while admitting that he got a speeding ticket while researching the book, says his findings have transformed his own life considerably. For one thing, he no longer rushes through bedtime stories.

I'd say rush right out and buy this book, but that would be wrong. Instead, walk -- slowly, mindfully -- to your bookstore, taking time to chat with your neighbors along the way. Then curl up and read the book slowly. At the least it will help you remember what we all seem to forget so often these days -- that it's life's journey, not the destination, that counts.

-- Karin Evans is the author of The Lost Daughters of China: Abandoned Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past (Penguin Putnam). She is currently at work on a Ford Foundation-sponsored training manual for China's social welfare institutions titled A Kind Word, A Gentle Touch, and Someone to Help Us Learn.

First published July 16, 2004
Last updated December 10, 2007
Copyright © 2004 Consumer Health Interactive

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