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The Perils Of Inactivity

Patrick Skahill

http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Chion/Colin%20McEnroe%20Show%2012-26-2012.mp3

Quick! What do Lewis Carroll and Donald Rumsfeld have in common with Virginia Woolf and Oliver Wendell Holmes? They all wrote standing up. So did Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, Victor Hugo and George Sand. So did Philip Roth, Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Wolfe.

In fact, the number of great writers who wrote standing up seems way out of proportion to the rest of the people who sit at desks. But the king of stand-up writing and thinking turns out to have been Nietzsche. Nietzsche hated sitting with an attitude that fits hilariously with his attitude about everything else. He called it "das sitzfleisch" (sitting meat) and he rained scorn down on people, like Flaubert, who attempted to create while sitting.

In the 1960s, there came an heir to Nitetzche - Bob Propst, a designer who became head of research at Herman Miller and attempted to lead a revolution in office design. 45 years later, the revolution is here. 

You can join the conversation. E-mail us colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us@wnprcolin.

Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.

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