The Importance of BEING IDLE

Early retirements. Flexible hours. Less drama only good vibes. Is a big chillout the balm we need in these chaotic 20s?

- ISABEL B. SLONE

Happy Hour, the recent debut novel from author and filmmaker Marlowe Granados, offers an intriguing; proposition for our increasingly unpredictable times. Protagonists Isa and Gala are whimsical party girls fumbling their way through a summer in New York, entirely unconcerned with the social climbing and career advancement that bog down many young arrivistes. Rather, Granados tells me, "They're motivated by the possibility of having a good time? Think of the book as Bright Lights, Big City for the new decade, a tantalizing blueprint showing the way forward: no ambition, no agita, very little drama-only good vibes.

Vibes, as it happens, rank high among the preoccupations of the creative elite and the leisure class as we enter an amorphous cultural moment that feels awkward and tentative but awfully close to fully revealing itself. The marketing guru Sean Monahan coined the phrase "vibe shift" to describe this latest pendulum swing of the zeitgeist, but evidence of a seismic reset writ large was foretold-after all, rarely has anyone ever lived through a historic global event like the pandemic and emerged doing exactly what they were doing before.

After the austerity of World War II, people flocked to soda fountains and sock hops and twirled their hips to the music of Elvis Presley. Now we find ourselves in a moment when vibrating anxiety has given way to a mass realignment of priorities. Rest has become a tonic rather than a sign of weakness. The understanding that life is meant to be enjoyed has many embracing a carefree life philosophy that lies somewhere on the spectrum between Zen Buddhism and Cartman from South Park shrieking, "Whatevah. I do what I want!"