essays

Wendy Wasserstein’s Guide to Slothful Living

Bill Thompson

About 20 years ago, the New York public library assembled a list of books on the seven deadly sins.

One of which, of course, is sloth.

But if you’ve always been a little fuzzy about exactly what sloth is playwright essayist and satirist Wendy wasserstein to the rescue.

You may remember wasserstein best for her 1989 play The Heidi Chronicles, which won a Tony award and a Pulitzer prize.

Her 2005 book Sloth is a parody of self-help books, with detailed instructions on how you too can acquire sloth.

I interviewed Wendy several times, but this was the most fun one. So here now from 2005. Wendy Wasserstein.

Wendy Wasserstein died in 2006, She was 55.

Robert Fulghum

Bill Thompson
Photo: Petr Novák, Wikipedia

Back around 1988 or ’89, you could hardly go anywhere without seeing a little book written by a former Unitarian minister called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

Readers all over the world were struck by the simplicity and elegance and wisdom of that little book.

That man was Robert Fulghum, and his book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for two years.

Here’s how he summed up the book when he and I first talked about it in 1988:

A year later, we met again, to talk about his sequel, a book called It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It.

So here now, from 1989, Robert Fulghum.

Robert Fulghum will be 85 in June. He lives in Utah and the Greek island of Crete.

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