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Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock

by Jenny Odell (Goodreads Author)

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TrishTalksBooks said: " This dense but very readable nonfiction pick gave me some interesting ideas to consider about our conception of time.

I read Odell’s 2019 release How To Do Nothing, and was enchanted by some of the concepts she presented. I still think about it to th This dense but very readable nonfiction pick gave me some interesting ideas to consider about our conception of time.

I read Odell’s 2019 release How To Do Nothing, and was enchanted by some of the concepts she presented. I still think about it to this day, and some of her ideas, like “manifest dismantling” are ones that still inform some of my choices. I love that! I jumped at the opportunity to read her March 2023 book Saving Time. It’s quite similar, and presents a new suite of ideas.

The first chapters discuss our current Westernized notions of time. Time is seen as a quantifiable entity, something that can be broken down into “fungible units”: divisible periods of time that can be used as units of productivity. This was fascinating, and plays into the idea of capitalism, the expansion economy and the question of who is buying whose time? Odell then explored self-timing, the notion of the Protestant work ethic, personal time efficiency, and “performance productivity.” Essentially we sell our time to others, or we police ourselves in the name of self improvement and pursuing efficiency and excellence.

With that established, she discusses how the privileged among us pay a cost to opt out of this system, but it is a lower cost than someone who has less privilege. It is easier for those of us with means to choose to live a different way, and with a different notion of what time means, if we choose to. I appreciate how Odell is always mindful of this issue. She also encourages us to consider “mediocrity” in the fight against time as money, and to refuse the wholesale embrace of endless expansion.

I liked Chapter 5 particularly, as she brings in the notion of linear time (chronos) to the climate emergency. The mental attitude of declinism–that all is in decay in the world and there is inevitable catastrophe coming–is a function of thinking of time on a human-life scale, and neglecting the notion of geological time. We see the forest in our own time, static–but it is a living entity that needs cycles of growth, decay and fire to maintain its vibrant health. We need to consider the “forest time,” or the “mountain's time” rather than just our own. She also includes a good discussion of the notion of the “apocalypse”: we see this as unique to our own time, which leads to nihilism. But we must remember that many societies have faced their own apocalypse already, and endured it. There is hope. The chapter was sobering but encouraging, because it ends with the urge for us to continue to gain a time-perspective on these issues, and to band with others to process our grief and distress.

In the end, I found this book to be an excellent and very informative read, though be warned that it is chock fuoo of fact and a dense read. That said, I’d highly recommend this if you are ready for a deep dive into sideways thinking and looking at some questions that might be a little tough. ...more "

Feb 20, 2023 01:06PM · see review