Book Review: The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are by David M. Henkin

Book #105 of 2022:

The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are by David M. Henkin

This nonfiction title explores an interesting and new-to-me topic, which is the obvious yet rarely-considered point that the seven-day cycle we know as a week is entirely cultural, having no relation to observable patterns in nature like a day (one rotation of the earth on its axis, measured in a period of light and then one of darkness), month (one revolution of the moon around the earth, measured in its appearing to wax and wane when seen from here), or year (one trip of the earth around the sun, measured in the changing of the seasons). Although the week may seem just as natural to us as these, its length of time is wholly arbitrary — and in fact, there are some cultures that did not develop such a concept, with the modern-style week really only establishing a global dominance in the past two hundred years.

As author David M. Henkin details, we use the artificial structure of weeks to divide work from leisure, but also to organize our recurring commitments (like a class that meets each Wednesday) and to take regular inventory of our lives in terms of last week / this week / next week. Even historical calendar reforms that alter the month and date have generally left the progression of weekdays alone, and in that steady unfolding, particular days with their associated activities come to acquire certain individual characteristics for us. Accordingly, we are unsettled whenever we realize we’ve gotten the day wrong, or even simply when we experience, e.g. a Tuesday that doesn’t feel like a Tuesday for whatever reason. In the height of the early Covid-19 pandemic, amid usual scheduled routines getting disrupted by widespread lockdowns and telework, that sort of untethering was commonly reported as days and weeks stretching uncomfortably into one long indistinguishable span that some sardonically nicknamed “Blursday.” In a somewhat roundabout fashion, this work attempts to get at why people reacted so strongly to the perceived lack of that traditional framework, and how we continue to rely upon the week to apply order to our existence.

Unfortunately, while such provocative ideas are floated throughout the text, the writer primarily focuses on his own existing area of expertise, which is the journal-keeping habits of nineteenth-century America. I believe the intent here is to showcase the different uses of the week that were then entering into common practice, but it reads more as just a dry catalog of recitation tenuously linked to Henkin’s surrounding theoretical thesis. He spends a lot of space, for instance, discussing the evidence that Thursday was once a popular day for weddings, but then doesn’t build to any specific conclusions from that. I would have loved a book that actually flowed from the discussion raised in the Introduction, but I don’t think this one ever quite gets there for me.

★★★☆☆

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