The Labour of Laziness in Twentieth-Century American Literature

The Labour of Laziness in Twentieth-Century American Literature focuses on the issue of productivity, using the figure of laziness to negotiate the relation between the ethical and the aesthetic. This book argues that major twentieth-century American writers such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, John Barth, Donald Barthelme and David Foster Wallace provocatively challenge the ethos of productivity by filtering their ethical interventions through culturally stigmatised imagery of laziness. Ladyga argues that when the motif of laziness appears, it invariably reveals the underpinnings of an emerging value system at a given historical moment, while at the same time offering a glimpse into the strategies of rebelling against the status quo.

Zuzanna Ladyga is Associate Professor, American Literature Department, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland.

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction

Part I: The Philosophical And Literary Contexts of Laziness

1. Laziness as Concept-Metaphor
2. Laziness in American Literature: The Inaugural Moment

Part II: The Modernist Moment of Laziness

3. Cessation And Inaction Externe: Gertrude Stein and Marcel Duchamp
4. Laziness and Tactility in Ernest Heminwgway's The Garden Of Eden

Part III: The Postmodern Moment of Laziness

5. Exhaustion of Possibilities: Harold Rosenberg, John Barth And Susan Sontag
6: Inertia and Not-Knowing on the Fiction Of Donald Barthelme
7: Acedia And David Foster Wallace's The Pale King

Epilogue
Index