The art of the wasted day

Book Cover
Average Rating
Publisher
Viking
Publication Date
[2018]
Language
English

Description

“A sharp and unconventional book — a swirl of memoir, travelogue and biography of some of history's champion day-dreamers.” Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air"A spirited inquiry into the lost value of leisure and daydreamThe Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of "retirement" in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne--the hero of this book--who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay. Hampl's own life winds through these pilgrimages, from childhood days lazing under a neighbor's beechnut tree, to a fascination with monastic life, and then to love--and the loss of that love which forms this book's silver thread of inquiry. Finally, a remembered journey down the Mississippi near home in an old cabin cruiser with her husband turns out, after all her international quests, to be the great adventure of her life. The real job of being human, Hampl finds, is getting lost in thought, something only leisure can provide. The Art of the Wasted Day is a compelling celebration of the purpose and appeal of letting go.

More Details

ISBN
9780525429647

Table of Contents

From the Book

Timelessness
To go
To stay.

Discover More

Excerpt

Loading Excerpt...

Author Notes

Loading Author Notes...

Similar Titles From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for titles you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
These books have the appeal factors reflective and lyrical, and they have the subjects "imagination," "creativity," and "authors."
These books have the appeal factors evocative, and they have the genre "autobiographies and memoirs"; and the subjects "relaxation," "imagination," and "creativity."
These books have the appeal factors reflective and candid, and they have the genres "autobiographies and memoirs" and "life stories -- arts and culture -- writing -- authors"; and the subjects "women authors" and "authors."
These books have the genres "life stories -- arts and culture -- writing -- authors" and "arts and entertainment -- writing and publishing."
These books have the appeal factors moving and lyrical, and they have the subjects "women authors," "imagination," and "creativity."
These books have the appeal factors reflective, bittersweet, and candid, and they have the genres "life stories -- arts and culture -- writing -- authors" and "arts and entertainment -- writing and publishing"; and the subjects "women authors" and "femininity."
These books have the appeal factors reflective, and they have the subjects "women authors," "women," and "psychology."
These books have the appeal factors reflective, and they have the genres "autobiographies and memoirs" and "life stories -- arts and culture -- writing -- authors"; and the subjects "women authors" and "women."
These books have the appeal factors reflective and stylistically complex.
These books have the appeal factors reflective and lyrical, and they have the subjects "imagination" and "creativity."
These books have the appeal factors reflective and lyrical, and they have the genre "autobiographies and memoirs"; and the subject "relaxation."
Combining lyrical personal anecdotes with topical essays, these reflective books quietly explore the power of mindfulness and solitude. The Art of the Wasted Day is an ode to daydreaming; Wintering is about embracing the winter as a time for healing. -- Catherine Coles

Similar Authors From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for other authors you might want to read if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
These authors' works have the genre "biographies"; and the subjects "women poets," "poets, american," and "social life and customs."
These authors' works have the genre "biographies"; and the subjects "poets, american," "social life and customs," and "authors, american."
These authors' works have the genres "autobiographies and memoirs" and "biographies"; and the subjects "women poets" and "poets, american."
These authors' works have the genres "autobiographies and memoirs" and "biographies"; and the subjects "women poets," "poets, american," and "authors, american."
These authors' works have the genre "biographies"; and the subjects "poets, american" and "authors, american."
These authors' works have the genre "biographies"; and the subject "poets, american."
These authors' works have the genre "biographies"; and the subjects "women poets" and "poets, american."
These authors' works have the genre "autobiographies and memoirs"; and the subjects "women poets," "poets, american," and "women authors."
These authors' works have the genre "biographies"; and the subjects "women poets," "poets, american," and "social life and customs."
These authors' works have the genre "biographies"; and the subjects "women poets," "poets, american," and "social life and customs."
These authors' works have the genres "autobiographies and memoirs" and "biographies"; and the subjects "poets, american," "social life and customs," and "authors, american."
These authors' works have the genres "autobiographies and memoirs" and "biographies"; and the subjects "women poets" and "poets, american."

Published Reviews

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The very thought of a wasted day feels decadent, conditioned as we are to be perpetually busy, caffeinated, slashing our way through to-do lists, reacting to the online onslaught. Memoirist extraordinaire Hampl (The Florist's Daughter, 2007), a master of judiciously elegant vignettes and surprising, slowly unfurling connections, recalls her blissful childhood reveries beneath a grand beech tree in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the shock of learning that daydreaming is a sin. What, she asks, is leisure, exactly? Embarking on a complexly metaphysical and artistic quest, Hampl makes pilgrimages to the homes of patron saints of cloistered serenity, including genre-defining essayist Montaigne, the abbot-scientist Gregor Mendel, and two eighteenth-century British rebels, Sarah Ponsonbyand Lady Eleanor Butler, who lived together in Wales in splendid accord. Hampl revels in the revelations of the reading and writing life, marveling over the intelligence of details and how essays tell a story of perception rather than action. For all the vital, sensuous, enrapturing descriptions that engender a powerful sense of presence, this is also a contemplation of absence and solitude as Hampl tenderly contends with the sudden death of her husband. An exquisite anatomy of mind and an incandescent reflection on nature, being, and rapture.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Powered by Syndetics

Publisher's Weekly Review

Novelist Hampl (The Florist's Daughter) offers a wonderfully lavish and leisurely exploration of the art of daydreaming. As an eight-year-old child in a Catholic household, Hampl learned that daydreaming was considered to be one of the "occasions of sin" in the Baltimore Catechism. She made her decision then: "For this a person goes to hell. Okay then." Decades later, retired and widowed, she commits herself to the task of wasting her life "in order to find it." Here, Hampl reveals her true purpose: to write a book for baby boomers who "are approaching the other side." Hampl leads by example. She visits the home of Sarah Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler, two women who discovered that "the act of leaving the world's stage" could be the "best way to attain balance and... integrity." Hampl enjoys leisurely meals in south Moravia where she ponders the patient monastic life of Gregor Mendel. Later, she visits Michel de Montaigne's tower in southwest France. As Hampl rumates and escapes, her late husband is palpably present. Hampl captures art of day dreaming with astonishing simplicity and clarity in this remarkable and touching book. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Powered by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

A writer's life is conveyed through "a lens of penetrating inquiry."As a young girl studying the Baltimore Catechism to prepare for her first confession, Hampl (The Florist's Daughter, 2007, etc.) was shocked to learn that daydreaming"this effortless flight of the mind"was a sin. She refused to believe it: daydreaming, her abiding pleasure, "sees things. Claims things, twirls them around, takes a good look," and makes sense of them. In this lucent, tender, and wise memoir, the author celebrates this quiet reflection, which actually requires acute observation and intense, even loving, attention. "Caress the detail, the divine detail," Nabokov commanded. "And because the detail is divine," Hampl discovers, "if you caress it into life, the world lost or ignored, the world ruined or devalued, comes to life." As in her previous memoirs, the author reports on journeys, both inward among memories and outwardto France, Wales, and on the Mississippi Riveras she works at "the job of being human." She is never really alone, "even though being alone is the one thing we recognize as our chance for authenticity, for surprising ourselves out of predictability." Her traveling companions include Whitman, Dickinson, Augustine, Gregor Mendel, Colette, Virginia Woolf, and, notably, Montaigne, the elegant 16th-century writer who withdrew from public life "to muse about how to dieor was it how to live?" Montaigne invented a new literary genre, the essay, liberating writing "to be wild, untamed, eccentric." His goal, Hampl writes, "was to renew the springs of the first-person voice bounding across the field of what we keep calling, against our uncertainty, reality." His goal is Hampl's, as well: memoir, she knows, is "not a reminiscence, but a quest." Although reveling in solitude, the author is no stranger to loneliness; her husband's recent, unexpected death has left her bereft. Grief pulses through the memoir, a feeling different, entirely, from "the solitude within the mind.""Loneliness eats away at you," writes the author. "Solitude fills and fills you." A captivating and revelatory memoir. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Powered by Syndetics

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* The very thought of a "wasted day" feels decadent, conditioned as we are to be perpetually busy, caffeinated, slashing our way through to-do lists, reacting to the online onslaught. Memoirist extraordinaire Hampl (The Florist's Daughter, 2007), a master of judiciously elegant vignettes and surprising, slowly unfurling connections, recalls her blissful childhood reveries beneath a grand beech tree in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the shock of learning that daydreaming is a sin. What, she asks, is leisure, exactly? Embarking on a complexly metaphysical and artistic quest, Hampl makes pilgrimages to the homes of patron saints of cloistered serenity, including genre-defining essayist Montaigne, the abbot-scientist Gregor Mendel, and two eighteenth-century British rebels, Sarah Ponsonbyand Lady Eleanor Butler, who lived together in Wales in splendid accord. Hampl revels in the revelations of the reading and writing life, marveling over the "intelligence of details" and how essays tell a "story of perception rather than action." For all the vital, sensuous, enrapturing descriptions that engender a powerful sense of presence, this is also a contemplation of absence and solitude as Hampl tenderly contends with the sudden death of her husband. An exquisite anatomy of mind and an incandescent reflection on nature, being, and rapture. Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.

Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.
Powered by Content Cafe

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Novelist Hampl (The Florist's Daughter) offers a wonderfully lavish and leisurely exploration of the art of daydreaming. As an eight-year-old child in a Catholic household, Hampl learned that daydreaming was considered to be one of the "occasions of sin" in the Baltimore Catechism. She made her decision then: "For this a person goes to hell. Okay then." Decades later, retired and widowed, she commits herself to the task of wasting her life "in order to find it." Here, Hampl reveals her true purpose: to write a book for baby boomers who "are approaching the other side." Hampl leads by example. She visits the home of Sarah Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler, two women who discovered that "the act of leaving the world's stage" could be the "best way to attain balance and... integrity." Hampl enjoys leisurely meals in south Moravia where she ponders the patient monastic life of Gregor Mendel. Later, she visits Michel de Montaigne's tower in southwest France. As Hampl rumates and escapes, her late husband is palpably present. Hampl captures art of day dreaming with astonishing simplicity and clarity in this remarkable and touching book. (Apr.)

Copyright 2018 Publishers Weekly.

Copyright 2018 Publishers Weekly.
Powered by Content Cafe

Reviews from GoodReads

Loading GoodReads Reviews.

Staff View

Loading Staff View.