TY  - BOOK
AU  - Hampl,Patricia
TI  - The art of the wasted day
SN  - 9780525429647
PY  - 2018///]
CY  - New York, New York
PB  - Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
KW  - Hampl, Patricia,
KW  - Poets, American
KW  - 20th century
KW  - Biography
KW  - Relaxation
KW  - Anecdotes
KW  - Leisure
KW  - Autobiographies
KW  - lcgft
KW  - Travel writing
N1  - Timelessness -- To go -- To stay
N2  - In an effort to discover the value of daydreaming and leisure, the author sets out on a journey that will take her to the homes of people who famously wasted time daydreaming, but were better for it, including Gregor Mendel; "The 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"--Book jacket
ER  -