THE ART OF THE WASTED DAY

A spirited inquiry into the lost value of leisure and daydreamThe Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure writte n from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, e ven an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of retirement in rural Wa les. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne-- the hero...[Read more]