The labour of laziness in twentieth-century American literature / Zuzanna Ladyga.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ladyga, Zuzanna, author.

Series:

Modern American literature and the new twentieth century.

Edinburgh scholarship online.

Modern American literature and the new twentieth century

Edinburgh scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Laziness in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 279 pages).

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2021.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

This text 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction: Doing Nothing in America

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 Hemingway’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 in the Fiction of Donald Barthelme

7. Acedia and David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King

Epilogue

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on May 10, 2021).

ISBN:

1-4744-7703-8

1-4744-4294-3

OCLC:

1306539975