The Art of the Wasted Day
“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 daydream
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…