The Art of the Wasted Day

<b><b>“A sharp and unconventional book — a swirl of memoir, travelogue and biography of some of history's champion day-dreamers.” <b>—</b>Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air"</b><br><br>A spirited inquiry into the lost value of leisure and daydream</b><br><br><i>The Art of the Wasted Day</i> 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. <br><br>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. <br><br>The real job of being human, Hampl finds, is getting lost in thought, something only leisure can provide. <i>The Art of the Wasted Day</i> is a compelling celebration of the purpose and appeal of letting go.