Zuzanna Ladyga is Associate Professor, American Literature Department, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. Her first book is titled Rethinking Postmodern Subjectivity: Emmanuel Levinas and Ethics of Referentiality in the Work of Donald Barthelme (Peter Lang, 2009).

It will be impossible for reviewers to avoid lauding the tremendous cultural work that The Labour of Laziness performs. Ladyga excavates, in a grand, rigorous essay of genealogical criticism, the stigmatized concept-metaphor of laziness from Aristotle to Žižek. The result is both a revelatory rereading of the US literary canon and an essential critique of Western culture norms.

• AcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroductionPart I: The Philosophical And Literary Contexts of Laziness1. 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 Heminwgway’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 on the Fiction Of Donald Barthelme 7: Acedia And David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King EpilogueIndex

Zuzanna Ladyga is Associate Professor, American Literature Department, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. Her first book is titled Rethinking Postmodern Subjectivity: Emmanuel Levinas and Ethics of Referentiality in the Work of Donald Barthelme (Peter Lang, 2009).

It will be impossible for reviewers to avoid lauding the tremendous cultural work that The Labour of Laziness performs. Ladyga excavates, in a grand, rigorous essay of genealogical criticism, the stigmatized concept-metaphor of laziness from Aristotle to Žižek. The result is both a revelatory rereading of the US literary canon and an essential critique of Western culture norms.

• AcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroductionPart I: The Philosophical And Literary Contexts of Laziness1. 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 Heminwgway’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 on the Fiction Of Donald Barthelme 7: Acedia And David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King EpilogueIndex

Zuzanna Ladyga is Associate Professor, American Literature Department, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. Her first book is titled Rethinking Postmodern Subjectivity: Emmanuel Levinas and Ethics of Referentiality in the Work of Donald Barthelme (Peter Lang, 2009).

It will be impossible for reviewers to avoid lauding the tremendous cultural work that The Labour of Laziness performs. Ladyga excavates, in a grand, rigorous essay of genealogical criticism, the stigmatized concept-metaphor of laziness from Aristotle to Žižek. The result is both a revelatory rereading of the US literary canon and an essential critique of Western culture norms.

• AcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroductionPart I: The Philosophical And Literary Contexts of Laziness1. 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 Heminwgway’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 on the Fiction Of Donald Barthelme 7: Acedia And David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King EpilogueIndex