A spirited journey into the lost value of daydream and ease, and the primacy of imagination.
Patricia Hampl is the author of six prose works, including A Romantic Education and, most recently, The Florist's Daughter. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Best American Essays. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation, she lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.
"It's impossible to do justice to the cumulative power of Hampl's
dream-weaver writing style by just quoting a few lines. You have to
go on the whole voyage with her . . . by wasting some of your time
with Hampl, you'll understand more of what makes life worth
living." - Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air" "Hampl's lyrical
repetitions and abstractions can be as poetic as prayer." - The
Wall Street Journal "The Art of the Wasted Day is literary art in
and of itself . . . Hampl invites readers to take a journey to
explore the idea of a life steeped in leisure without schedules." -
The Washington Post "A wise and beautiful ode to the imagination -
from a child's daydreams, to the unexpected revelations encountered
in solitary travel, meditation, and reading, to the flights of
creativity taken by writers, artists, and philosophers." - The
Minneapolis Star Tribune "Sharp and unconventional . . . a swirl of
memoir, travelogue and biography of some of history's champion
daydreamers." - The Seattle Times "A moving, lyrical,
intellectually bracing read . . . part essay, part travelogue, part
interrogative memoir, part mourning love letter, The Art of the
Wasted Day touches on a head-spinning range of historical and
literary phenomena . . . Hampl dexterously turns all these topics
into lenses bent on a central concern: the value of a certain kind
of psychic space, which she refers to as 'leisure.'" - Commonwealth
"About how rich life is when one focuses, at least part of the
time, on being rather than on doing . . . it's about being still,
being aware, about seeing what is in front of your eyes, about
being open to what one thinks and remembers and feels." - The
Chicago Tribune "Hampl [is] an eloquent apologist for solitude. It
is not just important to the creative life, she proposes, but a
cornerstone of spiritual well-being. Its prime function, and prize,
is a closer experience of reality." - The Boston Globe "Hampl lets
her mind wander, as one does on a wasted day. Readers familiar with
her work will recognize the confident tone and poetry-infused
language." - Ploughshares "Delightfully nebulous - dangling
somewhere between travelogue, literary criticism, memoir, and love
letter . . . Hampl's style is so lithe and lively that I happily
followed her anywhere . . . reading her thoughts is a bit of magic
that allows us to share in the solitude of ideas together." - The
American Scholar "A wonderfully lavish and leisurely exploration of
the art of daydreaming . . . [a] remarkable and touching book." -
Publishers Weekly (starred review) "An exquisite anatomy of mind
and an incandescent reflection on nature, being, and rapture . . .
Memoirist extraordinaire Hampl [is] a master of judiciously elegant
vignettes and surprising, slowing unfurling connections." - ALA
Booklist (starred) "Lucent, tender, and wise . . . a captivating
and revelatory memoir." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Vivid,
passionate, bursting with ideas and insights, Patricia Hampl's new
book is a summation of a lifetime of sensitive searching and
thinking. A love story, a meditation on death, travel,
Americanness, Catholicism, integrity and Montaigne, this beautiful
journey is finally about the education of a soul." - Phillip Lopate
"This book, tender, curious and crazily wise, brings to mind Michel
de Montaigne's saying that 'A spirited mind never stops within
itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.'" -
Azar Nafisi "What ties together this beautiful book are the
imaginary conversations born of Hampl's mourning for her life
companion. An elegy, a reader's pilgrimage, a reflection on the
writing life, full of humor, surprises, and wisdom gently given,
The Art of the Wasted Day is a book for the ages." - Alice Kaplan
"The art of Patricia Hampl is the art of a lyrical, contemplative
self, a self as instrument attuned to the world's vibrations.
Through reflection and investigation, vignette and daydream, she
roams centuries and continents in this book." --Margo Jefferson
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