The Labour of Laziness in Twentieth-Century American Literature focuses on the issue of productivity, using the figure of laziness to negotiate the relation between the ethical and the aesthetic. This book argues that major twentieth-century American writers such as Gertrude Stein, ErnestHemingway, 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. Ladyga argues that when the motif of laziness appears, it invariably reveals theunderpinnings of an emerging value system at a given historical moment, while at the same time offering a glimpse into the strategies of rebelling against the status quo. | The Labour of Laziness in Twentieth-Century American Literature by Zuzanna Ladyga, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters