7. Acedia and David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS v
3. Acknowledgements vi
4. Preface viii
5. Introduction: Doing Nothing in America 1
6. Part I: The Philosophical and Literary Contexts of Laziness
7. 1. Laziness as Concept-Metaphor 25
8. 2. Laziness in American Literature: The Inaugural Moment 72
9. Part II: The Modernist Moment of Laziness
10. 3. Cessation and inaction externe: Gertrude Stein and Marcel Duchamp 147
11. 4. Laziness and Tactility in Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden 168
12. Part III: The Postmodern Moment of Laziness
13. 5. Exhaustion of Possibilities: Harold Rosenberg, John Barth and Susan Sontag 189
14. 6. Inertia and Not-Knowing in the Fiction of Donald Barthelme 210
15. 7. Acedia and David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King 241
16. Epilogue 267
17. Index 272