The Labour of Laziness in Twentieth-Century American Literature

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, Ernest Hemingway, 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 the underpinnings 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 Formation of Hemingway’s Ecological Awareness

Hemingway, who has done a lot to shape twentieth-century American literature, remains an interesting writer because it is possible to read him in many ways. With the rise of American nature writing, the natural world in Hemingway’s fiction has recently caught critical attention. This paper is going to explore the origin of his nature complex and ecological awareness from three aspects, that is, his life experience in nature, his reading experience and the influence of the painter Cezanne.