Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life »

Kathleen Norris is the author of two books of poetry, Falling Off (1971) and The Middle of the World (1981) and has received awards from the Guggenheim and Bush foundations. She lives in Lemmon, South Dakota, with her husband.

In Acedia & Me, the acclaimed author Kathleen Norris explicates and demystifies the forgotten but utterly relevant concept of acedia, a term that has often been understood as spiritual sloth, but really signifies the serious malady of being unable to care. With great insight and candor, Norris explores acedia through the geography of her life as a writer; her marriage and the challenges of commitment in the midst of grave illness; and her keen interest in the monastic tradition. She writes of her and her husband David's battles with acedia and its clinical cousin, depression, and traces acedia's paththrough literary and religious history, exposing the damage it does not only to individual lives but also to our culture as a whole, as we are desensitized by ever more intrusive distractions and lose the ability to care about what is truly important. Thus, she finds that the "restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair" that we struggle...

The Barnes & Noble Review

Of the seven deadly sins, some seem deadlier than others. What of sloth? How bad can it be? The lust of philandering public figures and the greed of businessmen can bring down governments and capsize the globe's economies. Even gluttony seems an appalling indulgence of both waste and waists, inviting civic intervention against fast-food chains and trans fats. By comparison, I doubt many can define sloth, even if they know it -- like obscenity -- when they see it. Slothful behavior may seem wanton and disdainful, but it poses nothing of the menace to the individual or the social good that its half-dozen dangerous brethren threaten. Whether conceived of as melancholic apathy or lazy indolence, sloth goes a lonely path.

I Somewhere 1

II Tedium 7

III From Eight Bad Thoughts to Seven Sins 20

IV Psyche, Soul, and Muse 48

V Up and Down 65

VI Give Me a Word 87

VII Acedia's Progress 112

VIII Acedia's Decline 133

IX A Silent Despair 153

X The Quotidian Mysteries 178

XI The "Noon" of Midlife 199

XII Day By Day 223

XIII And to the End Arriving 238

XIV A Widow's Uneasy Afterword 257

XV Acedia: A Commonplace Book 287

Selected Bibliography 332