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Product details
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press; Reprint edition (3 Feb. 2012)
I enjoyed Toohey's book very much and it doesn't seem very hard to follow to me. He seems to think that boredom is good for people (it warns them against being stuck in what he calls toxic social situations - places like cages and prisons and he has a lot to say about the dangers that prisons can present). Toohey says that you can distinguish two sorts of boredom, simple and existential. The one he's most interested in the simple one and he puts an easy definition for it at the end of the first chapter. The book has a simple structure. It has six chapters that look at art, psychology, animal behavior, philosophy, history, and neurology more or less in turn. If there is anything to complain about, it is that the book is so short. Sometimes this makes the arguments seem a bit cramped and hard to untangle which can sometimes make it seem like he is rambling, which I don't think he actually is. Once you get the hang of the book it is very lively, as the title says, and it is often very funny. Who'd have thought that music helps elephants from getting bored?
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Writing about boredom sounds like a project which is destined to end in disappointment. Inevitably the book will be littered with the words bore, boredom, boring and related words like nausea, depression and ennui. If we think of how often just reading the word yawn, he yawns, she yawns, they yawn, everyone just yawns and yawns and yawns, and how this might make us want to join in the yawning, then we might expect that reading about boredom might well just make us bored.
However you'd be wrong, this book consistently held my attention, although I have to say it did feel a bit repetitive at times as it seemed to return to particular issues rather frequently. The book draws on a wide variety of sources throughout art, literature, ethology, behaviourism, psychology, philosophy and neurology. It reads rather similarly to works by Alain de Botton, addressing deep issues with a lightness of touch which draws the reader in without feeling like they're being patronised.
The book is certainly a meditation on boredom and it raises far more questions than it answers, such as whether boredom is a modern phenomena, or has been exacerbated in modern times, or whether it has always existed. It certainly isn't any kind of self help book for those who may suffer from the kind of chronic boredom that the book describes, with only the last 20 pages or so even discussing a cure for the condition. However, the argument put across is that boredom does not need a cure. It is more a manifestation of an underlying problem for a sufferer, and gaining some respite from the boredom will not address the real issue. In that case boredom is a positive emotion that we can learn from, rather than a negative emotion which we must suffer.
Overall the book is a thought provoking investigation into a topic most of us would think of as, well, boring.
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An accessible and intelligent discussion that links history, philosophy and culture through this most familiar of topics. Toohey takes a topic common to us all and delves into the academic and intellectual history and theory behind it in a way that is approachable and interesting.
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This is one of the best books I've ever got the chance to read, I totally loved it! It's very well written, coherent and cursive, and it kept me in hours at a time.
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This book is subtitled: "a lively history". For me this couldn't be less accurate.
It's incredibly difficult to make a book about such an intangible topic hang together well, and Toohey has failed. There's a constant struggle in the book between the academic and the more populist additions. It takes more to make an academic book more popularly readable than removing the references/footnotes (tut tut) and adding miscellaneous anecdotes, art criticisms, quotes and book reviews. The definition of boredom is also constantly expanded, perhaps rightly so, but giving me the impression that without the expanded definition he couldn't have filled more than a couple of chapters.
I must admit that this book was a present and I wouldn't have chosen to buy it myself, so perhaps others will find some interest where I failed.For me, it was just dreary.
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