Novels about Boredom

I personally haven't known boredom since I was born. I wonder why writers would want to write about it - to relieve boredom? Kierkegaard says somewhere that God created the world for this reason...
 
"Hunger" by Knut Hamsun is also worth reading, very unsettling in its everyday life description. I'm also re-reading all of Houellebecq, and I must say that his "P.H. Lovecraft. Against the world, against life" made a much bigger impression on me the first time i read it then now, i kind of "downsized" it.
 
Jezetha said:
I personally haven't known boredom since I was born. I wonder why writers would want to write about it - to relieve boredom? Kierkegaard says somewhere that God created the world for this reason...
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I have known boredom -- doing things that other people want me to do. For a start, my degree is in philosophy for which I was assigned some monstrously boring books... :eek:

... not that I read most of the stuff I was supposed to read. ;)

I do wonder about people who are bored in their own time. Why don't they find something with which to occupy themselves? It isn't that difficult. :o

And I do also wonder why writers would wish to write about being bored -- or why readers would wish to read the books. :(
 
I've seen the Internet bubblewrap before. Unfortunately, neither this computer nor my computer at work have sound. There's something unsatisfying about silently popping the bubbles. :(
 
I was looking for some Houellebecq interviews and found this pathetic, embarassing -and deadly boring- video.
I think Houellebecq would rather be dead than in that room with those academics.
Anyways, He wrote many pages on the topic (boredom) especially in "Extension of the domain of the struggle". His face (in)expressions here are hilarious!

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Ilsa, I can't thank you enough for posting the Houellebecq video . . . It's too funny for words! I love how, from around 2:55 to about 3:40, he drops off into an eye-fluttering stupor. And that graduate student belongs to the tribe of scholars lampooned by Pope in the Dunciad: "A Lumberhouse of Books in every head, / For ever reading, never to be read."
 
Has anyone here read A Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans? The protagonist is a very bored and very wealthy aristocrat, the last heir in a deeply inbred and unhealthy bloodline. The novel basically details his increasingly deranged and theatrical attempts to alleviate his ennui. All in all it is a great idea from Huysmans, a good writer as it is, but the ideas presented are such that he should have bequeathed an outline of the story to someone with more of a gift for atmosphere than himself.
 
EGS looks pretty much hyped-up. The interviews are usually either unintellectually vapid or pretentiously trendy. I remember there was an excellent post on EGS (http://blog.urbanomic.com/dread/archives/2005/04/if_those_weddin.html)

As you mentioned, the only positive aspect about this interview is Houellebecq’s weird movements.

Ilsa said:
I was looking for some Houellebecq interviews and found this pathetic, embarassing -and deadly boring- video.
I think Houellebecq would rather be dead than in that room with those academics.
Anyways, He wrote many pages on the topic (boredom) especially in "Extension of the domain of the struggle". His face (in)expressions here are hilarious!

YouTube - Michel Houellebecq at European Graduate School EGS 2006 1/4
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I read Michel Houellebecq's "Whatever" two or three months ago, I was unemployed back then (They closed the department I worked on in the company, so quite a few bitter young men were unemployed) and read it on a sitting at a bench in the park.

It was very good, despite being a book about boredom.
 
What do you think of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy? I ordered a copy from ABE Books together with a batch of other works (like Galeano's trilogy).
 
paeng said:
What do you think of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy? I ordered a copy from ABE Books together with a batch of other works (like Galeano's trilogy).
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Anatomy of Melancholy is an interesting, and sometimes fascinating, book to browse around in. I will never try to read it cover to cover, but maybe I'm just a wuss. Actually, it would be a perfect "desert island" or "solitary confinement" book, and I could imagine reading it cover to cover in those circumstances. Poring over Burton's knotty, dense prose and his endless miscellanea of allusions and strange lore, would keep my mind occupied for a long time. And I'd never reach the end of it, I'm sure, because it's so rich that it could be reread numerous times.
 
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