Boredom: A Lively History

Product Description

A rich and stimulating exploration of one of our most maligned emotions and how it might actually help us flourish In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it’s simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre’s nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience.
This informative and entertaining investigation of boredom—what it is and what it isn’t, its uses and its dangers—spans more than 3,000 years of history and takes readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Dürer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature.
Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today’s world. Boredom: A Lively History is vital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens.

Review

“As for his engaging new book, Toohey needn’t worry:
Boredom, with its wise insights, is never boring.”—Carmela Ciuraru,
Boston Globe

(Carmela Ciuraru
Boston Globe)

“Readers who are willing to meander from science to literature to art and other realms will find themselves engaged.”—Nina C. Ayoub,
The Chronicle Review
(Nina C. Ayoub
The Chronicle Review)

“There are plenty of fine things here to keep a receptive mind alert.”—Alain de Botton,
The Times
(Alain de Botton
The Times 2011-04-02)

“Few writers on boredom can match Peter Toohey when it comes to finding pleasure, excitement and even a perverse kind of glee in his subject.”—Robert Douglas-Fairhurst,
The Daily Telegraph
(Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
The Daily Telegraph 2011-03-26)

“Mr. Toohey presents his case with verve.”—Elizabeth Lowry,
Wall Street Journal
(Elizabeth Lowry
Wall Street Journal)

‘Peter Toohey is a wonderful scholar, whose work on classical literature both instructs and delights.’ – Darian Leader
(Darian Leader)

‘Forget ennui: Peter Toohey makes the case that the simpler, everyday kind of boredom we all experience is far more important than the pretentious world-weariness of French philosophers. Being bored can be excruciating, but it can also spur people to the heights of creativity. Toohey succeeds in making boredom interesting.’ – Dylan Evans, author of
Emotion: The Science of Sentiment
(Dylan Evans)

‘Who would have thought that boredom could be so stimulating?’ – Michael Foley, author of
The Age of Absurdity
(Michael Foley)

“A thoroughly enjoyable exploration of the history a maligned emotion, which according to the author, may actually be designed to help us flourish.”—
The Bookseller
(
The Bookseller 2011-01-14)

“[Toohey’s] crisp conversational prose is untainted by jargon or pretence. His arguments display impressive erudition: history, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and aesthetics all get a guernsey. If good writing requires authorial boredom, Toohey was undoubtedly tortured by tedium while writing this sharp, humane and funny book.”—Damon Young,
The Australian
(Damon Young
The Australian 2011-03-19)

About the Author

Peter Toohey is a professor in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary. His previous books include Melancholy, Love and Time: Boundaries of the Self in Ancient Literature. He lives in Calgary, Canada.