Andrew Gallix emailed me the other day to mention that there was a rather interesting article on all things boring in the New York Times. As those who know me this is of particular interest. My non-fiction work On Boredom should be finished this year, which traces my thoughts and reactions to those in both fiction and popular culture who have embraced boredom in all its phases."And yet boredom is woven into the very fabric of the literary enterprise. We read, and write, in large part to avoid it. At the same time, few experiences carry more risk of active boredom than picking up a book. Boring people can, paradoxically, prove interesting. As they prattle on, you step back mentally and start to catalog the irritating timbre of the offending voice, the reliance on cliché, the almost comic repetitiousness — in short, you begin constructing a story. But a boring book, especially a boring novel, is just boring. A library is an enormous repository of information, entertainment, the best that has been thought and said. It is also probably the densest concentration of potential boredom on earth."
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