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Boredom Is Everywhere
I find this a little hard to swallow, both that Charles Simic would be unable to entertain himself for a few days without his smart phone and that it took an enormous natural catastrophe to reunite him with boredom.
I thought not too long ago it was all the rage in the whole pop cultural Internet-is-killing-us narrative that electronic devices were in fact preventing us from those acres of unimpeded reading and deep thought that we all knew we wanted–if only we could stop checking our email! But no, now it’s that they are in fact our only defense against the evil effects of boredom that we’ve forgotten how to protect ourselves from.
The argument just doesn’t wash. Like everyone else, I see people taking their devices out at the least hint that we’re in for five entire minutes of unstructured time, but I really doubt that these things are bringing people any further from whatever bordom-esque sensation they might be feeling in their absence. And the rest of the time, instead of bulwarks against the threat of having to see where your mind wanders if you’d only let it, these devices seem to be distractions from the enormous amounts of work-like tasks that I continually read that Americans subject themselves to.
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Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
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Enrique Vila-Matas Interview
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
If Simic’s so concerned about boredom, why does he write the vapid poetry that he does?
I was just a bit “bored” at the Picasso exhibition at Yerba Buena today and ended up looking at some paintings longer than I intended to. A rewarding experience in the end.
People are afraid to just sit and think. It’s considered a weakness to have such “unstructured time” as you put it. I little “boredom” is a good thing; I can accomplish more during these periods of boredom by simply thinking through the bigger issues that you never get to when you’re head is stuck in you PDA!