Review: A Philosophy of Boredom by Lars Svendsen
Carlin Romano recently reviewed Lars Svendsen's Philosophy of Boredom in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Svendsen brings together observations from philosophy, literature, psychology, theology, and popular culture, examining boredom's pre-Romantic manifestations in medieval torpor, philosophical musings on boredom from Pascal to Nietzsche, and modern explorations into alienation and transgression by twentieth-century artists from Beckett to Warhol.
Romano praises Svendsen for his writing:
Unlike Scandinavian philosophers known for sterile prose styles, Svendsen combines droll dismissal of statistical research (he reports "no completely reliable studies of how large a percentage of the population is bored"), incisive readings of boredom art from Beckett to Warhol to Bret Easton Ellis to Iggy Pop ("I'm bored / I'm bored / I'm chairman of the bored"), and etymological ponderings of the nuances among boredom, Langeweile (German), noia (Italian), ennui (French) and kjedsomhet (Norwegian)....You will not be bored reading him for the first time.