I remember Littlewood in (I think) A Mathematician’s Miscellany describing an episode during the Great War when, after a day on the front, he was required to attend a “lecture”, consisting of Kings Regulations being read aloud, with lighting which shone directly into his face. He said something like “I realised that, for a dim man, a mathematics lecture must be very much like this”.
Many years ago a psychologist coworker told me that in her taxonomy of emotions, boredom, like frustration, was a form of anger -- a bored brain is one that is *angry with itself* for failing to offer itself the stimulation it expects, and boredom thus physically and hormonally manifests in a way that resembles anger. This seems to track with the idea that boredom in reading signals misalignment between the text's expectations of your mental infrastructure and what's actually there -- our brains view that misalignment as an unjust betrayal, and get mad. Fun to think about.
Good article, although perhaps not the one I need to read right now being two weeks away from Finals and already spending way to much time gazing longingly at Cybernetics books whilst trying to force myself through a Macroeconomics textbook I should have done a year ago…
Only other thing I’d add is at under no circumstances should you ever underestimate the impact of mood, environment and mindset on one’s ability to concentrate and take an interest in something. Concentration is fundamentally a chemical process, and one’s capacity to consume information can be utterly transformed just from being comfortable, in a good mood, and with a clear rationale for whatever it is you’re doing, such that you can get the right hormones flowing in the right places (hence why people with ADHD struggle so much).
For my French A-level we read Thérèse Desqueyroux, a novel about being driven to despair by crushing boredom. It's the only book I've ever flung across a room to get it away from me.
I think you might unwittingly be illustrating Dan's point. If you are not interested in Catholic theology and how it can interact with the social norms of French rural society about 20 years either side of the beginning of the 20thc then you are doing damage to yourself by trying to read Mauriac. Have you tried, say, Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter" as a comparable exercise in English fiction?
In The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe (a man also notable for having invented some machine or component that is involved in the process of creating Pringles), the unreliable narrator is a member of the guild of torturers. The excessively detailed accounts of situations which seem to deliberately miss the actual point of whatever is going on are pretty explicitly supposed to be the closest thing to torture an author can do to a reader.
The black-letter format is still commonly used by lawyers. Most of the Uniform Commercial Code, for example, appears written in machine language. There is no way you can know what it means unless you already know what it means. However, each section enjoys extensive comments that clarify the black letter. Often enough a UCC Article has a preface, which reads like a decent law review article written by the drafters of the statute. Most complex contracts contain recitals--the "whereas" clauses. They clarify the purpose and often the top-level mechanics of the contract.
Regarding American Psycho, I don’t know about the plan for the tedious horrors, but as I understand it the tedious and graphically described men’s clothing, full of brand names and so on, would have actually looked ridiculous if worn. Ellis knew that everyone reading would gloss over the actual interminable detail and just imagine a bunch of men dressed like, well, like they were in the film. I don’t know whether this is actually true or not though! Still, if so, it might be related.
I've been thinking about this post and asked Grok how Adam Curtis would introduce it, got ElevenLabs to synthesize the voice, and then combined it with some youtube clips that the AI suggested. ONLY FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES! https://youtu.be/vdGU7di1Of0
Like this, except for the point that you cannot be bored reading something that you can comprehend. I have absolutely been bored reading repetitive stuff that I understood before reading it.
The "black letter" format is how I imagine knowledge was transmitted before the printing press. I know the Talmud (Jewish law) is mostly about the margin comments of historic sages, and Ibn Rushd's edition of Aristotle (then 15 centuries old) has St.Thomas arguing with the Commentator on doctrine.
I remember Littlewood in (I think) A Mathematician’s Miscellany describing an episode during the Great War when, after a day on the front, he was required to attend a “lecture”, consisting of Kings Regulations being read aloud, with lighting which shone directly into his face. He said something like “I realised that, for a dim man, a mathematics lecture must be very much like this”.
Many years ago a psychologist coworker told me that in her taxonomy of emotions, boredom, like frustration, was a form of anger -- a bored brain is one that is *angry with itself* for failing to offer itself the stimulation it expects, and boredom thus physically and hormonally manifests in a way that resembles anger. This seems to track with the idea that boredom in reading signals misalignment between the text's expectations of your mental infrastructure and what's actually there -- our brains view that misalignment as an unjust betrayal, and get mad. Fun to think about.
Good article, although perhaps not the one I need to read right now being two weeks away from Finals and already spending way to much time gazing longingly at Cybernetics books whilst trying to force myself through a Macroeconomics textbook I should have done a year ago…
Only other thing I’d add is at under no circumstances should you ever underestimate the impact of mood, environment and mindset on one’s ability to concentrate and take an interest in something. Concentration is fundamentally a chemical process, and one’s capacity to consume information can be utterly transformed just from being comfortable, in a good mood, and with a clear rationale for whatever it is you’re doing, such that you can get the right hormones flowing in the right places (hence why people with ADHD struggle so much).
For my French A-level we read Thérèse Desqueyroux, a novel about being driven to despair by crushing boredom. It's the only book I've ever flung across a room to get it away from me.
I think you might unwittingly be illustrating Dan's point. If you are not interested in Catholic theology and how it can interact with the social norms of French rural society about 20 years either side of the beginning of the 20thc then you are doing damage to yourself by trying to read Mauriac. Have you tried, say, Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter" as a comparable exercise in English fiction?
In The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe (a man also notable for having invented some machine or component that is involved in the process of creating Pringles), the unreliable narrator is a member of the guild of torturers. The excessively detailed accounts of situations which seem to deliberately miss the actual point of whatever is going on are pretty explicitly supposed to be the closest thing to torture an author can do to a reader.
Re the footnote: I once wrote that this was definitely part of the point in the section "The Part About the Crimes" in Bolaño's 2666.
The black-letter format is still commonly used by lawyers. Most of the Uniform Commercial Code, for example, appears written in machine language. There is no way you can know what it means unless you already know what it means. However, each section enjoys extensive comments that clarify the black letter. Often enough a UCC Article has a preface, which reads like a decent law review article written by the drafters of the statute. Most complex contracts contain recitals--the "whereas" clauses. They clarify the purpose and often the top-level mechanics of the contract.
yes, European regulations often have really useful recitals, I should have mentioned those
Regarding American Psycho, I don’t know about the plan for the tedious horrors, but as I understand it the tedious and graphically described men’s clothing, full of brand names and so on, would have actually looked ridiculous if worn. Ellis knew that everyone reading would gloss over the actual interminable detail and just imagine a bunch of men dressed like, well, like they were in the film. I don’t know whether this is actually true or not though! Still, if so, it might be related.
I've been thinking about this post and asked Grok how Adam Curtis would introduce it, got ElevenLabs to synthesize the voice, and then combined it with some youtube clips that the AI suggested. ONLY FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES! https://youtu.be/vdGU7di1Of0
Like this, except for the point that you cannot be bored reading something that you can comprehend. I have absolutely been bored reading repetitive stuff that I understood before reading it.
The protagonist of Saul Bellow's novel Humboldt's Gift, a post-successful writer, procrastinates by pondering producing a long piece about boredom
The "black letter" format is how I imagine knowledge was transmitted before the printing press. I know the Talmud (Jewish law) is mostly about the margin comments of historic sages, and Ibn Rushd's edition of Aristotle (then 15 centuries old) has St.Thomas arguing with the Commentator on doctrine.