Guest blog post on boredom by author Lee Rourke

By michele on June 18, 2010 | Add a Comment

Note on the author: Lee Rourke is the author of the short story collection Everyday. He is also one of England's leading young literary critics, writing regularly for The Guardian, The Independent, TLS and the New Statesman, as well as leading book blogs such as Ready, Steady, Book. He is Contributing Editor at 3:AM Magazine and also blogs at Sponge! He lives in London. Lee will be reading at RiverRun Bookstore tonight at 7pm!

I suppose I have always been interested in boredom - the physical and mental feeling boredom creates. The Canal is an exercise in exploring this feeling. Especially the idea that boredom should, or can be embraced.

It was Bertrand Russell who said that if we only embraced boredom then there would be less violence in the world. I wholeheartedly agree with this. The violence that haunts the narrator of The Canal is a direct result of such boredom, and the friction caused by trying to avoid being bored.

I am writing this blog on a Greyhound Bus, halfway between New York and Boston on my Iphone. It is an odd feeling. J G Ballard - an author who has greatly influenced my writing - when asked what he thought the future would be like, answered 'The future is boring'. Sitting here writing this, tecnology making it all possible, it's hard to agree with him . . . But I've got the feeling the narrator of The Canal - a novel which exists on the intersection of boredom, technology and violence - does.