Boredom: A Lively History by Peter Toohey

(Yale, $26)

Author Peter Toohey seems overly enamored of boredom, said Rachel Shteir in The New Republic. In his brief and “distinctly unromantic” history of that enervating emotion, the Australian-born scholar has uncovered evidence of its effects everywhere—from the odd pranks of certain chimpanzees to the complaints immortalized by ancient Greek graffiti. But what good is a book whose principal goal appears to be making the thunderously obvious point that boredom is beneficial to humankind because it inspires us to seek out more interesting experiences? “I often wondered whether Toohey was bored while writing Boredom.” When he finally gets around to discussing the potentially interesting subject of “existential” boredom, he actually suggests that that particular malady might be a myth.

Yet “Toohey presents his case with verve,” and that energy helps a lot, said Elizabeth Lowry in The Wall Street Journal. The distinction that he makes between “simple” and “existential” boredom even turns out to be quite useful: Though it’s often been said that boredom didn’t exist until the 18th century, when the English verb “to bore” was born, Toohey is able to make a case that tedium has always been with us. Not just the ancients but various animals also exhibit signs that they can abide only so much repetition. Later, Toohey shows that the type of deep ennui suffered by Jean-Paul Sartre in mid-20th-century France has deep roots, too: The Roman philosopher Seneca complained that the seeming endlessness of quotidian routine made him physically nauseated.

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Toohey doesn’t stop there, said Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in the London Tele­graph. The 4th-century ascetic Evagrius, he reminds us, described a similar malaise sweeping early Christendom. Unfortunately, the variety of material Toohey calls upon too often “comes at the price of coherence.” Loaded with “idiosyncratic digressions and jerky jump cuts, this is cultural history for the Internet generation.” It does suggest, though, that a book can still offer one of the most powerful anecdotes to monotony. “Though often quirky, Toohey’s writing certainly isn’t boring.”