Life? How boring!

In George Gissing’s New Grub Street, a character named Harold Biffen writes a novel which describes the life of an ordinary grocer in absolutely realistic detail and with zero dramatic shaping. The novel is unutterably boring by design. It is about the monotony of life. The novel is a work of art but sheer drudgery to read. Disappointed in love and art, Biffen ends up poisoning himself. (Gottschall, Jonathan: The Storytelling Animal. Boston and New York: Mariner Books, 2013: 51)