Worrying - by Francis O'Gorman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Worrying: A Literary and Cultural Historysuggests a unique approach to the inner lifeand its ordinary pains. Francis O'Gormancharts the emergence of our contemporaryidea of worry in the Victorian era and itsestablishment, after the First World War, as a feature of modernity. For some writersbetween the Wars, worry was the "diseaseof the age."

Worryingexamines the everyday kind ofworry-the fearful, non-pathological, andusually hidden questioning about uncertainfutures. It shows worry to be a naturalcompanion in a world where we try to liveby reason and believe we have the right tochoose, finding in the worrier a peculiarlycontemporary sufferer whose mental lifeis not only exceptionally familiar, but alsodeeply strange.

Offering an intimately personal account of an all-too-common human experience, and of a word that slips in and out of ordinary conversation so often that it has become invisible in its familiarity, Worryingexplores how the modern world has shaped our everyday anxieties.

Review Quotes

Francis O'Gorman offers a witty, philosophical meditation on the meaning of worry, where it comes from and how it came to be our constant companion ... Although the visual arts and music can provide temporary distraction for the worrier, we need words - fragile, unstable words - to express it. Thankfully O'Gorman has given us some more.
The Independent

It is 4.06 am. Francis O'Gorman is in bed. His partner and three cats lie fast asleep beside him. But he is awake, worrying. So begins this subtle, exploratory, completely original book.
The Sunday Times (Culture Magazine)

The best parts of this book, as you would hope from a literary critic, are the textual readings. O'Gorman doesn't just provide illuminating discussions of worry literature ... He also reads worry per se as a literary trope, a "comedy of mental manners" in which its victims are like stage characters trapped in their humours, always enacting the same scenes and parroting the same catchphrases. He is often dryly funny himself ... While it failed to assuage any of my worries, this winning little book still made me root for and, yes, worry a little for its author. I hope this review stops him fretting for a bit, at least until the next worry arrives.
Book of the Week, The Guardian

About the Author

Francis O'Gorman is from English, Irish, and Hungarian families and was educated at the University of Oxford as Organ Scholar of Lady Margaret Hall. He has written or edited twenty books, mostly on English literature, and his many essays discuss literature, mental health, music, and the state of the modern university. His most recent piece of creative non-fiction is a memoir, Forgetfulness (2016). He is a Professor in the School of English at the University of Leeds, UK.