I was just wondering -- what kind of literature "scares," or intimidates you?
I've always been rather scared, so to speak, of poetry, or at least in trying to discuss it or analyze it: kind of in the way the villagers and king's advisors were in the children's tale called The Emperor's New Clothes, when they were too scared (or intimidated) to admit that they couldn't see his "clothes" and went along with the tailor's hoax...or I feel like a fraud like some of the people in art museums who travel in packs and ooohhh and aaaahhh at all the artwork and make profound statements of the art's ephemeral yet timeless appeal... I guess when reading poetry I often worry that I've missed the author's intended meaning -- particularly when I'm reading Wallace Stevens or T.S. Eliot, for example.
Some philosophical literature also scares me, for much the same reason. I recall feeling particularly like a moron when I took a 17th century French philosophy class (as a very-much undergraduate and non-philosophy major). I just couldn't get where everyone else was going. Or at least I felt that way.
And then there's James Joyce. Anyway, I've tried to overcome these 'fears' in recent years, with varying amounts of success and failure. Anyway, what do you think?