I found a list of the most difficult texts online.
What do you think>
http://listverse.com/2010/06/07/top-...iterary-works/
Here's another:
http://www.cbc.ca/books/2012/08/the-...y-history.html
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I found a list of the most difficult texts online.
What do you think>
http://listverse.com/2010/06/07/top-...iterary-works/
Here's another:
http://www.cbc.ca/books/2012/08/the-...y-history.html
From the first list; I read War and Peace initially for two reasons first, "Because it's there" on my bookshelf, to borrow from George Herbert Leigh Mallory and secondly so I could say I read it. Once started, I learned to appreciate it. I finished btw.
Haven't tackled Moby Dick. My son started it a couple of years ago, but took a break about halfway through.
I made it about a third of the way through Solzhenistyn's Gulag Archipelago and now working on one of his that is more daunting; August 1914 at 800+ pages, but this is just one part in four that makes up The Red Wheel.
Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom! was a tough read for me.
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War and Peace, Moby Dick, and Absolom, Absolom were long with some boring parts, but not particularly hard reads. The Sound and the Fury was hard if you didn't concemtrate. The only book which really put me off was Joyce's Ulysses.Even after a multi-hour lecture course, I had trouble with certain chapters. But I know PhDs who had trouble finishing this novel.
It's usually a matter of timing. When you are ready to tackle one of the longer and more difficult classics, you should have the concentration, background, and vocabulary which will prepare you for the reading.
Another hard one for me, one I just thought of, was Carlyle's The French Revolution. You must be well versed in this period of French history before attempting to read this one.
In terms of what I actually had to really push myself to get to the end of - War and Peace. It wasn't a difficult read, but it's just so long.
Ulysses was challenging, and there were parts where I thought "I have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on" but I wouldn't call it difficult, because I loved it so much that I had no problem pushing onward. Same with The Sound and the Fury.
Finnegans Wake kind of scares me too much to actually try at this point.
I love Henry James and had read a dozen of his novels, including the three great novels ending with The Golden Bowl (1904), before recently attempting The Awkward Age (1899). The latter tells of a young girl coming of age and, you would think, couldn't be too difficult.
The Awkward Age is permeated with cryptic stream of consciousness writing. Tortuous and impenetrable.
The writings of Herbert Marcuse. These books were incomprehensible and beyond the understanding of most people. He was popular among ideologists of the late 1960s. But a few years later he died in total obscurity.
I read Gertrude Stein's Three Lives (which is more like 3 thematically connected novellas than a proper novel) and it was a difficult slog at times. Interesting book but a lot of work.
As to those mentioned on the lists, I disagree that many of them are particularly all that difficult.
Absalom, Absalom! is the most unintelligible, boring book I have ever tried to read. I didn't finish it though so I suppose it doesn't count. From the list I've read The Waste Land and Foucault's Pendulum. I actually didn't find Foucault's Pendulum that difficult to read, although by the end I grew tired of his info dumping. The Waste Land is definitely hard reading and incredibly dense but I find it fascinating. I admit that I don't understand what is going on in that poem but it is fun to attempt to get meaning out of it.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I don't like James Joyce, I don't get his whole modernist avant-garde thing. It felt like someone was chipping at my right temple with an icepick for the last 1/3.
I didn't think The Waste Land was difficult at all, huh.
Most difficult text I've read actually probably was Moby Dick as I haven't finished it. It's been like 5 years since I've attempted it though.
Apart from the philosophical texts in those lists, Heidegger, Kant, Hegel etc, (these German philosophers can drive you mad) everything else was all right, not easy but not difficult either. I have tried reading these philosophers but, I must admit, I couldn't read them and rely heavily on secondary sources to get a gist of their ideas indirectly.
I've read all but Naked Lunch and Atlas Shrugged off the first list, though I did not finish the Gulag Archipelago. Only Finnegan's Wake is difficult as a text in terms of language. The rest are just hard, by the poster, based on their lengths. The Sound and the Fury is a high school level book, though Benji's narration at the beginning is off-putting to some.
Probably E.T.A Hoffmann's "The elixirs of the Devil". Might have to do with the translation too, but i found it immensely hard to read, due to its complexity. That Hoffmann is a very romantic writer does not help either. I love some of his other work though, such as the Sandman, and Councellor Krespel.
Like everyone else, I think I'd quibble over what those webpages define as difficult. I've read several of the things on both of them, and some are certainly harder than others...
I started reading Ulysses spasmodically half a century ago and finished it on Bloomsday a dozen or so years ago. Now back cannibalizing it for my own purposes and getting more out of it each time I step onto Joyce's sacrilegious turf.Quote:
Originally Posted by dfloyd