Most Difficult Texts You've Read

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Originally Posted by Gladys

I love Henry James but thought The Turn of the Screw paltry, and James himself labelled it a potboiler. A much better introduction to James might be the novella The Aspern Papers, the moving, early novel Washington Square or, for humour, What Maisie Knew.

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Thanks. I had a similar discussion with Emil last year about another writer. I'll perhaps give him another chance when I come across one of your recommendations.

there are a couple of books that i am surprised haven't been mentioned that clearly fit this category
gravity rainbow by pynchon
the becket trilogy: molloy, malone dies, and the unnamable.

pynchon was interesting but way too long and i felt he intentionally made it difficult.
becket is unbelievably challenging

i read and enjoyed all three volumes of gulag archipalego, loved everything i have read by faulkner including AA and sound and the fury

there is a sense of accomplishment in completing a difficult and complex book. you may not understand it all, but the ingenuity of the author is refreshing. best example is the benjy portion of the sound and the fury. how do you even begin to conceive of that point of view.
remarkable!

I found Naked Lunch by Burroughs and Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller to be difficult reads. At the same time they were completely worth the time and effort it took to not only complete them but to understand them as well. They are three of my favourite novels.

Hi Everybody; a new poster here, and very glad I found this place!

The most difficult texts I've read are:

War & Peace: Mostly because of it's length
The Sound & The Fury: especially the first section narrated by the imbecile Compson

Ulysses required a great deal of persistence in some chapters. Most overtly in Oxen of The Sun. 40 Pages, yet it must have took me about 4 hours to finish; absolutely brilliant, but so horribly painful to get through!

It's a difficult book: the most difficult that I've ever read but it's worth it. It's so beautifully written, that I can't wait to read it again!

Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum. The prose was so thick that I had a hard time staying in the narrative.

I haven't attempted a read at it in half a decade, but I remember The Unvanquished being too difficult for me. Also, for me Paradise Lost was a tough one.

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Originally Posted by Freudian Monkey

I know, that's why I didn't even try to read Critique of Pure Reason. It would certainly be even more tedious. I can only comment on what I've read, sorry. Being and Time was a much easier read for me.

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Kant is quite the devil. Nothing to be undertaken without proper rest, coffee ingestion, and complete isolation from anyone and anything that is distracting.

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Originally Posted by Pensive

Totally agree with The Sound and Fury (the only book out of these which I actually remember having completed). I had to struggle really hard to make sense of the happenings!

I also think To The Lighthouse could have qualified for the list - stream of consciousness making it such a complicated read. Another book that springs to my mind is For Whom The Bell Tolls even when Hemingway is supposed to be known for his simple style!

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I agree. To The Lighthouse was quit e a struggle to me and I had the same with Hemingway, but then in his The Sun Also Rises. I think I know what you mean: it's not that it's difficult to read, it's just because of his descriptions which are so brief, along the lines of his Iceberg-principle (10% is narrated, 90% is hidden and up to the reader to imagine)

Last year I read A.L. Kennedy's Day. Not easy at all

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Originally Posted by Freudian Monkey

I can definitely agree on Eco's Foucault Pendulum, it was extremely laborious to read, filled with references to semiotic theory, intertextuality etc. Eco is a brilliant writer, but he rarely cares about whether he's book are accessible to readers or not.

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I am shocked that anyone would think that. Eco's prose and exposition are clear and straightforward. But some of the concepts may be a way out there.

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Originally Posted by _Paul

A book I can recall having incredible difficulty with is The Silmarillion by Tolkein. From memory, it had no real plot, was ridiculously written - full of old language and overly complicated sentences - and there were endless long and bizarre names you were supposed to remember. I guess it didn't help I was in my young teens at the time but nevertheless I imagine I would still struggle with it. Almost unbelievable it was produced by the same author of The Hobbit and LOTR.

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The Silmarillion shouldn't have been published. It is a collection of notes about some of the background fro the LOTR.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

The Silmarillion shouldn't have been published. It is a collection of notes about some of the background fro the LOTR.

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That's not really true, the Silmarillion is structured more like a religious texts, since it recounts in general the mythic creation and downfall of the elves. The latter part of the book was largely unfinished though. How successful Tolkien's project was is debatable, I'm lukewarm about the book, but there's a charm that arises from the ambition of the text.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

That's not really true, the Silmarillion is structured more like a religious texts, since it recounts in general the mythic creation and downfall of the elves. The latter part of the book was largely unfinished though. How successful Tolkien's project was is debatable, I'm lukewarm about the book, but there's a charm that arises from the ambition of the text.

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Which part were you disagreeing with? That it should not have been published or that it is a collection of notes about background?

i can imagine that your comment may be partly accurate and make my seconD comment less than completely accurate, but i think that my first comment stills stands.

Paul 's various letters. Kant, Hegel and bleedin Karl Marx.

I don't read much non-fiction and I imagine historical documents are a whole other monster but for me it was Faulkner.

Snopes trilogy. As great as the writing is (amazing at capturing the nuances of southern speech), it's incredibly hard to get through. I'm talking a page with a one sentence paragraph that goes on and on and on.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is the most difficult book I've finished. I used a modern translation often recommended as the most straightforward (Pluhar's) and parsed every sentence into English I could understand, in my word processor, with Caygill's "A Kant dictionary", and Google search, permanently in use. It took about six months, working several hours a day. I'm not sure it was worth it; Scruton, Magee and others have already done the parsing donkey work and written excellent popular accounts of what Kant was getting at (which is important!)

I also started taking this approach with Heidegger's Being and Time, but gave up. Life's too short, and popular accounts are many :) Other contenders, that I gave up on: The Bible, Ulysses, late Henry James, Naked Lunch. Unlike GreenLucky I didn't find the latter worth the effort, though found Junkie an interesting read.

Book's I've been too frightened to even attempt: anything by Hegel, Finnegan's Wake, more Kant...

I agree that Paradise Lost is a tough one, I did give up on it recently, but I may give it another attempt... unlike the other contenders...

Faulkner and Wolfe are also tough, but I enjoyed the only two novels I've read by them (To the Lighthouse and As I Lay Dying) I tried them after Kant and Joyce, so they didn't seem *that* hard :) Joyce had primed me to carry on reading while bemused - didn't enable me to gain enjoyment or closure with Ulysses, but enabled me to enjoy other modernists...

I don't think it's fair putting War & Peace on this list because of it's length. In a good translation, it's as easy to read as Dickens. It might be the length of five normal-length novels, but you'd never find five normal-length novels as good.