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
There's cetainly a question about whether the books are difficult or just more work than normal. I wondered what books you found difficult that weren't on the lists.
I prepared for Tolstoy and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was despite the length. I didn't get on with Naked Lunch, but I found The Waste Land intriguing, and have regularly returned to it over a number of years. I think I realised that it was an influential and important poem, without fully undrstanding much of it when I first read it.
I read To The Lighthouse whilst doing my A levels, and it really had a positive effect upon me, though I had, at that time, nowhere to channel what it did. I think that reflects the limitations of the Eng |Lit course at that time. I may well have followed it up with more relevant reading if I had understood its import.
I also enjoyed The Gulag Archipelago, though I know, due to my ignorence of much of Russian history at that time, that I didn't get as much out of it as I might have. It is one of the few books I intend to re-read.
I read Sartre's Nausea and Iron in the Soul when I was in my twenties, and I felt that I didn't fully understand the implications of it due to my ignorence of the philosophy. These were difficult books for me, as I was aware that I wasn't getting them.
It seems like for several of the books, the only characteristic that defines difficulty is length. I just don't think War and Peace and Moby Dick are that hard. They're just long. I didn't finish Absalom, Absalom because I wasn't in the mood for it at the time and found it boring, not because it was hard. The Spind and the Fury is only hard at the first section, and it's supposed to be. Aside from length and politics one may disagree with. I've never heard anyone claim Rand was a difficult read. Foucault,s Pendulum was diifcult, but not enough to warrant a place on the list. Even though I really hated To the Lighthouse, I didn't find it hard at all. The Scarlet Letter? Really? That's not hard at all. The Waste Land deserves its spot, though. Finnegans Wake of course does. I think that book is kind of a joke, though. I haven't read the others.
I really think a couple picks should be swapped out for Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow, the latter of which is the most difficult book I've completed to date.
I will never ever complain of difficulty in regards to reading an english, french or italian book. I have been trying to learn latin, and reading Cicero and Caesar in the original is horribly rough, I can't imagine how brutal the poetry must be to read.
Throw this in:
"Genius is the only justification for stunning difficulty, because only genius can reward enormous demands made upon the reader."
Harold Bloom discussing Paul Celan in "Genius".
War and Peace, Naked Lunch, The Waste Land, Foucault's Pendulum, and I'm reading Moby Dick.
Don't understand why some of those are considered difficult, unless it's because they're long.
Those lists are funny. Come on, Moby Dick is certainly not difficult, and Foucault's Pendulum is one of the best novels ever, a joy to read. I laughed when I saw A Tale of a Tub listed; that is simple and fun to read; a;though it is rather dated. I will agree that Finnegans Wake is difficult, but if you want to read some really difficult thins, then try some of William S. Burroughs works, especially The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962), Nova Express (1964), and his othe cut-up method books. There are other writers who have done the same sort of thing, and it is not easy to read.
The first list is misleading - War and Peace + Moby Dick are not at all difficult. The second list is better. Heidegger Being & Time + Finnegan's Wake are impossible. I've read bits of Hegel and have been too afraid to read a full work. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is the hardest thing I've ever read and completed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilliatt Gurgle
I also could just make it a third of the way through the Gulag Archipelago - too much tedious detail and repetition (same goes for the Old Testament and the Long Discourses of the Buddha).
A!A! by Faulkner was also a tough read for me... but I made it through (it's short!)
Tolstoy is wonderful - AK and his main short novels are just as good as W&P.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
I read Sartre's The Age of Reason recently and will not be going on to read Iron in the Soul - I just thought it was a really bad novel... not hard... just bad... I remember finding Nausea bearable a couple of decades ago, so might try re-reading that. Being & Nothingness I tried but found it impossible, definitely deserves to be on the "hard" list.
I also didn't get on with Naked Lunch - try Junkie, it's much more approachable, a good read.
I can probably think of 10 Chinese classics more difficult than any of those but Joyce. Even a translated one like the lyrics of chu (songs of the south) has an average of two debatable footnotes per line, and has an eccentric vocabulary and exists in a genre unique to itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandis
Yet there will never be a blogger who will list it. The blogger just put books he knows of, which appears to be limited.
As for difficult books, Joyce is unique in that his difficulty exists for difficulty's sake, which is unique to modernism and postmodernism, which is an interesting idea to think about.
As for Eliot, a good edition and a good teacher will get someone through it alright.
Joyce's works are a catalyst of ennui.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
I tried reading an ancient paperback copy I bought ages ago, used, but I could never quite make it thru.Quote:
Originally Posted by Inwit
A few years ago, I bought the unabridged audio version on CD & listened to it in the car. Actually, I think listening to it & reading along was the way it was meant to be read & understood; in fact, Joyce alludes to this early on in Ulysses, when Bloom ponders how nice if grandfather were to make a recording for posterity that his family could listen to now & then.
I've done the same w/ other books, but the only one on the list I've read is Moby Dick & that only a few years ago. One problem with Moby Dick is that there's very little story in them thar pages: much of the novel is devoted to musings on whales & whale hunting. But with those Biblical characters Ishmael & Ahab (& the ship Rachel), it prompted me to read the Holy Bible thru, which I also got on CD.
The rest of the list never interested me, except for Sound/Fury, which I found hard going: I may get that on CD too.
For years, I could not get into Sartre's Nausea & have read only parts of B/N.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Later, because Sartre said he wanted to be remembered for his last philosophical tome, Critique of Dialectical Reason, I read both volumes of that over about 12 years. Two psychiatrists, Ronald Laing & David Cooper, wrote a much short synopsis of Vol. 1 in their Reason & Violence (1964), but there is even a more lucid reduction of Sartre's 1300 pages in a lecture by a guy named Michael McGee from 1989, called Rhetoric, Organizational Communication, & Sartre's Theory of Practical Groups, & available online. McGee defines Sartre's primary terms using the example of a retiring bus driver. (An example in Sartre was people standing @a bus stop.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Truth
Yeah, i agree.
I red Moby Dick and i must admit -it's the most boring book i have never red-O.O
At the end it's nice ,like every book, because you understand that the hunting of the white whale isn't only a work, but the meaning of the captain's life.
However there are a lot of pages so stupid that i d like so much to delete for POSTERITY :)
And i am sure that i will not read it again.
But you asked the most complicated book we have red, and according to me is "The trial" by Kafka :P
I have red it i don't remember how many times..it's complicated, but really stimulating ACCORDING TO ME..because there are a lot of people that don't like Kafka. Like the latins say "de gustibus non disputandum est".
Greetings from Italy :hat:
I've heard a lot of people say this and I'd have to disagree. I found that once you know Benjy's section is fragmented and non-linear it becomes much easier to understand. Initially some scenes may be confusing, but that's just because there's no context for them. For me, Quentin's section was the most difficult to grasp. Benjy has a simple mind whilst Quentin's is complex and deeply troubled.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandis
As for the list, I've only read The Wasteland and The Sound and the Fury. I got halfway through Moby Dick before giving up, which is a shame because I enjoyed Melville's short stories like Bartleby the Scrivener and The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids. It wasn't that I found the novel difficult, I just lost interest somewhere about the point where Melville devotes a chapter to the significance of the colour white.
I think people are confusing difficult for unreadable. Moby Dick, for example, is a perfectly readable book, but I wouldn't exactly call it an easy one. I think it's a bit more challenging than just, "Gee golly, this is a really long book." The various permutations of "nonfiction" whaling literature that makes up the bulk of the novel at the expense of the main plot is not exactly a standard linear narrative and getting through them and making sense of them in relationship to the plot can be quite an arduous task. Are the words themselves particularly difficult on a sentence-by-sentence level? No.
But this shows exactly the problem with this discussion. No one is elaborating what they mean by difficult. I imagine a work can be difficult in a number of ways (employing a complicated non-linear narrative, difficult style, eccentric vocabulary, difficult philosophy, etc.)
Good point. With the different narrative styles available today, perhaps the most modern novels are more difficult - certainly compared to the linear narrative novels of the past.
From stylistic point of view, yes. But content wise, the 19th century novels are more majestic in scope and oceanic in depth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
The scope may be true, but I don't necessarily agree on the depth. A work doesn't have to be long to be profound.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raven Falcon.
I think Hilary Mantel's use of first person narrative to describe the subtleties of Henry VIII's court in Wolf hall is both stylistically sophisticated and innovative whilst providing a fascinating blend of fictional biography and historical accuracy.
Apparently A Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes, is both profound and beautiful. Perhaps i should get that onmy Kindle next to see. yes - I think I will.
Of course length doesn't equal profundity. Even so, 19th century novels are generally deeper, even the short ones. Notes From Underground, for example, is very short; Hadji Murat may have been Tolstoy's greatest work and it's about the same length as the former.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
Speaking about Joyce, he might have been the biggest innovator of the 20th century prose, but his subject matters are uninteresting and seem trifling to me. Perhaps Proust is the only one who is more boring.
Joyce's works, more than anyone's in opinion, exemplify style for the sake of style and difficulty (obtuseness, even) for the sake of difficulty.
I'm not sure that's true anymore about Joyce. Certainly he's the more well known and celebrated, and we'll all be on catch-up with newer novels. Will Self's new book, Umbrella, is apparently self consciously modernist. I haven't read it, but reviews suggest that the narrative style is demanding with narrative changes within the same sentence. Of course i'm not saying it's better, or even more demanding - I don't know yet, but it is certainly self consciously crafted. The review I read says that it deals with a woman who has the sleeping sickness after WW1 and wakes in the 70s, the literary implication being that she starts in one narrative genre and wakes into another that she struggles to understand. Neat metaphor if it pans out thus.
The problem is we're in a poor position to evaluate the current with the past because we've got the old weight of lit crit against new and unexplained novels. Interesting to find out though.
Generally deeper? Like Ivanhoe right? Seriously that is unfounded. As for Joyce's subject matter, that is just to you. There is plenty In there. More so than in The Mill on the Floss.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raven Falcon.
Sweeping generalization is silly.
I read To The Lighthouse whilst doing my A levels, and it really had a positive effect upon me, though I had, at that time, nowhere to channel what it did. I think that reflects the limitations of the Eng |Lit course at that time. I may well have followed it up with more relevant reading if I had understood its import.
I also enjoyed The Gulag Archipelago, though I know, due to my ignorence of much of Russian history at that time, that I didn't get as much out of it as I might have. It is one of the few books I intend to re-read.
I read Sartre's Nausea and Iron in the Soul when I was in my twenties, and I felt that I didn't fully understand the implications of it due to my ignorence of the philosophy. These were difficult books for me, as I was aware that I wasn't getting them.
These three paragraphs of Paul's really struck a chord with me. But unlike Paul it is a situation I accept for the moment.
It means I rarely find a book difficult. Boring, yes. Incomprehensible, yes. But I am prepared to finish it and be satisfied with an incomplete understanding of the author's intention. I read at a lower level than JBI, and ok, I do sometimes get a feeling I've missed out somehow. However, I still get pleasure in the prose and the story and the philosophy, but I read with the attitude that if I don't completely "get It" it is a shame, but it is the author who has been found wanting in his ability to get the message across.
Yeah, I'm reading War and Peace right now and it's not really that difficult of a read.
I don't know if it was because I was young or what, but I remember The Picture of Dorian Gray was a bit difficult for me.
War and Peace is easy to read and I might even say that it's a page-turner while at the same time being a literary heavyweight. Although it's heavily descriptive, the prose flows from sentences to sentences quite well and that, for me at least, lends it a certain lucidity not found in many of its fellow 19th century novels.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brielle92
Nonetheless, I don't mean to say that the book has no muddled parts, as it certainly has, like the few digressions on human history that interspersed the the book, alongside the two famous yet needless epilogues devoid of narrative.
At the micro level, namely phrasing and syntax, War and Peace is hardly culpable for smothering difficulty. Sure, there are some awkward syntax and long winded sentences, but they are graspable after some cursory mull.
Looking at it at macro level, War and Peace is anything but easy, though that's not to say that it's exceeding difficult either. At this level, the difficulty is merely impressionistic, that is, it arises because of the length and size of the book, not unlike its contemporaries.
Finnegans Wake, without doubt. I also found Aristotle's Metaphysics heavy going.