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I dare you to read this.
Published: 8/9/2012 11:53 AM
Last Modified: 8/9/2012 11:53 AM

A couple of years ago, the literary website The Millions began a series it called “Difficult Books,” in which readers were asked to name the books – fiction, poetry and non-fiction – that they found to be most challenging, frustrating, abstruse to read.

The reasons for this difficulty might include the books’ “length, or their syntax and style, or their structural and generic strangeness, or their odd experimental techniques, or their abstraction.”

This week, the two curators of the list, Emily Colette Wilkinson and Garth Risk Hallberg, came out with their list of the “Top 10 Most Difficult Books,” which appeared on the Publisher’s Weekly website.

(Full disclosure: I own one of these titles. In hardback. Have had it for years. Was fascinated by the idea of the book. Read maybe a dozen pages. Not sure it’s going to make the move to the new house near Richmond.)

In any case, here’s the list:

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
The Phenomenology of Spirit by GF Hegel
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
Women and Men by Joseph McElroy

One would expect “Finnegans Wake” to make the list – the book’s linguistic experimentations pretty much guarantee that most people will find it difficult to read, although I know of at least one person who’s made it through and thinks it’s marvelous and funny. Good for him.

And I remember as a youngster seeing a paperbound copy of Richardson’s “Clarissa” on the top shelf of a bookstore – a tome thicker than most Bibles.

Two titles that probably could have been included on this list are “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon and Samuel R. Delany’s “Dhalgren.” I managed to get about 50 or so pages into “Gravity’s Rainbow” before giving up completely (all I remember of the experience is the opening sentence – “A screaming comes across the sky” – and a whole lot of talk about bananas).

And “Dhalgren” – a mammoth slab of post-apocalyptic post-modernism – was well-nigh impenetrable. Ten pages was more than enough for me.

So – what’s the most difficult book you ever read? If you made it through to the end, was it worth the effort?



Reader Comments 4 Total
Danomite Dandy Dan (6 months ago)
If I can't get lost in it, I'll drop it.
For me, reading is for enjoyment or education.
A book over my head fullfills neither.

Sadly, I have the same problem with poetry. :)
Jayhawk Ken (6 months ago)
A William Faulkner short story, "The Bear" stumped me in a second level college English class. With sentences that literally ran on for pages, a scarcity of any punctuation and interpersonal relationships that were challenging to decode, it seemed like Faulkner was trying too hard to be "artistic." The college English department even saw fit to supplement the piece with a genealogy chart to assist with understanding.

When we had to write an essay about it, I dared to write on the topic of why the selection was inappropriate for a college English course, knowing I'd probably either get an A or an F for my audacity. I got a B and was delighted to have never read it beyond page 25!
anna1781 (6 months ago)
I got halfway through Infinite Jest, had to put it down for about a year, and then when I picked it back up I had to start over again. Multiple first- and third-person perspectives, dozens of storylines involving unrelated characters, and jumping back and forth across several timelines. David Foster Wallace may have been a genius, but why should I have to be one to read his magnum opus?
Hunlett (6 months ago)
toughest book I ever read was "The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann. It took me a full month but it was worth it. It has probably been 20 years since I read it and there are still passages and situations that stick with me. It is as relevant today as when it was published after WWII. I have not read any of the books on your list but I have attempted Faulkner (the disjointed ramblings of an incoherent drunk)David Foster Wallace (Is he just nuts?)and, I'm sorry, I don't like Comac McCarthy. I have read "Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kenndy Toole and it was wonderful. How sad the author took his own life after completing the book.
Bottom line; we are all better for the experience of tackling a difficult work even if we don't make to the end or didn't like it at all.
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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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