Tough reads--what books have challenged you the most, were they worth it in the end?

On a different thread I talked about the preparations I made before I tackled ULYSSES, the bios, the books about the book. And I STILL got my ass kicked.

But I ended up admiring ULYSSES, its artfulness, Joyce's incomparable grasp of language. It was even (gasp!) hilariously funny in places (the brothel scene, for instance).

Other tough reads:

CASTLE TO CASTLE by Louis Ferdinand Celine
A VOID by Georges Perec
RIDDLEY WALKER by Russell Hoban
Anything by Irvine Welsh (that heavy Scot dialect)
" " by Thomas Pynchon

Note: Ian will NOT be listing the entire canon of Lawrence Durrell since his is a superior intellect and he understood every word, every inflection perfectly...

I found Ulysses tough as well, of course (and loved every baffling minute of it). Two others come to mind immediately:

First, The Waves, by Virginia Woolf which, despite my admiration for Woolf, really never opened up for me. If I had to do it again, I probably wouldn't read that one.

Second, Williams Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!. The difficulty in this one really varied from chapter to chapter. The sentences in some chapters were much easier to parse than those in others (I still shudder with a mixture of dread and glee to recall chapter five), but there is the further difficulty of assembling the various accounts of different parts of Thomas Sutpen's life into a coherent narrative. A professor I had in college created a visual timeline of the events in the novel with Flash, and while I didn't use this resource at the time, I've since examined it, and it did much to help my understanding of the basic storyline. Needless to say (username), despite (and partly because of) its difficulty, I loved Absalom, Absalom! Sometimes I think it's an achievement that rivals Ulysses. Only sometimes, though...

Dhalgren is a novel that requires work. And, of course, there's pretty much anything by Gene Wolfe...

I KNEW someone would bring up DHALGREN...

Faulkner has thus far defeated me--but I'll forgive the man anything for his Nobel speech, which still brings a lump to my throat when I read the closing passages.

One day I'll take another crack at SOUND AND THE FURY. Who was it suggested that I should tackle it fortified with bourbon? A very fine idea...

Another tough writer, Steven Erickson. TOURS OF THE BLACK CLOCK, RUBICON BEACH. Hell of a writer but very demanding.

DAYS BETWEEN STATIONS is his most approachable work and I commend it to one and all...

Read The Sound and the Fury twice. It actually seemed much better the second time around. I find Faulkner depressing, however, and rarely read his books without good cause.

Personally, I feel that if a book is too hard to understand or decipher, it is simply not well written. Language is designed for communication, and while sophisticated use of language can be rewarding and interesting, it should still communicate. Just a thought.

The first person that comes to mind in this category is Pynchon followed by DeLillo. as I said elsewhere after slogging through their work, I can truthfully say the time spent was not worth it. I had somewhat the same problem with Vonnegut. While his books were not necessarily such slogs, they nevertheless left me feeling like I'd just wasted precious time.

My literary taste just doesn't go much beyond 1965. There is so much truly wonderful stuff written prior to that time, that taking a chance on more recent stuff doesn't offer much. I'm sure I'm missing out on some great reads, but then Hardy, Dickens, Eliot, Conrad, Dostoyevskii, Balzac, Tolstoi, Gogol, Faulkner, O'Connor, and more such keep me busy with fulfilling reading experiences. When I choose one of them I know what I'm getting into.

Well, Gene, you can't go wrong with writers like that.

Those guys crossed over from craft to Art; posterity grants them eternal regard (and rightfully so).

And there's so much of theirs and others like them that I just don't feel I have the time to search out the current art among the dregs.

Admittedly, contemporary writing is like sifting through a dung pile for a pearl but when you DO come across a real gem--a la David Mitchell, George Saunders, Jim Shepard--it's worth the stinky fingers...

Anything by William T. Vollmann. I love his work, but sometimes I struggle a bit to stay focused; his style doesn't grab me the same way some others do. Totally worth the struggle.

Yes, I got halfway through EUROPE CENTRAL but it was an inter-library loan, I ran out of time and had to give it back. Still pisses me off. The guy is a genius and astonishingly prolific--how does he do it? I have his BUTTERFLY STORIES, which is a good intro to his oeuvre...

Perhaps you are shoving me in the direction of trying "Riddley Walker" again again. I am a dedicated Hoban fan but haven't been able to do this. . .

It's a tough one--definitely worthy of re-reading and I HAVE to do it. Got to pump some mental iron, otherwise I'll start watching TV and voting Conservative...

my dad tried hard to get me to read/like Ridley Walker..didn't take.

You've got a few decades ahead of you, Bob. Still plenty of time for RIDDLEY...

The New Orleans metro phone book. It really put up a fight, but I was dead-set on getting the data on local ethnic origins, see? The toil was considerable (even with reading last names only--most of the time), tinged with existential angst, but even so, the results were infinitely more interesting than Wolfe and Vollmann combined.

jeez..that's kind of like my wife's going through every US census from 1840 - 1970 (this was in the late 70s early 80s) and getting the population breakdown by age/sex of the ethnic Chinese population in every county (she was looking at the effect of immigration legislation on the diffusion of Chinese in the US over that time frame). Later ones were available on mag tape..but early ones she tabulated by hand. Actually, in a similar, i went through all the 19th C NC handwritten censuses/vital stats documents looking for comments regarding the perceived relationship on the local environment on health..Not to mention skimming the entire holdings of the Journal of the Med Soc. of NC through ~ 1910, looking for similar sorts of observations

But I bet your wife was paid. Or got an article, or a degree out of it.

I did it for a bee in my bonnet.

yeah..that was her master's thesis..she really should have published (her committee really wanted her to do so) as she's a good writer and it was very interesting (given an interest in population geography) but basically had Adam instead..Patty was ~ 4 months pregnant when she defended...during the last late April snow in Chapel Hill ever.

My mom ditched her Fullbright to have me!

Aw, moms, bless their selfless hearts.

Patty warned her committee that if a snow in late April was odd, that event was a modest warning of what would happen if they gave her a hard time..Channeling Saruman.

actually for what was likely the most peculiar MLS thesis ever, i wrote mine illustrating how a variant of graph theory could be used in the reading/analysis of specific poems and ended up w/ it (i'm quite sure) being the only MLS thesis published in Semiotica (umberto eco's old journal - now defunct?)..i think that qualifies as very obscure weirdness. But it also got me a job i never applied for with the company i still work for, Westat - which started our doing survey research and has branched into related fields. well enough self promotion..

which makes me thing of in the name of the rose and Cryptonomicon as a couple of genre books that demanded and rewarded attention. NSteph went downhill posthaste afterwards..i'm trying to get into Anathem.

Stephenson really gives the impression he DESPERATELY needs an editor. I liked CRYTONOMICON but it was wayyyy overlong. I have the first book in his Baroque cycle but have yet to get to it.

Tell us about ANATHEM when you've finished (er, IF you finish)...

My mom turned down the opportunity to be FDR's VP in order to have me. Some dude named Truman got the job.

To serve in FDR's administration...sigh.

The first and only socialist Prez...

well..he DID have a socialist veep, Henry Wallace..but yeah..FDR was pretty great..and as my hiking buddy Mike keeps saying..a lot of the trails and waystations we (well mostly he) go to were CCC projects.

I agree (and i know we've discussed this before) that after Snow Crash, Stephenson seems to have been given verbiage carte blanche by his publisher..and after Crypto.., which could easily have lost 100 pages, was given license to be boring, as well. I haven't given up on Anathem..but having just been through Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer want to avoid slow, subtle tedium for a while.

It's good to mix it up a little--grab an Elmore Leonard book or, better yet, James Crumley and let your hair down...

Gravity's Rainbow was pretty awesome. The first Pynchon I've read. V was also a challenge. I guess I had the hang-up that a novel needed an actual conclusion when it ended. But both were fun rides.

The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann was grinding, although it was quite a page-turner.

Pynchon, Vollmann--damn fine authors...

I have a category that I have mentally labelled "books for boys" (meaning of course very erudite grown men). The authors of these books include Georges Perec, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pyncheon, Don DeLillo. And who wrote "Underworld?"

DeLillo did UNDERWORLD.

And that's a smashing list of authors...

John Donne; TS Eliot; AR Ammons; - all worth it- all poets.

collected essays of Thomas Carlyle. put me to sleep every night for 3 weeks and i don't think i ever finished it before writing my 4 week late weekly english lit essay for freshman english. NOT WORTH IT. I've been thinking about reading him again as i read a couple of his critical essays on painting/painters that i rather liked in grad school so i might be judging him unfairly.

Any micro-economics text - not worth it and defn. fictional.

The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett - well worth it, but very info dense.

Murakami requires a lot of attention - he's not difficult at all on a page to page level, but requires being in kind of a Murakami gestalt to be receptive to one of his stories or novels. Jack Womack is similar in that i have to be in a receptive state of mind to really enjoy his singular style.

I've got the Laurie Garrett book--it's a doorstopper, all right. Right beside it I've got a smaller, less daunting book on plagues, Andrew Nikiforuk's THE FOURTH HORSEMAN. It's a good intro...

Pfft. Doorstopper. Nothing. Now this is a weighty tome. Weighty as in, well, weighs a bloody ton.

All that verbiage...framed around a bad movie...

Two and a half million words. But how many of them are ESSENTIAL...

I hope you're not expecting me to list them...

Only one of them is essential.

Shall we add it to our Book Club reading list? Right along with THE SHACK and THE ALCHEMIST?

(Not recommended for some of our older members, who may not live long enough to finish it...)

#38: I will say this for The Alchemist: the Spanish edition is useful for translation practice. (His simplistic prose is so easy on my muy rusty español...)

That (ALCHEMIST) was just one of those books that I KNEW, without reading a single letter, wasn't my type of book.

I know, I know: SNOB!

Garrett's probably only interesting if you have a near professional concern with epidemiology and environmental change - but as a geographer/public health type, her stuff is v. relevant to me. There are a lot simpler related takes..the rather trite Guns, Germs and Steel comes immediately to mind. Rats, Lice and History was an early and rather more worthy entry into this general field of man/ecology/disease/history (than Diamond's book).

The Diamond book has been on "the list" for awhile. Along with Hitchens' and Dawkins' books on God/religions...

Guns, Germs and Steel does a pretty yeomanlike job of presenting some interesting thoughts about why some peoples were more successful than others. Of course success is purely subjective. The most successful cultures were the ones that learned the ways of the earth and abided by them for thousands of years, never really advancing. but by the same token, none of them are capable of blowing the earth to smithereens with the touch of a button, either.

I have not yet read Collapse which strikes me as part two of Diamond's thesis. From what I gather it is the story of several cultures that were advancing, but destroyed themselves in the process, a kind of cautionary tale for our own advanced societies.

In the end the successful societies were the ones that stayed truest to their neolithic roots.

I'm not sure I'd define "capable of blowing the earth to smithereens with the touch of a button" as a criteria for success. But it makes sense that low impact societies would have more staying-power. But they'd also have to stifle progress, which does sort of make you wonder what the point is. Surely, by any definition, success means making things better? For everyone. Not just the evil bastards at the top.

Ian, I've been working on the above post, probably while you were composing your response, although I did not change the sense in which I meant the comment about blowing ourselves up. It comes from a thought I read in a Noam Chomsky book (he quoted it from someone I don't know) about humanity on the whole proving to be a spectacularly unsuccessful species.

Obviously, a society that blows itself and everyone else to smithereens will not be a successful society. The societies that we consider successful have been blowing themselves to hell on a routine basis for the last 1500 years.

Indeed. Because the criteria for success have been defined by a few - and their criteria for personal success has been warped so it defines success for the entire society.

Advancement that leaves a used up sphere with the only way to proceed is backwards is only temporarily successful. I agree, theoretically we can continue to progress, but to do so will require a basic change in the nature of humans that I am not sure is coming.

Humanity, as a whole, is on the cusp of a major reorganization on the order of the change from stone age cultures to farming and settlement, it's just that we won't know what it is until it has occurred. In terms of advancement, it could go either way.

From what I recall Diamond is careful not to make value judgments about the various cultures he explores in Guns, Germs, and Steel. He uses scientific information from several fields to formulate an answer to questions like "Why did the meeting between European and American cultures turn out so poorly for one group and so well for the other?" and "Why did certain cultures develop social innovations before others?" without resorting to racism or platitudes. I found the sections about the spread of agricultural knowledge within but not across zones of latitude particularly interesting.

Collapse is basically an examination of societies that have extinguished themselves in the past. I think it is a response to the general feeling that we would recognize the point at which we've abused our environment so thoroughly that it will soon no longer be capable of supporting our society. Apparently many societies throughout history failed to recognize this point.

The trick with Riddley Walker is to read it out loud - the prose is easier to understand when you hear it than when you read it... That said, the book was really a rather simplistic, and somewhat pointless, quest/adventure story, obscured by a formalistic language experiment. The reinvention of gunpowder was also a bit too abrupt - creating a mixture that would be that explosive would hardly have been possible on your first try...

Ai kwait preefr "Feersum Endjinn" bai Iain Banks, oetch yootilisis a ceemeelr spurimentl prous, bt tels a mor mbishus n komplx storee.

Given that it took me ten seconds to read a sentence that should have taken two at most, why would I want to devote the time and even more importantly the effort to reading something like that?

Feersum Endjinn is, like Banks' earlier The Bridge, written in phonetic Scots. And it's not an accent but a dialect. Ye ken?

I was not aware of that. My comment in #50 still holds. I expect the Scots have the same problem, what with it being neither Scottish Gaelic (is that native Scots?) nor English.

Reading a book in phonetic Southwestern US English would be just as tedious.

I find with someone like Irvine Welsh, the first 40-50 pages are tough and then one begins to develop an "ear" for the dialect and the reading comes far easier.

No, it's not Gaelic. That's an entirely different language. Scottish - once known as Lallans - is a dialect of English, with different pronunciation, slightly different lexicon (kirk for church, for example), and probably a few different grammatical rules as well.

Ahhhhhhh, thanks Ian. The language of Bonnie Rabbie Burns, eh.

and Cornish? just from some seasonal carols, been thinking about a language whose last speaker died..when...early 20thC?

I think Cornish is still being spoken, but it had to be re-introduced.

Manx is still being spoken. Just. Mostly by bearded chaps in ideologically sound jumpers. And their meek hush-puppied women.

Nollick Ghennal as Blein Vie Noa!

The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon

Luckily I had help from a guide by J. Kerry Grant -- what a Pynchonesque pun of a name.

Lots of wonderful passages, low puns, 1960s SoCal pop culture, satire, the Yoyodyne Corporation, and a sublime ending.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace was also tough. Even the footnotes added another level of complexity.

I have The Crying of Lot 49 to read. Maybe I should start (again) tonight.

I think it's EASILY the most approachable of the Pinch's work. That and the short story collection SLOW LEARNER...

Reading Pynchon isn't really about accessibility? Is it? If I wanted accessibility, I can read the oeuvre of Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer anytime. Although Slow Learner might be a good "gate-way drug" to more challenging stuff.

Speaking of inaccessible, challenging works, I'm in the middle of reading Ezra Pound's Cantos. I'm currently stuck in the Chinese Cantos section. Even with the help of Carroll Terrell's Companion to the Cantos, it's still extremely slow going. Then again, this is the Mount Everest of Literary Modernism.

Pound...say no more. Terrifying stuff; even makes hardened snobs like me quail.

In terms of accessibility/Pynchon, I was alluding to good starting points, best first books for folks who haven't tackled the Pinch yet.

I agree. One needs to seduce readers somehow, accessible Pynchon may be the trick. Then again, I read Gravity's Rainbow first. I guess I was more attracted to the book than the author.

Pound is ten kinds of crazy, usually all at once. While his economics is rather bizarre, his usura canto resonates, especially with our current global economic predicament / apocalypse.

The Crying would be my, let's see, fifth (fourth and a half) Pynchon. Gave up on Gravity's Rainbow, loved V as a teenager and loved Mason and Dixon as, ahem, an older gentleman, and I liked Vineland too, somewhere in between.

The trouble with The Crying seems to be - as kswolff seems to suggest - that it's too 60s. Well it is for me, or has been up until now.

I have had to read Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and DeLillo's White Noise for classes that I've taken. I am still in school (in my senior year of college) and I honestly believe that I would have hated White Noise if I was not able to discuss it during class. After the discussion, I was able to gain an appreciation for the novel, and since, it has become one of my favorite novels of all time. Lot 49, however... that was not one that I ever took to... even after the discussion!

Crying of Lot 49 is easier to understand if you read about paranoid schizophrenia first. Oedipa's symptoms are classic - she sees fits everything into the pattern she has developed to explain the world.

Petersburg by Andrei Bely is an experimental novel. Descriptive passages of great beauty, ditto for the inner lives of the feverish characters but never amusing like say Papa Karamzov on his deathbed in Dostoevsky. However other passages, whole pages at a time, went sailing right over my head. Well, can’t expect to understand high modernists like Joyce and Rhys the first time through.

...or the second...third...

Multiple readings at various points of your life. Maybe the best way to get the widest possible perspective on a great book....

Ok so I've been meaning to get round to Faulkner for ages, and have been put off by better people that me struggling with his stuff, can someone tell me which is the best one to start with that will not kill me, and will be worth it?

Why not COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF WILLIAM FAULKNER?

If you can't handle him in his abbreviated form, the novels will be a feat of endurance (rather than an experience to be cherished)...

True true and good suggestion. But will I be able to 'cross him off my list' of people whose books I must read at least one of? Do short stories count? :-)

The short stories count, you betcha...

If I forget thee Jerusalem is a good start for Faulkner. It's a pretty straightforward read. Plus they talk about the novel in Breathless by Godard.

I usually recommend As I Lay Dying as the introduction to Faulkner. It's short, moves fairly well and is an excellent introduction to Faulkner's particular human nightmare.

If you read this and like it, I would recommend Tobacco Road for a non-Faulkner peek into the same world.

If you ever read The Sound and the Fury, the quintessential Faulkner, IMO, keep in mind you will need to read it once to get the gist of it and again to understand it.

For Faulkner, I would suggest Light in August. It's not stream of consciousness, and is really a great book.

I cheated like crazy during my reading of The Sound and the Fury. I read it for pleasure, not for school. But I referred to readily available online study guides and these really helped me understand the sequence of who was "talking," when. I agree that As I Lay Dying and A Light in August were a bit more readable.

I have read War and Peace a few times now. It is difficult in two ways. It is long and complex in narrative and, depending on the translation, narration (first name, patronymic, family name and their interchangeability, for example). It offers ideas that apply universally and require reflection to absorb and come to terms with. Except for the first time, I have kept Cliffs Notes at hand when I have read the work, even with a well annotated edition like the Norton Critical Edition; I will have Cliffs Notes at hand the next time I read it.

Europe Central was difficult because of the sweeping narrative and the serious revelation of character in it. There are long prose fictions which are not novels. Novels are about character and tell a story. The novel Europe Central tells how characters of ordinary virtue react to abomination and to extremity. The depth of revelation of possibilities of character in this book is almost as deep as the subject itself. It has overwhelmed me. I have had to read nonfiction about the tyrannies involved. I have wondered how I would have been.

Robert

Robert: I got about halfway through EUROPE CENTRAL and had to return it (it was a library book). Always kicked myself for that one. I liked the interlocking narratives, the huge canvas Vollmann works with. Genius.

WAR AND PEACE? Some day. Either the new Pevear version or the old Penguin Classic. I read somewhere that even Tolstoy got confused with the huge narrative he was creating and there are inconsistencies (author mistakes) in the text that discerning readers can spot. Noticed any of them?

I have not noticed inconsistencies in War and Peace because it is a very big book and I wasn't looking for them. I think they'd have to smack me in the eye in order to get my attention.

I often look for the consistencies. I saw the new The Day the Earth Stood Still a couple of nights ago. It had non-sequitors and unlikelihoods by the reservoirful. It also had a moral; yuck. But I came away thinking about what I liked about it.

Robert

That's one remake, like the new version of "I Am Legend", I won't see in any format. Well, maybe if the local library had a free copy I could rent and it was REAL slow night.

Death to huge budget films, kindergarten scripts disguised by 600 million gigabytes of CGI.

Feh!

# 79 It also had a moral; yuck.

So did the original version.

The original version had Robert Wise directing and the moral was a tough one, delivered at the height of the Cold War.

"Live together or die..."

Seems pretty rational to me.

rdurick, I was reading your post and thought, "gee, I don't recall having any problem with War an Peace."

Then I quickly remembered I had watched 2 movie versions, listened to a BBC abridged audio version, etc., etc., prior to reading it!

The Trilogy by Samuel Beckett Tough going, but very rewarding. The toughest thing is trying to situate any sort of narrative. Calling it minimalist would be a bit reductive, since there is a lot more going on than saying little with little. Malone Dies is like a combination of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the underworld sections of The Odyssey, and Chaplinesque slapstick.

"Calling it minimalist would be a bit reductive"
I see it as a gradual decay/death(?) of the various characters, until there's nothing left but a voice speaking from a void. Extremely minimal.

A paring away...to near nothingness...the lip of nonexistence...a pallid point, barely perceived...an almost undetectable pulse that, against all odds, reveals the stubborn persistence of life...

Here's a challenging read. The challenge being trying to get to the end of it without laughing...

Ah...what the heck? Is this why so few people read poetry these days?

Shucks, I didn't even make it past the first line.

Epic fail, plop, plop
Please, my broken funny bone, stop! Stop!
This poem is a flop, flop.

Can I view thee panting, lying
On thy stomach, without sighing;
Can I unmoved see thee dying
On a log,
Expiring frog!

Say, have fiends in shape of boys,
With wild halloo, and brutal noise,
Hunted thee from marshy joys,
With a dog,
Expiring frog!

(Ha. Let's see Trollope come up with something like that!)

I don't usually drink this early in the day but...

Finnegans Wake its was just too much for my fragile little mind

I'll approach Finnegans Wake with a non-sober mind ;)

That's certainly true for the films of Alexandro Jodorowsky...

Jodorowsky is best watched on an hallucinogen, doncha think? With a syringe of thorazine sitting nearby, just in case...

I always get Thorazine and thalidomide confused.

A friend and I read Beckett's works together, and discussing helped a lot. But How it is, which is considered something of a sequel to the Unnamable, was torture. Apparantly, nothingness can be taken a step further (or backwards, I guess). It contains no punctuation and is broken up into these five to eight line chunks. The mind "catches its breath", as if panting, between these chunks. It's something Beckett actually intended (which, interestingly, the characters do a lot also.) 20 pages felt like 200. I'm not kidding! And I even like to read those Victorian bricks by Dickens and Trollope!

By the time I got to page 100 (the end), I was exhausted, even though I read only 10 pages at a time. Damn worth it, though. Did not realize the genius of writing a story which "moves" and yet nothing happens.

Funny how you mention being out of breath. Proust attempted the same thing, especially with the long ornate sentences. Proust was an asthmatic and the long sentences were like holding your breath or the trippy effects of an asthma attack.

That's really interesting! I'm being a bad modernist when I say that I'm not a fan of Proust and his magic cookies overall. But I'll definitely acknowledge the brilliance of his writing.

I remember reading how Billy Whitelaw (Beckett's favorite actress) nearly had a breakdown trying to perform one of Beckett's pieces. He takes a toll on readers, actors, directors...it makes him challenging and it makes him GREAT.

>102 mariagilbert:: That's how were different from the mouth-breathing fan boy idiots out there. We can appreciate something we don't like. I'm not a fan of Hemingway, but his pared-down style are another facet of Literary Modernism.

I'm not a fan of Ezra Pound's politics or economic theories -- although anyone paying credit card fees should read the Usura Canto -- but I do consider him one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. Even though we're only 9 years in, I wonder who will be among the great 21st century poets?

103: I agree about Beckett and liked what you shared about Whitelaw. Fascinating. He's well worth the laughter and pain. Post-Beckett, you come out a different person with a clearer, more comfortable relationship with chaos and nothingness. I've noticed that whenever I've tried to write about Beckett, I've always ended up sounding pretty damn ridiculous. So I'll shut up.

104: I'm not a Hemingway fan myself. But when I had to teach A Farewell to Arms, I thought, alright, that's a damn good first chapter because there's the whole novel in two pages. And then I read how he rewrote the last page 39 times--I stare at it and wonder, how did he finally decide? When asked in the Paris Review interview what stumped him, all he said was, "Getting the words right." I've read five of the 39 different versions of this ending and though the changes are subtle and minor to me, they were probably monumental to him. In the end, I said to myself, this dude is the real deal, a real writer. Pared down meant that every word written and unwritten mattered, I think. Decisions were obviously made. And if I was ever to give Hemingway the time of day, I had to learn just how.

I wish I knew Pound better. That's another slap on the hand for me.

Zoe: great post.

Hemingway was a meticulous writer, unlike many of the scribblers out there today, writing DOWN to the level of their sub-literate, fan-boy readers.

And Beckett...he simply astounds and is so far beyond everyone else in the 20th century world of letters. You just get a sense he's one of those people who, like Shakespeare, Joyce, will be read 1,000 years from now. The word "timeless" is grotesquely overused but in this instance...

Hemingway began to believe in his press clippings (whose existence he had encouraged) and then lived accordingly. If you throw away his biography and take a clean look at his work, you see an amazing wordsmith. Go back and read "Hills Like White Elephants." Few writers today can say as much in as few words.

And Beckett? Beckett is life changing. Which does sound ridiculous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFZatmOFpns

NICE link.

Not ridiculous to say Beckett is a life-changing experience. Reading Beckett for the first time is like a dose of LSD, it provokes an altered state, an awareness of an entirely different level of reality.

Glad to see so many defenders of Hemingway; great that he still retains his "snob" quotient...

107: Thank you for the cool link. "Hills Like White Elephants", eh? I will look again! That Paris Review interview is amusing to me. Hemingway seems irritated but he also clearly loves all the attention and messes with the interviewer's head sometimes.

To say Beckett is life-changing kind of is and is not ridiculous. I meant ridiculous as in souding like Beckett...like just now. Beckett would have found it ridiculous, I think, but that's life, yes? However, life-changing for me meant embracing the abyss for a few moments at a time, enduring the repetitions and hyper-negations, and relinquishing elementary principles of logic to get to a different self. That's an altered state for sure, at least mine, like a focused madness (ridiculous again). Anyway, no one else makes me laugh as hard as well as cry like a damn sissy, which I'm not ashamed to say happened when I finished The Unnamable, like Beckett. He called tears "liquid brains". Amen to that on so many levels!

I just finished Beckett's Trilogy a couple months ago. Reading his novels is different than his plays. The Unnamable takes you to all these crazy places, like being inside someone's head and an external observer, all at the same time. Amazing how he wrote those 3 books shortly after WW2. Again, Realism is overrated.

What is your favorite of the three? I liked Molloy best for the longest time. Then I reread the trilogy, too, a few months ago and was surprised that I liked the Unnamable more.

"Liquid brains." My god, I love that.

Me, too. Beckett says in The Unnamable (these are perhaps one of my favorite Beckett lines): "The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? From time to time. There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquified brain."

I think Celine was mentioned earlier. For me, he is impossible to read in French--the dude makes up words and craps and pisses all over the polite classroom French I know, making it unrecognizable to me. All the argot. I'll take pages of Proust's subordinate clauses over one line of this angry man's prose. I never finished Mort a Credit or Voyage... I enjoyed Death on the Installment Plan, however, very much!

I have really ratty old copies of JOURNEY and DEATH by Celine, those New Directions editions. Not the prettiest books in my collection but it's hard to find Celine these days. His politics, he's a tough read--so I treasure what I can get. To me he's only a rung or two below Beckett. Savage man, savage writer...

"Post-Beckett, you come out a different person with a clearer, more comfortable relationship with chaos and nothingness."

Which reminds me of:

"I accept chaos. I don’t know whether it accepts me.''

Oh, I like that. It strikes me as very, very dismal but maybe like Beckett, too. I will have to think about it. Beckett's characters never connect but they need each other:

Vladimir: Come here till I embrace you.
Estragon: Don’t touch me!
Vladimir: Do you want me to go away?
Estragon: Don’t touch me! Don’t question me! Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!

I say comfortable with chaos because...hmm...maybe acceptance by anyone or anything no longer seems to be relevant. What matters is that chaos is just THERE--to reject me, to embrace me--and both. Beckett is depressing, but I also see him as hopeful. Thank you for the comment!

More on hope. Art for Beckett is a perpetual failure to communicate, to mean what you say, to say what you mean. But one goes on, yes? Suicide isn't an option. You arrest the pointless journey towards silence, and then art ends. So hope is inextricably tied to despair.

I definitely need to read more Beckett. One of my great lacunae.

You know, I've been holding back on this one for a while, but I just can't help myself.

Behold: " 'Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFE2CCfAP1o

Followed the link--wha! That's...very Becekett-ian. Funny stuff.

The name of one of Sam's collections sums up his oeuvre perfectly:

"I can't go on, I'll go on..."

The best Beckett bio I know of is James Knowlson's DAMNED TO FAME, in case anyone's interested. It was written with Beckett's cooperation, unlike earlier efforts, like the one by Deirdre Bair.

"Liquified brains." After reading Beckett or Stephanie Meyer? ;)

I can't say I have any familiar book of the Trilogy. Like the similar "debate" over Empire Strikes Back vs. Return of the Jedi by microcephalic LucasArts fanboys. The Trilogy is all of a piece, you can't have one without the other. Within the trilogy -- since there are many little stories told and being told by the various narrators -- I do like the tale about the inmates / prisoners / ? of the hospital / asylum / ? taking a trip to an island. It's grotesque and absurd and touching all at the same time. Malone gives each inmate a funny nickname, The Saxon and the Giant, etc.

I go back and forth on Frost. Sometimes I dismiss him as some kind of "people's poet" but then I read work by him that shows subtlety and menace and a genuine understanding of the human condition...

the best of Frost is very bleak and very well fashioned. Even "popular" Frost can be trickier than one thinks. He's no Carl Sandburg, thank goodness.
Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

old fashioned, stark and brilliant. And evidently a real bastard.

Frost revises Blake for the 20th C and does in the ID* shites in one short sonnet.
*intelligent design.

Frost is the HP Lovecraft of American poetry, except much scarier because he doesn't go over the top. Hell...even:
"the woods are lovely, dark and deep" is creepy. (comma maybe misplaced)

I think you're right, Bob. Frost's poetry is a lot darker than one realizes at first blush.

Remember the one, "Out..." Out something...

I read it back in Grade 8 (I think) and it had an impact.

I'll find it and post it on the poetry thread in less than a minute...

That should be Nightwood by Djuna Barnes.

There was a lot of death in Frost's life. He lost two of his children when they were young and his only surviving son committed suicide. He blamed himself for them. I think in "Design" there is an eerie reference to the children's death in "a dimpled spider, fat and white", that juxtaposition of an infant-like or child-like image and the predatory spider. The beautiful white heal-all (rare in nature because it is usually blue) is an accomplice to the death of the moth. Doesn't it sound like the flower's on trial in the sestet? But that's nature's way. This is also Frost's version of a Pertrarchan sonnet, a fixed-form usually about love.

Is the Maker a benevolent one or an evil one? The sestet is a series of questions--undecided. And how about the poet as "designer"?

I don't usually do a little biographical reading of poems, but I think that if I lost my children that way, I would have a very complex attitude toward nature and the Maker.

I used to hate Frost, but when I read this one, my favorite, I took a second look at his poems. He's no moderrnist, but there is more depth and complexity than I realized.

I am sorry about the poetry lesson. But when I saw "Design" I could not resist.

Djuna Barnes. Now there's a name that hasn't cropped up before (and should have). I have NIGHTWOOD but haven't yet read it. It has a daunting reputation. Any further thoughts on her or the book?

Read Oscar Wilde's Salome and Flaubert's Temptation of St. Antony. Not necessarily tough, but a wholly different mode of writing, since both are elaborate, visually stunning symbolist romps.

Salammbo was another tough read. It's worth a reread, since I read it when I was younger -- I'd seen Citizen Kane and there's an operatic adaptation of the book in it. I couldn't find the plot.

>128 mariagilbert: lessons appreciated; as i mentioned in re Stevens, i read a lot more poetry than background/interpretation so there's a lot i'll miss. I have a set of essays on AR Ammons and a text from a course in Yeats and that's about it for actual lit-crit in our library.

CliffBurns: You really should try to read Nightwood. It's beautiful. First time I read it, I didn't understand that book. But the second time, wow, it all made sense to me. I found the language most difficult, it looks like Victorian English. (Could be my fault though, English isn't my mothertongue.)
May be you should try to read it twice: first time for the poetry Barnes writes. Second time you try to grasp the story.
Enjoy (and good luck).

Leuntje:

I have the extremely ugly New Directions edition of NIGHTWOOD, intro by T.S. Eliot.

Had it for at least 15 years and occasionally hear it call out to me, a soft, lilting brogue, but there are so many books shouting for my attention, I keep passing it by.

One of these days...

Oh, I see Nightwood is a book. I always thought it was something else.

Gene, if that's some kinda weird, pervy comment...

Even thought I have only read a couple of pages, Fe Fi FOE Dies by William C. Samples challenged me greatly.

Is Fe Fi FOE Dies the sequel to Fe Fi FOE Comes?

>139 Jargoneer: - Dies! That really was a Freudian slip.

When did this thread become Jay Leno's monologue? There's more innuendo here than in a Minneapolis airport bathroom.

***

I've passed Nightwood by as well. May have to crack open the pages when I'm looking for a short, dense read.

Jargoneer, you nassssty person.

I had not the slightest idea what you meant with the William Samples reference until Ian clued me in.

Laughed meself silly, I did...

#138 it was just a "little" death.

Don't contribute to that, Bob...

Apologies - but that Fi Fi Foe Fum book sounds just dreadful, and the manful defense its advocate brings to the thread is...a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Beckett, Pynchon, Faulkner ... discuss!

Ah, that feels better.

I remember that when, as a young spark, I read The Sound and the Fury it challenged me greatly, but I also remember that it was the first difficult modernist novel that I read (and reread) all on my own . . . and got! I learned how worthwhile it could be to sweat, struggle, and groan a bit when reading. A love affair with "difficult" works was born.

Yeah, when a book makes you WORK for it, it stretches those mental muscles, busts you out of constricting preconceptions, like that first time you take acid...and the world never looks the same again....

"After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him..." -- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I met Frost when he was at UK for several days, giving workshops & readings (1950's) He was, as we said in those days, a big flirt. I remember him sitting in an arm chair at one of those wine & cheese receptions after a reading (which everyone enjoyed) and there were girls sitting on each arm & another hanging over the back & me sitting on the floor at his feet.

as for most difficult read, I've told this before. Everyone told me "You gotta read "Portrait of the artist as a young man" So I tried & tried. Finally when I flew from Cleveland to LA to visit my daughters I took 1 book with me. Joyce. I tried & tried but before we reached the rocky mountains I was reading the in-flight magazine.

PORTRAIT definitely not a plane book.

You should have had a copy of FEAR OF FLYING tucked inside--appearing smart while revelling in trash (something I do rather a lot of myself, come to think of it).

Best airplane book: House of Leaves ;)

Got that one and all I can say is...Jeee-zus...

Just kidding.

Never read HoL yet, but I did get through the crazy introduction. The author loves to play with fonts and typography as much as Ezra Pound and William Vollmann, except he jumps the shark. Even the Ghost of James Joyce is saying, "You're on your own."

Read it??!!!

You mean it's a BOOK? Like, a novel? I thought it was a text on typesetting. Well, that changes everything.

Shee-it...

Or some elaborate postmodern joke ;)

Wasn't Finnegans Wake written as a prank for academic-types?

I've tried 'em, but those last two make me want to stick with The Poky Little Puppy. It's a long road to snobdom.

Yeah, being a snob gives me a bitch of a headache sometimes, have to admit.

HOUSE OF LEAVES. That one makes me shake in my fuzzy pink bunny slippers just LOOKING at it.

Since when did pomo cachet equal "typographic tomfoolery"? Neither Pynchon nor Beckett did any crazy font stuff.

But they MIGHT have, had they lived longer and technology made such things easier, more accessible. With those two GIANTS, I wouldn't rule out any possibility. Can you imagine what they would have done if they'd been given the chance to do something like Chris Marker's IMMEMORY?

http://www.amazon.com/Immemory-CD-ROM-MacIntosh-Chris-Marker/dp/1878972391/ref=s...

I've just got back from the Sheffield Central Library book sale. A bit disappointing: no fiction, just poetry, literary criticism, history and travel.

I came away with four books, one of which might qualify for this thread: One-Way Song by Wyndham Lewis, a collection of five epic poems from 1933.

I also picked up: Essays on Twentieth-Century Poets by George Fraser (includes a chapter on Lawrence Durrell), Collected Poems by Keith Douglas, and Understanding Poetry by James Reeves.

Uhm. Not a single one of these has a touchstone...

Ian: sounds a bit dull for a library sale. Lewis is all right and at least you got something on Durrell. Drop by my joint some time in late October--I think even our small city library sale can provide a few more gems than that. Sometimes (embarrassingly) I actually cackle when I nab a prize find.

Deranged behavior, always provokes a fast-spreading blush when someone next to me looks up sharpish...

Library sales in towns without universities are slim pickens. It's hard to find anything besides James Michener, Danielle Steele, and multiple copies of Executive Orders. Just sad, really.

There's two bloody great huge universities here. The combined student population this year is around 55,000. Which is enormous. (When I was a Coventry University, for example, the student body was 8,000 wehn I started and 13,000 when I graduated 4 years later).

But universities have their own libraries. And besides students don't read.

Sales, if you haven't got anything nice to say--

Wait, you're in exactly the right group for that, aren't you?

That's all I did in college was read. That and program oddball films in the film group. Since I had high standards, no luck, and self-esteem issues, the best I could do was curl up with a nice book. Well, at least until Space Ghost Coast to Coast was done.

Then again, with all the required readings students have to endure, I can understand why they wouldn't want to read more. I did all my pleasure reading in the summer. That's when I read Ulysses and Temptation of St. Antony by Flaubert.

It's funny, because I find bad writing more difficult to get through than "challenging writing." Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein; The Book of Kings by James Thackara; Chapter 1 of Angels and Demons. I'm sure these entertained somebody, but the awful writing style made them slow-going, if not impossible to finish.

Beckett's Trilogy remains one of my most challenging reads, along with Gravity's Rainbow. Since GR was the first Pynchon I ever read, I might have set the bar too high. It merits a reread, especially with the literary guides available by J. Kerry Grant. Read his Companion to the Crying of Lot 49 and it helped a lot. It was nice, since it didn't explain everything and it espoused the attitude that "We don't know everything that's going. There's a lot of conflicting perspectives, so we'll tell you all of them."

Yeah, sometimes those writing about Joyce are more confusing and labyrinthine than the tomes they're discussing...

It's not even that. A confusing labyrinth is fun to get lost in, hence my love for all things Pynchon. But reading those badly written books is like driving a car stuck in 1st gear. The story might be good and have great potential, but the writing is so sub-par or below grade that reading becomes a chore. Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a classic example. Great premise, great ideas, yet it's written like minutes from a Moldavian Politburo board meeting. Ugh! It got to a point where I asked, "Why am I wasting my time with this?" I never felt that way reading the plotless, characterless ramblings in The Unnamable. It was a challenge to figure what, if anything, was going on, but the poetry and flow of words made it a delight to read.

Reading Ch. 1 of Angels and Demons was a struggle. Like my friend said, Dan Brown has cool ideas wrapped up in terrible writing.

That's the problem with calling out critic-proof books. People hate you for:

*Being a critic. "Nobody listens to critics anyway," is the common refrain.

*Pointing out the obvious. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

*Being a buzzkill.

Yet it's hard to remain silent when people read and gush about utter crap.

...and then you sound off and the herd turns on you, hissing and spitting.

It's hell being a snob sometimes, innit?

I take comfort with my Nietzsche and Thomas Hobbes ;)

Then I just throw up my hands and say, "Fine, read your pop lit. You're still a bunch of gorram idiots!"

Then again, Philistines jeered a blind, hairless Samson.

Can barely type ! Too busy LMAO !

Morlocks and Eloi. Is it really any different from Red States and Blue States? (And Brain-dead States?)

Oh, and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvs2g5Nj0NI

RIP Bill Hicks

MY HERO.

Thanks, Karl. The greatest comedian of all time. Pryor was good, Kinison rocked but this guy was in a league all his own.

Love it when a comedian voices what we all want to say and just says it.

Although I'm sure Waffle House waitresses everywhere appreciate the literary genius of Stephanie Meyer and James Patterson ;)

It's one thing to be illiterate, for whatever reason. It's another to look down on people who like to read books. It's snobbish in its own Bizarro World way (see Sarah Palin voters). The last 8 years of my life has involved enduring the Waffle Waitress-ocracy of incurious, bigoted, stupid, inept, corrupt, incompetent, thuggish, sanctimonious, hypocritical, and arrogant administration, its talk radio enablers and Good Germans, and the equally dumb culture that voted for him ... TWICE!

Needless to say, I'm pissed off when the unqualified are calling intelligent dissenters treasonous al-Qaida loving French-looking abortionist gays. Subtlety and irony aren't their strong points. Was like living in the Restoration Britain of Charles II, minus the culture and talent.

***

Tough reads, eh?

The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann. Mainly because the subject matter was so depressing. Not to mention it was in an 900 page book. By the end, I was pretty numbed.

House of Pain by Pan Pantziarka. Not your typical BDSM novel. It's scorching and merciless.

Regarding House of Leaves. The typography was designed by Danielewski so that the experience of the characters in the novel exploring the tunnel/labyrinth/underworld contained within the house is imitated by the experience of the reader exploring the novel. Just as a cave explorer leaves markers on the cave wall to mark where he's been and to find his way back out, so does the reader leave yellow sticky notes to find his way around as he jumps forwards, backwards, upside down in the book. Just as the explorers move ever faster and cover hundred of miles in the cave in an evening so too does the reader cover hundreds of pages in the book because there are in some cases just one word on the page.

I think there is art in that.

I'm not doubting the art--but, like all experimental literary works (from Beckett to Burroughs to Perec and Steve Erickson), the novel runs the risk of being too clever, too incoherent or (for most readers) not worth the herculean effort required to make it through the entire book.

Personally, I like a good, tough read to keep my brain from turning to grey paste and I may take a whack at HOUSE OF LEAVES just as I occasionally grab a volume by L.F. Celine and stick my nose into it. Sharpen my wits and, at the same time, pay tribute to an author who provides no easy answers and challenges my preconceptions of literature, reality and the limits of human endeavor...

Brain-toughening is good and I heartily endorse it. It makes up superior to the waterbrained plebes (or proles or Red State voters and Waffle House waitresses) and it also sharpens our critical faculties, something very important in maintaining our pretend democracies ;)

Now back to my vampire romance.

I'm a long time lurker of this board, and have often felt that I would be out of my depth posting here amongst the heavyweights. I have whiled away many otherwise dull hours at work reading the posts here.

My amazon wish-list has grown exponentially as I worked through this thread, and I have been inspired to go back and tackle a few books I picked up, and then put down again (House of Leaves and War & Peace). I'll report back here how I get on.

My own reccomendation for a tough read:

Whatever by Michel Houellebecq. which is short, but so remorselessly misanthropic it can be tough going. The dark humor I found very rewarding.

Houellebecq is interesting and challenging, definitely snob-worthy. Welcome aboard.

Nothing wrong with lurking but I encourage EVERYONE to post a comment, quip or observation every so often. I defy you to find one thread where folks have been out and out dismissive or ridiculed an individual. A bit of teasing is SOP here...but the beginning of wisdom is admitting our ignorance and there have been a number of occasions (re: talking about Conrad or Austen), where I've done just that.

Tastes vary and as long as you have the wit and ability to articulately defend an opinion, I think there's room for a broad diversity of opinion here.

No one gets slagged, no one belittled.

Well, except me. But I rather like being the resident whipping boy for a bunch of smart asses...

That's our Cliff. Now get back under the bridge and don't go scaring any more billy goats ;)

Speaking of the French guy, I have The Elementary Particles and that looks like an interesting read. I want to find his biography of Lovecraft.

I have his Atomised. Um, which appears to be the UK title of The Elementary Particles.

I'd like to see Michel Houellebecq and Stephanie Meyer get trapped together in an elevator. That would be an interesting conversation. Still, I'll take French misanthropic nihilists over idiots who write about sparkly vampires and their passive female love interests. Might be worth writing some Atomised / Twilight cross-over fan fiction ;)

The Elementary Particles does look good!

Hallo Anneh - I was interested to read your note on language or rather the sophistication thereof. I am an English author (A BOY FROM NOWHERE in two volumes - see my website on www.davidjmitchell.co.uk)
and get somewhat impatient at those who would destroy the heart and soul of what I write in the pursuit of "very correct English and prose". You see - I believe there is a difference between a writer and a storyteller. I am the latter and have the ability to write just as I talk. Thus the finished work may well be imperfect - after all who talks in perfect English all the while ? But the heart and soul of the story is all there - warts and all !
David Mitchell

I'll second that sentiment. Delany's novel was very challenging, with the multiple streams of text. Reminds me of another book I've tried to read but haven't finished yet...http://www.librarything.com/title/house_of_leaves

Dear God, HOUSE OF LEAVES again. Every time I pass that book on my shelf, it taunts me.

"You're not smart enough to read me, you pretentious bastard..."

One day I'll show that book who's boss...

Reminds me of the scene in Army of Darkness where the Necronomicon starts eating Bruce Campbell's hand. I think Army of Darkness was based on Northanger Abbey

I'd have to say The Three Musketeers. I was about ten when I read it, and so confused I couldn't get through the thing. A few years later, I couldn't put it down. Dumas truly is a master storyteller.

I remember reading Sphere in middle school. It was my first "adult book." Good times.

>190 LongHairLady:

Isn't he? The Count of Monte Cristo was magnificent, though I was quite angry when I realized I had bought the abridged version. I'm still meaning to get the 1000+ page version, but don't know when I'll have the time read it all.

re: 188

I certainly know the feeling of not quite being able to start a book you want to read, but House of Leaves is just a really good thriller on one level. It's true that without some Hegel and Derrida you're going to be missing out on a little bit of stuff, but it's really a *very* little bit. Mostly it's just a really cool, if somewhat complicated, story. 95% of the sophisticated looking works cited in footnotes were fabricated by Danielewski anyway.

Long story short: Read it! It isn't hard!

190: I read The Three Musketeers at ten just to spite the librarian who gave me a dubious look at seeing that the copy on hand was larger than my head. I very quickly learned that it was nothing like the movie that prompted my checking the book out in the first place, but damn it if I wasn't going to finish. Didn't regret it.

192: I don't know if it helps at all, but once Dantes' revenge plans hit their full stride the novel goes very, very quickly. My father bought The Count of Monte Cristo for me in middle school after seeing how much I enjoyed the above. Even then he knew better than to buy abridged copies. :-)

Why yes, I am a Dumas fan. However did you guess?

Anything by Dostoevsky tends to take me a bit (The Brothers Karamazov, I'm looking at you), but he's a favorite of mine regardless. I read Naked Lunch a few months ago at the behest of a close friend, and THAT was a decidedly unsatisfying read. More like a barely comprehensible 300-page mindf***.

I have still never finished Crime and Punishment. It's very well written (masterfully written, even), but it just crushes me. It is not so much difficult in its prose than its emotional weight.

>195 kabrahamson:: Read The Soft Machine. It's difficult but actually worth the effort.

Best Willie Burroughs is CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT. That one absolutely confirms his genius. But his canon of work is, without a doubt, a true mindfuck...

I got the impression form The Soft Machine that it was some other (indiscriminately chosen) guys butt. Decidedly not a topic of interest for me.

I have not read it and gleaned the above from skimming. I doubt I will ever read it, or any other Burroughs for that matter. Salaciousness for its own sake interests me not one whit. Especially when there are no pictures.

"Of Grammatology" by Derrida and a collection of speeches by Levinas. Derrida was like digesting a brick laced with LSD, whereas Levinas was just a brick, period but both gave me the occasional shiver of comprehension while reading and the feeling of having expanded my mind just a little bit when I was done.

Still couldn't tell you exactly what either is about if you so put a gun to my head, though.

Be careful how your head expands with Derrida.

199: So what did you get out of Derrida?

201: The idea of essence, and how to challange it. For a completely practical example, I was getting a vaccination and felt a little freaked out about having something "Other" inside of me. Randomly I thought of Derrida and how nothing is ever pure, and translated into bodies, we all interact with weird stuff making its way into our system all the time.

Don't know if that makes sense. I'm pretty sure you guys are snickering at my being pretentious or whatever, but some of the most dense philosophy still has gems in it.

I'm reading Derrida's The Politics of Friendship right now (one his his later books after he started writing about politics, religion, and ethics), and it is dense but not impossible. His thinking about love and friendship is pretty compelling. I doubt I will ever go back and try to read his earlier work.

Being pretentious is a positive VIRTUE in this group.

Don't worry about how you "sound", just come in, hang your deerstalker by the door, have a glass of your poison of choice and come hang out...

202: That's a good lesson of Derrida's to pick up. The quest for essences and certainty has not been fruitful, particularly if one is tempted to say humans have essences.

Speaking of mindfucks, Crying of Lot 49, especially the last chapter. I won't spoil it, suffice to say that its a compelling that gets more mysterious not less, could be an actual conspiracy or just something in your head, and it has loads of low puns and eloquent prose. All in a book shy of 200 pages.

Naked Lunch is a total mindfuck, like the bastard twin of Nabokov's Lolita. Naked Lunch is closer to the works of Sade, Swift, Rabelais, and Artaud than the usual naturalist narrative we're used to. It's shocking, disjointed, scary, disgusting, and paranoid. Then again, with McCarthy ascendant, the A-Bomb ever-present, and America living in a ticky-tacky cookie-cutter suburban existence, it seems like the right book at the right time. A flaming stink bomb on the lawns of the drones and conformists of post-WW 2 America.

Lolita attacked the same plastic cheapness with his carefully wrought bejeweled prose about a hypercultured pedophile taking advantage of a teenager (aka common practice of the Catholic Church until recently).

I thought about starting a new thread to ask this question, but decided to stick it in here instead. I hope that's ok--I don't anticipate this being a big long-term highjack situation.

I love DeLillo, I like Barthelme a lot, I love DFW, I like Vollmann a lot...you get the idea. One major missing piece here is Pynchon--I read The Crying of Lot 49 and *haaaated* it. I could try to articulate exactly why if necessary, but (just in general) does it seem possible for someone to hate Crying and like either V or Gravity's Rainbow? I'm sort of curious given their reputations, but I'm definitely not putting in the time necessary for either of those unless there's a good chance I'll like them.

If it helps, I liked Underworld a lot more than White Noise. I'm not sure why that would help, but it occurred to me that it's another apparently unusual opinion I have about this 'era' of literature.

I like UNDERWORLD far more than WHITE NOISE too. It's an absolute masterpiece (except for the last 2-3 pages where I think the Master could have brought things to a close with a nice, final note, like the last chord of "A Day in the Life", if you get my point).

Pynchon tasks you because he doesn't cater in any sense to the reader--you either buy into the full experience or, yup, you end up hating the Pynch's stuff. CRYING OF LOT 49 is probably his most accessible novel so if that one didn't appeal to you, er...

Pynchon's inaccessibility is either a turn-on or a turn-off. (Try throwing that name in front of a bunch of sci fi readers and see what happens. It's ridiculously amusing.) I read Gravity's Rainbow and V. without help and understood bits and pieces of them. Then I read Crying of Lot 49 with the Companion to Crying of Lot 49, which helped a lot, and put his other works in perspective.

Pynchon, like Bolano, is a divisive figure. You can't be mushy on either of them. You either love them or hate them. But it is nice to hear other perspectives on Pynchon, even from those who hated his books. Different strokes and all that ...

I'm also a liberal who likes Tom Clancy books (and Warhammer 40K books, since we're on the subject of cartoonish military fiction). Tom Clancy is good palate cleanser stuff. Fun and fast to read and it doesn't tax your brain.

209: As a liberal I can read spy novels like Tom Clancy etc. but there are some novelists who actually put their right-wing ideas too far into their plots and then I can't stomach them. Crichton and the mystery author Patricia Cornwell come to mind.

Only read one Chrichton book and that was as a kid. Never went back.

Clancy seems basically like a movement conservative with a yen for foreign policy and rad weapons. The strawman liberals he populates his novels with are kind of funny. I've only read one book of his, but I wouldn't mind reading some more. He seems far more palatable than Ayn Rand or any other pro-capitalist wingnut.

1: Cliff, I'm finally trying to read Ulysses with only minor preparation and it too, is kicking my ass. It's like Mrs. Dalloway on psyllicybin.

There must be some kind of metric here. How many times must you read Ulysses, or what % comprehension must be attained before one has earned the official title of literary snob?

I'll give ol' Jimmie a once through read and then give it a rest. Then I'll just continue to kick back here and wet my pants over the posts of kswolff, et multi al.

In practice, snobs only have to be able to drop the name of the book in conversation to impress their friends. No comprehension is necessary.

Oh, sure, but REAL snobs can also throw great chunks of text at you and wow you with their talent for minutiae. On the other hand, they can't balance their checkbooks or figure out how an ATM works...

215: Though they don't know how to work one, they'll never call it an ATM Machine.

Hey Cliff, you refered to a LT thread about your preparation for Ulysses. Is that still accessible some where? I've seen a post of some excellent on-line resources, including heavily annotated transcriptions.

I've access to Ulysses on the Liffey, James Joyce, Two Decades of Criticism, and McKenna's James Joyce - A Reference Guide.

I can't remember which thread it was where I talked about how long it took me to prep for ULYSSES. Read all the bios I could get my hands on but the Stuart Gilbert book, prepared with Joyce's assistance, was pretty much useless.

Let me plug one tome I thought very good, a lovely companion volume to Ellmann's bio, Peter Costello's JAMES JOYCE: THE YEARS OF GROWTH (1882-1915). Anthony Burgess praised it when it came out and I recommend it highly.

Thanks! And another kind soul pointed me to this thread:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/57530

Those folks look like they can provide a pretty decent bibliography. But don't OVER-PREPARE, the book should be able to stand on its own. ULYSSES is very funny and earthy in places; one can swoon about the syntax and hidden symbols but unless a reader can enjoy a book on some level, what's the point?

A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. The only challenge about it was trying to understand completely Pechorin's mind and character. Seems egotistical to say I succeeded; I suppose it's just as well that I didn't. I feel I got close, though.

Definitely worth reading. If only Lermontov had written more with Pechorin (or had lived longer, either would be nice).

Oh, I just found a copy of that after seeing it in the film 'A Heart in Winter'.

I've been having a lot of fun reading and ressurecting these old posts, tonight.

And, I've one comment about Delillo. For a guy that exclusively uses very...simple...words...

He can be quite the challenge!

sea of poppies - not for conceptual problems, or space and time problems, but because the reader is constantly working with the different pidgins that were used in early 19th C India/Chinese trade. One for Muslim sailors, another for the internal Brit/Indian colonial thing, and others as appropriate. There's a glossary at the end, but it too is very idiosyncratic as it's presented as the work of one of the main protagonists.

Atlas Shrugged ... because it's so terrible. A horrendous philosophy, cardboard characters, epic length, and prose so overwrought and overworked it makes my eyes bleed.

Isabel at Midnight by Ken Knight. An overlong amateurish slog. Good story ruined by lack of an editor or a spellchecker.

Peter Sotos is a tough read, since he stares into the abyss of human nastiness in an utterly unsentimental way.

I'm a reader who loves to linger through books, soaking up the details, and loving the magic of words...and I'm a writer who enjoys crafting her own words...so, I appreciate challenging books...

Porius A Romance of the Dark Ages by John Cowper Powys... a beefy tome, wordy as the day is long, but the writing is splendid, and there is an amazing cast of characters that all have a story to tell...it's the Mabinogeon on steroids...my Fred and I have agreed to each crack open the covers of our copies (yes, that's plural) and spend the fall and winter reading it together (we have both read it at least twice, and want to read it again!)

War and Peace...am I the only person who found humor in this book? It was a treat to read, I really don't understand why people are so intimidated by it, it's a doorstop to be sure, but it runs along at such a brisk pace that I was surprised how quickly I read it, and adored it all the way!

The Master and Margarita What wickedly funny book! I'm a real sucker for the Russians, and there's nothing finer than a good translation to make the reading experience a good one, I'm a fan of the Mirra Ginsburg translation.

The Waves by Virginia Woolf... breathtaking, gorgeous, magical, and I love this book, I peek into it from time to time, read random passages, and fall into it...

Ulysses... a real piece of work that one... I entered it with my mind wide open to receive what it had to off, and it is all that I expected and more, the humor was surprising and I was glad to receive it in the spirit in which it was written.

Wonderland by Joyce Carol Oates... I read this book when I was only 14 when much of it was way over my head, but I steamed through it because I wanted to read something other than what was within my age range...I was ready to grow up, and checked this book from the library, it was a monster in girth, frightening and beautiful at the same time...I rolled around with it in my bicycle basket much of the time and climbed a favorite tree to read where no one could bug me!

That's my story... I'm stickin' to it.

The only two that were challenging that I'm really glad I stuck through are Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow. I like DFW and Murakami and Auster and Nabokov and De Lillo and Woolfe and Burroughs and Delany, and I have read lots of Victorians and 19th Century Russians, but none of those seemed hard to get through.

I gave up on Cryptonomicon and Remainder and every Dickens I've ever tried because life is too short to read books that other people think you should like.

eta: I couldn't get through Riddley Walker, either.

Agree with everyone who said Ulysses was hard. But worth it.

I didn't have trouble reading Master and Margarita. I thought it was hilarious and sailed right along.

Les Miserables was a slog for me.

Just being long does not make a book hard - I thought Infinite Jest, Anna Karenina, and War and Peace were all enjoyable, fast paced, and not really difficult to read.

I read Paradise Lost last year and I think it was a bit of a slog, particularly some of the middle chapters.

Atlas Shrugged is taking me longer to read than Ulysses Hell, Kissinger's memoirs fly by faster than Rand's anvilicious literary atrocity. But AS is worth reading 1) to see what all the fuss is about; 2) to use as a cudgel against Objectivism and Rand's deregulatory philosophy (the same one can quote the Bible back at fundamentalist d-bags who hate gays).

2666 - Not so much for its length, but for its subject matter. Unrelentingly grim, Bolano's opinions of the Mexican government and its policies are not veiled at all. I loved it, though, for its playfullness, especially when you could just tell he was fucking with the critics.

Underworld - The psychological detritus deposited into the minds of humans living through the cold war. The timeline kept me off balance, but in the end I felt as if I had learned more "about" the era then I could from a history book.

Three Plays by August Strindberg - The guy was just a misogynist through and through. Tough slogging through these.

Crime and Punishment - Bleak, psychological self-agonizing. The writing, in the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation, was not difficult, but reading it mid-Winter may not have been the best idea. I did find it harder going than the nearly thrice as long War and Peace, which I read as an epic adventure, the 19th century version of modern warfare stories.

As for House of Leaves, I found it much easier going than Danielewski's next book, Only Revolutions, which is a 360 page prose poem (with 180 words per page) alternately told by the two halves of a rebellious teenaged couple, each partner's text typeset in the alternate direction so you have to rotate the book, but only after every 8 pages. It all works out and I was able to come away with a history of transportation in 20th century America. Weird indeed. Can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

Those are mind-benders all right. Strindberg's INFERNO and OCCULT DIARY are also fun reads.

I'm not sure I have ever had a difficult book in the sense of the original post, simply because if I don't enjoy a book, I stop reading it. The only book I can remember finishing despite great difficulties is War and Peace. And that was only because of circumstances, I was stuck in the middle of nowhere with not much else to read. Besides, I cheated and simply skipped all the boring stuff about war and politics to read only the "story" parts. I enjoyed them once I started doing this.

On the other hand, I am lucky in that I don't really need to understand a work of fiction to enjoy it. I am currently having a lot of fun with Ulysses. I read The Crying of Lot 49 a long time ago, but I couldn't tell you whether I liked it or not. I probably didn't know even immediately after finishing it. I'd like to try another Pynchon, in English this time (read Lot 49 in French).

Ever since I started reading this group, my wishlist has been growing at an alarming rate. Keep dropping those names, people! I'll be in the back taking notes.

I used to read Dostoevsky at school but when I went back to his work later it was by a different translater and I didn't like it. Odd, or what?
oldstick.

232> Doesn't surprise me, the translation is a critical element in appreciation of a book. I am very sensitive to language and I hate a badly translated book.

I once heard that Edgar Allan Poe was much better regarded in France than in the English speaking world, in part because he was translated by Baudelaire. The implication being that the quality of the translation was better than the original... I have no idea if that is true though. I only read Poe in Baudelaire's translation, and I did enjoy it.

I only discovered library thing last week and already my wish list has experienced exponential growth, this is a bit overwhelming, but otherwise fantastic. The most recent challenges for me have been Steppenwolf and Blake's America, a Prophecy both were rewarding but forced me to question my intelligence as I would often come to the end of passages and think "wait, what's going on? I know words, but not when they are put together like that." I navigated as best I could and felt like a real champion when I came to the end.

War & Peace took a while, but it wasn't difficult for me. Anybody who skips the war parts is missing out, though. :P

For me, Gravity's Rainbow was a complete slog, with a few moments of hilarity but mostly just random bumbling about for 900 pages.

A comment in #234 reminded me of Borges' The library of Babel. The library contained every possible combination of letters, numbers, etc, all the great literature as well as the trash, both already written and yet to be, not to mention thousands of volumes of just plain gibberish, in fact, this message and indeed all of LibraryThing, and everything else on the internet has already been codified in the library. One of the most interesting things about this concept is, it appears DNA works a lot like that. Occasional bits of meaningful stuff surrounded by vast oceans of gibberish. Borges has a vision into nature that was way ahead of his time. He saw things we are only now discovering. If you are looking for a name to add to your list, do not forget the name of Jorge Luis Borges. He will literally rock your world right off its foundations.

I'll second Gene's raves re: Borges. What a writer. Literally no one else like him in world literature.

I've got Labyrinths on the shelves, somewhere, I believe. Must dust it off, I've been thinking of Borges lately...

My most difficult read of late would probably be A Clockwork Orange. I didn't find the language difficult, and while it was chock full of violence, it wasn't truly upsetting on that level (okay, maybe when they destroyed the books...). While I was rather disturbed that I was on Alex's side sometimes, I definitely relished the discomfort of the lack of black/white moral code in the book.

But I came away with the feeling that Burgess was irretrievably depressed while writing it. I kept on wanting to tell him "it's not that bad, really". And then thinking maybe it is (was) that bad, which made me depressed.

And I'm worried I may have misunderstood something somewhere. (Am I supposed to agree with the odious Alex at times? Or does that mean that I'm a borderline sociopath myself??)

235> LOL, yes, I'm sure I missed something! Life is made of missing things if you think about it. I am now reaching an age when it's time for me to come to terms with the fact that I will, in my life, do, see, read maybe 0.001% of everything that it would be possible to do, see or read. If I'm lucky. I'm not too worried about that, mostly (well, except for the occasional pang :P). I think it's much more important to concentrate on doing right what I actually do, and enjoying what I do read.

If I'm recalling correctly, CLOCKWORK was partially inspired by an assault on Burgess's wife by an American serviceman. Mebbe I'm wrong but that sounds right. So if it seems Burgess was depressed while writing it, that might be the source. There's also incandescent fury in that book, likely for the same reason...

>240 CliffBurns: yes she was attacked in April 1944 by four GI deserters. Burgess was informed of this in a letter from Sonia Brownwell(later Sonia Orwell) , "an occasional drinking friend of Lynne's". He and his wife also encountered violent teenage gangs while on home leave in the late 1950s.

I recently found a paperback copy of Ada at a library resale shop. This particular edition is the first to include Vivian Darkboom's notes. ADA online,Brian Boyd's annotated site, is also keyed to it. These aids are of great help in explaining, among other things, which mistranslation and which garbled version of whose work Nabokov is parodying.

>Wookiebender & 240 & 241
Very interesting about his wife. It almost makes me want to read the book/rethink my reaction to the movie. I haven't read the book, but have a friend who went to a religious high school in Chicago where Clockwork Orange was required reading. She had a hard time with the slang and the violence. I've only seen the movie and will absolutely never see it again, but of course some scenes from it have stuck in my head for over twenty years. Judging from the movie, I'd say you are right, Wookie, that sometimes we are supposed to be so much in Alex's head that we are siding with him. I think we are supposed to believe that the reprogramming he went through was verging on the law overstepping it's boundaries. I think Burgess was also struggling with the fact that our culture is both fascinated and appalled by violence. Nothing like making you side with the villain sometimes to slap you into seeing how appalling what the author is describing really is.

I didn't state that well, but I think you know what I mean. Being sucked into that kind of sickness makes the reader examine themselves as well. Any author who can do that is talented, and also expert at providing an uncomfortable read.