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Short Little Difficult Books

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Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#91

Post by mordechai9000 »

ramesh31 wrote: post #18
vhantz wrote: post #8

What prepares one to read Finnegan's wake?

>What prepares one to read Finnegan's wake? Listening to Joyce read it aloud: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kFqiv8Vww&pp=ygUcam95Y2UgcmV... . I had so much trouble trying to read him before understanding the intended pacing. It's more poetry than prose.

This was my experience, too. A Skeleton Key To Finnegan's Wake by Joseph Campbell helped me understand the overall themes of the book, and hearing Joyce read it helped me appreciate the language and the rhythm of the words. I found it more approachable once I saw it as a story told in wild poetic dream sequence imagery.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#92

Post by kusokurae »

I find normal prose suffocatingly boring and poorly paced so this is wonderful. I love stuff like Blood Meridian & old middle english poems with the asterisk that the length results in the difficulty bordering on turning leisure reading into a form of labour or study.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#93

Post by dreamcompiler »

wavemode wrote: post #72
paulorlando wrote: post #4

I happened to have been assigned Moby Dick in 9th grade English class. Foolishly put off reading it until the night before the book report was due. Got about 1/3 of the way through and went through life thinking it was boring. Fast forward decades, I'm now reading it for real. It hilarious, it's pause encouraging, I love it! (And I'm still only 1/3 through.)

I had a similar experience with the play "A Raisin in the Sun". Reading it in class, it was boring and difficult to relate to. Watching the play live as an adult, you realize it's actually hilarious and heart-wrenching. Part of it is growing up, but part of it is (obviously) that plays aren't meant to be read. There's a lot of detail and tone that doesn't really come across properly, and it sucks the life out of the…

To this day I still think Shakespeare is the most overrated buffoon ever to put words on paper, probably because I was forced to read so much of his work in school.

I realize I'm probably wrong about my assessment, but I've tried to watch performances of his plays as an adult and the outcome is always the same: His words just sound like random noise to my brain. They bounce off.

And yet I love Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian is one of my favorite novels. Go figure.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#94

Post by m463 »

threetonesun wrote: post #40
QuercusMax wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with things like (picking at random) The Great Gatsby and a lot of literature having to do with adult relationships and romance. How on earth is a 16-year-old in 2025 going to understand what's happening in Gatsby? I read it, wrote some papers and got As on them, but didn't really make sense of it at the time.

The Great Gatsby is an Americanized version of a Greek tragedy, I don't think it's too hard for a 16 year old to understand. It's no "Rabbit, Run", at least.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#97

Post by cgio »

sotix wrote: post #86
pklausler wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that English might have fewer opportunities for this sort of thing; I found Beowulf to be surprisingly dull in the original. Greek, on the other hand, has lifetimes' worth of good stuff in its ancient forms, and can really reward the time spent in learning to read them.

However, I can hardly read Ancient Greek as a modern Greek speaker!

The point is for it to be hard.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#99

Post by q-base »

paulorlando wrote: post #4

I happened to have been assigned Moby Dick in 9th grade English class. Foolishly put off reading it until the night before the book report was due. Got about 1/3 of the way through and went through life thinking it was boring. Fast forward decades, I'm now reading it for real. It hilarious, it's pause encouraging, I love it! (And I'm still only 1/3 through.)

I read it a few years ago and was severely disappointed. All these comments about Moby Dick makes me reconsider giving it a second go.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#100

Post by aquariusDue »

ssttoo wrote: post #19
nluken wrote: post #3

Nice little article. Another personal suggestion in this vein: The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin (trans. Sally Laird), which consists entirely of unattributed dialogue. It's challenging at first but once you get a feel for the rhythm and start recognizing characters by how they speak, it becomes a really charming read.

Let me add also Blindness by José Saramago, it has pages-long paragraphs and sentences, characters have no names just descriptions… it’s surprising at first but not hard to get into. Amazing book!

I also recommend "Death with Interruptions" by the same author. I too was blindsided by how it was written but once you get used to the style it just flows.
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