The 5 Most Difficult Books Ever! (Fiction)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2024
- In this video, we're talking about the most difficult books, and what exactly it is that makes them so hard to get through.
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BOOKS MENTIONED:
(These are Amazon Affiliate links, If you buy anything through these it will support the channel):
📚 Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
amzn.to/41BPymT
📚 Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
amzn.to/3toq4wI
📚 The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
amzn.to/41BrRuV
📚 Ulysses - James Joyce
amzn.to/4azsf15
📚 Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
amzn.to/48vrtjN
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FURTHER READING:
I found A LOT of commentary on these books, here are the things directly referenced in the video.
🎞️ How to Read Gravity's Rainbow
• How to Read Gravity's ...
🎞️ How to Pronounce all of Finnegans Wake thunderwords
• DON'T PANIC: it's only...
🎞️ The Sound and the Fury Movie (watch the 1959 version, the James Franco version got TERRIBLE reviews)
www.imdb.com/title/tt0053298/...
📚 An online guide to each chapter of Ulysses
www.ulyssesguide.com/11-sirens
📍 Infinite Jest Map
sampottsinc.com/ij/
OTHER SOURCES:
www.buzzfeed.com/louispeitzma...
earlybirdbooks.com/difficult-...
/ 827.most_difficult_novels
dbrl.bibliocommons.com/list/s...
airshipdaily.com/blog/09242014...
www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/...
www.newyorker.com/culture/cul...
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:22 Infinite Jest
01:12 Gravity's Rainbow
02:15 Stream-of-consciousness
02:44 The Sound and the Fury
03:54 Ulysses
05:57 Finnegans Wake
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Music from Epidemic Sound
Stock Footage from Pexels, Unsplash
I once read the first page of “Finnegan’s Wake” out loud to show someone how absurd it is, but when I got to the “koaxkoax” they said “Wait, isn’t that how the frogs speak in Aristophanes’ ‘The Frogs’.” They were correct. They had identified an allusion, though what it mattered in context remained a mystery.
", ...though what it mattered in context remained a mystery." is literary criticism of some weight. Our
ability to doubt efficiently is so far from the animal, in our minds, that we think the hesitations of the
fishes have no meaning, since our efforts to encode them have been barren. "Woe unto them that
taking tides for their inflections, have more purpose to perform a craft than finding their assignment."
Shit now I have two books to read
When I was in college my lit professor brought in a recording of Joyce reading Finnegan’s Wake. It was totally different from seeing it on a black and white page.
I've read all of it. I have to agree with Nabokov (the author of "Lolita") that it's not that great. Eliminating plot and character for the most part and reducing a novel basically to word play is just taking away too much. The most difficult novel ever written, but not among the best.
@@johnkrieger185 I’ve never made it through Finnegan’s Wake. I did make it through Ulysses, while I was living in Dublin. That helped. I think it was worth it.
I read Gravity's Rainbow and I can honestly say the only thing I remember about it is that I finished.
filtered. GR isn't hard
@@greatcoldemptinessWhy do some readers have to be such a pompous ass? Good for you. You read it and didn’t think it was hard. Great. Most people are going to find it very difficult to read and understand, because it is intentionally a difficult book, but that doesn’t make them stupid or a bad reader. OP just made a joke and you decided to be a jerk for no reason. Hope you’re proud of that.
@@Cheeses_K_Riced No, it’s just rude and there’s no reason for it.
Same thing, except with Ulysses.
I read it for college.
@greatcoldemptiness no reader has the same reading pace or comprehensiveness as another reader
I read Ulysses while living in Dublin. I think you need a knowledge of Dublin and it helps if you’re familiar with Irish music. My friends and I did Bloomsday one year. We hit every pub mentioned in Ulysses, one drink allowed in each pub. By the time the pubs closed, always after the last bus, we staggered home. It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience.
You should do the route of don Quixote and/or the route of El Cid, next.
yeah, I've actually heard you can (or at least one point could) use Ulysses as a sort of tour guide for Dublin.
@@kevinschultz6091 No so much now, but back n my day you could. Dublin had really changed.
They're all still in business, a hundred years later?
@@vanhouten64 I did Bloomsday in 1972. Most of Joyce’s pubs were still going. I don’t know how many of them are still there.
The Sound and the Fury is a terrific book and well worth the effort to read and comprehend.
That book is beautiful
I agree. Did a Faulkner seminar in which we read 17 of his 20 or so novels. Sound & the Fury and Absalom, Absalom were my personal favories, though I could not blame anyone for having completely different ones. And I love the short story, The Bear. Spent a couple of years with a lot of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, & Dos Passos... and in the library's closed stacks with all the literary criticsm about them and their works was. A couple of the best years of my life. Told myself I would read Finnegan's Wake for retirement. Well, I'm here and I know that's not going to happen. As much as I love Joyce...
The Sound and the Fury is genuis.
@@evelynmayton470: I could not agree more!
I couldn't pass page 30. I might give it a try again some day.
There is a book club in California that read "Finnegan's Wake".
It took them 28 years.
That's nothing. A man who was convicted for speaking too slowly has just died in prison. He was halfway through his sentence.
I read it over several months. I just set a goal of reading, I think, 10 pages a day. I also read "A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake" and another guide at the same time.
So they actually finished it? Surely you jest.
Trump said in an interview he read "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake" when he was 12. I believe him.
@@pedroparamo7351 Trump probably couldn't understand the five simplest books ever written.
On the other hand, "Dubliners" by James Joyce, a collection of short stories, is very readable and quite good. It's hard to believe it's even the same author as Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.
True, Dubliners is a marvelous book.
Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man is a pretty straight forward read, as well.
@@kevinlakeman5043 Except towards the end, where it becomes more elliptical and resembles the first part of "Ulysses".
I've found Joyce's short stories much better than Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.
@@parkerbrown-nesbit1747 "The Dead" is a masterpiece. Some of the others may also be, but I would not put them on the same level as "Ulysses".
Great video; of these I’ve only read “Ulysses", but I loved your take on these...uh...classics.
Thank you!
I remember loving The Sound and The Fury So Much. Thank you for bringing it up, time for a good old reread
Hegel's "The Phenomenology of Spirit" also deserves a mention.
It's also non-fiction! So that's an advantage. 🙂
Yeah, I created a reading group for it at my University a year a two ago. Over 14 weeks of consistent focused meetings each week, we only got through the first 25 paragraphs of the introduction as a group. Really good time.
Also, as someone who has now read a lot more of Hegel, I’d recommend new Hegel readers to read his lectures first then go through the little logic and big logic then go through the Phenomenology. A lot of the issue with going straight into the Phenomenology is that it uses a bunch of concepts (from his logic) that are left undefined in the Phenomenology.
Or anyting written by Derrida
I was thinking Being and Time by Heidegger to be harder because he references Hegel a bunch but at this point we are splitting hairs lol
@@DiotimaMantinea-gc1uwdo you really think that. I read at least hundred pages of both books & I think Hegel is way, way harder
This was a lucid and well-written survey of difficult books. In graduate school, I spent an entire semester on “Ulysses,” starting by carefully reading Homer’s “The Odyssey.” If you’re reasonably familiar with that classic, Joyce’s cascade of allusions makes more sense. This was pre-internet, so I had to rely on published articles and guidebooks to decipher the multitude of other allusions and languages. It would be easier to solve the puzzles today by using online material. But (as others have pointed out), the real pleasure of reading this difficult book is Joyce’s masterful wordplay, which often is more accessible if read aloud. Doing so definitely increased my appreciation. Joyce’s quip about professors spending their lives on his book has turned out to be so true. As for “Finnegans Wake,” I agree with William Faulkner’s assessment: “This is a case of the artist getting too close to the divine fire and being electrocuted by it!”
I can't even imagine trying to tackle this one without the internet.
For the non-scholar, I'd actually recommend NOT trying to catch the references and allusions, at least with the Bloom chapters. You can get a lot of mileage out of it just by inhabiting the mind of a character so fully, with writing that sometimes sings, and the fart jokes.
Yes, it’s pretty common from what I’ve heard for English departments to run a course on Ulysses.
Before the Internet, we had annotated versions, which are actually still really nice: You can sit down & just read straight thru without having to open any device in parallel.
William Faulkner is great.
Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are both so worth the effort. Actually Joe Campbell co authored a book titled A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake that is very helpful. Thanks for making this video and encouraging us all to keep on reading!!
A very useful companion book.
"The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works." James Joyce
Butterfly: I got only two weeks, sir.
Once I asked my literature teatcher what was the hardest book he ever tried to read, he said immediatly "Ulysses, I took 6 years to finish and I still dont get it".
And just for curiosity, here in Brazil we have a writter called João Guimarães Rosa, who is our James Joyce, he also spoke several lenguages and made a truly masterpiece called "Grande Sertão Veredas", maybe the greatest and hardest brazilian novel.
Wow that is so cool! I’ve never heard of that author before, I’m definitely gonna look him up, thank you for sharing 🙂
No one should ever even try to read "Ulysses" or "Finnegan's Wake." They are pure mental masturbation, and their only value is that they amused Joyce in writing them. The idea that one is writing something of such value that it is worth months or years of somebody else's time to read is such an example of overweening arrogance, pretension, and narcissism that it's disgusting and contemptible.
@@DrawntoBooks You should do video on the five most difficult books that worth the trouble to read. "Das Kapital" would probably be on that list.
O comentário que eu tava procurando haha
@@donnievance1942 hahahahah
My father used to say that Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" was the hardest book he had ever attempted to read. This is a person who read the entire dictionary from start to finish. Multiple times.
I’ve studied academic philosophy extensively and I struggle to get through a 10 page excerpt of Critique of Pure Reason . Although the work of Logical Positivist A J Ayer was the most incomprehensible
I would say that Kant's writing is what makes the First Critique so hard to read. Rather than its explicit content and ideas. For example, you can get a good secondary reading and Kant's ideas tend to become quite comprehensible over time and with more experience. That doesn't mean the content is not also difficult. But Kant's approach certainly didn't help readers. Now Hegel by comparison is just crazy difficult on both the conceptual and the textual level. And not because he was a terrible or dry writer. Even if you do find a secondary work that makes Hegel somewhat more digestible... it normally comes at the expense of much of Hegel's own intentions and ambitions. Put 5 of the top Hegel scholars in the world into one room... and you will end up with at least 6 or 7 incompatible interpretations of what Hegel was trying to convey! 😄
Read this at college. Once I got past the initial style of writing, it was actually quite readable and definitely thought-provoking.
The best way to get through Germans is by learning German language and familiarising with classical German literature. In the words of gadamer, Germans really love their long drawn out sentences and soulful obscurities. And when you translate that to English, it becomes difficult.
@shahsadsaadu5817 I guess the reason I found it so decidedly readable was that I do speak German. It was my first language, though apart from the first 2 years of my life, I've lived in the UK. I read it at college too, which makes a difference. You're more inclined to really give things a go when everyone else around you is doing the same
I LOVE this video, especially the sections on Joyce. Quite apart from the actual content, your delivery is spot on. Difficult as they are, I love 'Ulysses' and' Finnegans Wake'. In comparison with 'Finnegan's Wake', 'Ulysses is fairly straightforward - but to be honest, I read them mainly for the fun of the language.
The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea 😂
Brilliant analysis of hard to read books. Thanks. Enjoyed Dubliners. Finnegan's Wake was impossible. Enjoyed James Joyce's Ulysses drama on BBC radio 4.
James Joyce was an author who was designed for audiobooks. I've read Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake twice, the first time in paper and the second time by audio, and the listening experience was so rich and satisfying.
I listened to full unabridged audio version as well and this is a good way to begin his book. Homer's work was heard before ever making it to print.
is it in a Dublin accent, English Received Pronunciation, or general midwest American?
Wasn’t it written in a Dubliner accent?
... nice tip. but do you think joyce wrote it with the intention of technology being needed to understand or enjoy it?
i've heard of all these books but only tried to read one; joyce's "Ulysses." i stopped trying after about 5 pages. and those first 5 pages i couldn't decipher with a captain marvel decoder ring. i bought it at a used book store on the cheap. man i love libraries and book stores. they have that great musty smell of intrigue, adventure and knowledge. i hate shopping but book stores and record shops, both practically extinct these days (thanks technology), are the only places i like to browse.
Deanna! What a magnificent staredown we just had. You won of course.
Gravity's Rainbow may be confoundingly difficult in some ways. But I recall parts that were utterly beautiful, and others that were utterly, utterly hilarious. A character looks out over a city at sunrise and sees "crystals growing in the morning's beaker." Some great writing.
Yea it's kind of sad the poster wrote it off without giving a try. Also kind of weird they rated the difficulty without reading it now that I am thinking about it.
@@hfjdksalablebecause most “booktubers” just like talking about how much they like books
And those crystals are the condensation trails of V-2 rockets coming at him. Beauty and terror as identical.
There once was a rocket called V2, to pilot which you did not need to. You just pushed a button and it would leave nothing but stiffs and big holes, and debris, too. (That's what I remember from the 1.5 years I spent reading Gravity's Rainbow.)
@@philpollack8140oh, bro... You forgot the part about the banana peal? That's tragic. 😂🤣
Concise and very informative.
Love your sound affects.
After the first read through, Sound And Fury is not that bad. I have gotten to the point where I can tell where we are and who is telling the story in about any part. The beauty of the writing is what got me through the first read. The writing is intoxicating. It is one of the books that has shaped the way I think about reality since I first read it almost 50 years ago.
I got about half way through V and knew I was missing something important and started over. I had missed the point entirely the first time but had still enjoyed it. It has a lot of very funny parts. It was like reading an all night BS session in college back when everybody was high on something.
5. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace 0:24
4. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon 1:12
3. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner 2:13
2. Ulysses - James Joyce 3:53
1. Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce 5:54
Of all of these, I think _Ulysses_ is the only one I've attempted. I bought it and decided to read it, and probably got 100 pages in. Thank you, thank you!
It's the one that sounds most interesting actually.
@@SugarSnapDragonit's very interesting. James Joyce doesn't pull any punches telling the story he wants to tell how he wants to tell it, a habit that saw Ulysses banned in the US for around 10 years (book burnings and all) until a Supreme Court decision said that the book was not p*rn*graphy.
Infinite Jest is my favorite novel of all time. My first time through I had never read anything like it before and I was enthralled. Like Gravity's Rainbow, it rewards you the second time through. These authors chopped up the narrative in a way that significant details are presented before sometimes many pages later you are provided a reason to recognize their significance. While overall I enjoyed GR, the obscene scenes in that book are over the top for me. I got most of the way through Ulysses and enjoyed it for the most part, but I had help from an explanatory text that I read at the same time. I appreciated Joyce's experimentation, helping usher in modernist literature. Truly, Ulysses has humor as you say - but so does Infinite Jest, in spades - and Gravity's Rainbow as well. I like works of art that make me think, that don't reveal their mysteries so easily, that I can return to again and again and find new things each time. I am now intrigued to check out Finnegan's Wake.
I liked how the entire climax & denouement of Infinite Jest happens off-screen, and he gives you enough knowledge to fill in the blanks and work out what happened. It's really unique how he did it.
You might enjoy Nabokov's Pale Fire, and Michel Tournier's The Ogre
At the high school where I worked, there was a paper bound Finnegan’s Wake in the fiction section. It survived “weeding” by three long serving librarians. I hope it is still there. A librarian’s little joke.
I guess the dumb Southerners, if it's in the USA, did not consider it subversive.
As a former teacher-librarian who did weeding, I could never get rid of classics, no matter how old they were looking and knowing they’d never, ever be read by staff or students. I just couldn’t. It seemed like a crime, morally wrong, a loss of our history.
“Weeding” would take more stamina than I could muster. Often the books discarded from the library found their way to my classroom, where I had my own collection of 250+ Book Club book sets. Book Club , which can be as challenging and transformative as you want, can be the best of pedagogies if taken seriously. My colleagues finally adopted it, and watered it down to the point that it wasn’t worth much. Book Club also allows you to compensate for the shortcomings of a official core literature, in our case almost exclusively DWEM.@@learningisfun2108
@@learningisfun2108and maybe, just maybe, some dreamy-eyed kid would pick up that Dead Souls or Anna Karenina, or even Master and Margarita.
@learningisfun2108 I mean even if the school gets rid of it that doesn’t mean no one can ever read it
"The Sound and the Fury" was one of the most amazing reading experiences I had in high school. It remains one of the most important milestones in my life for myriad reasons. I love that exasperating but ingenious deconstruction of the "normal" storytelling process. I'm so glad I stuck with it until the entire picture began to develop like a Polaroid photo. And, yes, I love both Joyce books, too.
The sound in the fury makes much more sense if you have read Faulkner‘s other books set in Yuknapatawpaw county.
A masterpiece. Not difficult at all. It is somehow a shame to call this book this way.
@@user-lb4vh7xw9i I agree that it's a masterpiece. But I've noticed that lots of people agree with her that it's a difficult read. I loved it myself.
I read this in college. And once I got the rhythm of the stream of consciousness chapter, I fell in love with it.
Found it not difficult so much as bothersome to read. His 'Absalom, Absalom', however, is on my list of the ten best novels I've ever read. Got so drawn into it that it was like swimming underwater, holding my breath. Had to take a break every now and then, to get air. And then back in. (His 'As I Lay Dying' is far better IMHO than TSatF, and is funny to boot.)
Very funny, charming, educational, wonderful video. So glad TH-cam showed it to me. That's what I get for joining my library's reading challenge, I guess.
Thank you, I appreciate that! 🫶
I’ve read two of the five, and started FW. Ok, I’m a chemist, not a lit. person. But I would love to join your book club!
I think you should also have mentioned "The waste land" by T.S. Eliott. It is basically a poem-novel featuring time shifts, language shifts, full of literary references both modern and ancient.
It is basically Joyce, but in verses.
The only thing at all difficult about The Waste Land is knowing the allusions. Much, much easier than Joyce and much, much shorter. He even gives you notes!
The Waste Land is so much better written!
I was a member of the National Forensics League in high school, and read a section of this for poetry interpretation competition. It always scored high with the judges (most of whom were English teachers).
I love that poem; it is amazing. Made a huge impression on me.
Waste Land and Ulysses were published in same year of 1922. Both authors admitted a debt to Wagner (each work containing numerous references) and were striving to make literature have the same visceral power as Wagner's music.
Yes ! Just the opening three lines ;
' April is the cruellest month
Breeding lilacs out of the dead land / Mixing memory and desire....
I struggled with The Brothers Karamozov. It is not that it's some unreadable thing, but it is difficult ( much more so that Crime and Punishment), and it's just so damn dark. It's worth it in the end, but boy, was that a trudge for me.
I’m reading this right now actually. I love Russian literature, I agree it is dark though, and a trudge, some nights I just can’t even pick it up. But I still love it!
@DrawntoBooks Mine was made worse as it was a read for high school. I re-read it on my own which was better. This teacher's summer reading was "The Agony and the Ecstacy" if that tells one anything. 🤣
I spent half a year - at least - on C+P. Was it worth it? No.
Now I am going through Dr. Zhivago, which is lighter, but anything but a page turner, I must say.
Brothers Karamozov- the one book I found too depressing to finish.
I struggled with "The Idiot." Not impossible to understand just boring.
"The Castle" by Kafka should be on any most-difficult-to-read book list. That novel will most certainly put your patience to the test.
Took me two years to finish, and I love Kafka. 😅
I think it is fitting that it is unfinished.
The joke : The Castle is such an elusive a read that even Kafka didn’t finish it …
When I finished it I wrote in my diary that after such a hermetic book I need something opposite, so I picked 'Who Killed Palomino Molero' by Llosa. And yes, they are both splendid and thought provoking books with opposite grades of difficulty
Not difficult at all. Quite entertaining, actually.
Great list and commentary. I did manage to get through Ulysses on the third try, but only by taking two days and reading it straight through. Finnegans Wake lost me around the middle of page 2.
After reading one of Stephen Hawking's books, I looked at the 'Further reading" section at the end. It recommended a book by Roger Penrose, which I subsequently bought. It was a lengthy book, and the first sentence in the preface read ( I'll never forget this) - "In order to appreciate the work in this book, it is necessary to have a firm grasp of mathematics, so the first seventeen chapters of this book are dedicated to mathematics".
After returning to the store that same day, I pointed this sentence out to the girl who sold me the book...and I had no trouble getting my money back.
🤣
I'll bet that was "The Emperor's New Mind"
A nice story, but it doesn't add up.
Gasp, a maths pun - and a good 1 2. @@davidcopson5800
Are you talking about The Road to Reality? I keep a copy handy on my bedstand right next to Finnegans Wake😂
It really is worth the time, especially if you want to understand what modern physics is for real, not just conceptual abstractions.
Emperors New Mind is a good one too. Dr. Penrose is a great science communicator, but he does ask a bit from his audience. Like: study math intensely for a few years. That kind if thing😂
I think the key to "read" Finnegans Wake is in what you said about the Sirens chapter of Ulysses. Joyce is not using language to convey meaning, but to convey music, in all its parameters: melody (sentences), harmony (clusters of words), timbre (the different languages, rhythm (word spacing & punctuation), etc. So, the book works more as a symphony, than as a novel. You don't listen to Beethoven's Fifth to rationalize every note that is being plucked, but to submerge in the mass of sounds & flow with the music. That approach to Finnegans Wake make it very enjoyable, in spite of you understanding what is going on (which does not mean that it's utter nonesense, but rather that the motifs are scattered all along the work). It was something not unusual in its time: Kandinski made music with his paintings, Schoenberg was thinking his music in terms of colors, &c. As you said, Joyce is, in his core, very playful, & if you let go with the flow of it, eventually will be able to play with him in the game he's proposing. It's quite intimidating at first, for certain.
He is writing a normal novel, with all the imagery there, you have to understand it like any other book. It is not a symphony, This is simply false. It is only true for Book II ch 2, that's it, that represents the most abstract and deepest part of sleep.
@@annaclarafenyo8185 ok.
I think that your comment is very intriguing. Not sure that I agree 100% but I like the thought. I feel like I am letting go of many other forms of knowing this work if I try to fit it into any type of category. I especially balk at the "dreaming" idea. Okay, yes it represents stream of consciousness and the dream realm is it's playground but this book is so much more than that. The symphony is only a tiny part of the experience, but the idea definitely resonates in the work. I will file it for later reference as I continue to coax meaning from the pages. Thank you.
@@anthonybrakus5280 Yeah, I mean, of course musicality is only an aspect of how Joyce employs words, but it's a major one, imo.
It's also very evident for me, as another commenter pointed out (alas in what I perceived as a very rude manner, that's why I parried that conversation), that there is a syntactic/narrative progression of the work (otherwise it would be utter nonesense), but that's also the case in musical composition. The concept of 'programmatic music', developed by romantic composers delves deep into that idea: take, for instance, Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture", where by the mere modulations of the melodies for the Tzar's Anthem & the Marsellaise, he depicts not only the Franco-Russian war, but also which faction is winning or losing at each point of the work. Cesar Frank's "The Accursed Hunter" is another exemplar case of orchestral music having a heavy narrative inclination.
My point is that it's clear that Joyce's main composition concern was not using words for clarity of exposition or anything akin, so trying to brute force comprehension as if the work were a very compact riddle (which seems to be a common approach among those frustrated with this book) is by no means the best way to read it, let alone enjoying it.
A musical approach is the one that was useful for me, & I find that the clues suggesting such an approach are quite evident in the book, but in the end it is only an example of how to approach the book not from a syntactic/narrative centered position.
I'm sorry if my words become entangled at some point. I'm afraid it's not a very easy idea I'm trying to convey, & English is not my native language. I would struggle to express this point in Spanish as well.
Regards!
I think I understand what you are saying. I definitely find the same kind of revelatory nuance in musical ideas. I really learned a lot about the mathematical abstractions present in Bach's work. I read another masterpiece of Western art called "Goedel, Escher, Bach An Eternal Golden Braid" which spelled out the clear relationship of math ideas with Bach's work. He introduced the concept of homeomorphism and showed how a piece by Bach is homomorphic to a concept in number theory. It's truly a once in a hundred years type of work.
I have a small selection from my library that I keep on the night stand next to my bed for quick access... Finnegans Wake, The Road to Reality, The Bible, Complete Shakespeare, Goedel, Escher, Bach and a few others that change depending on what I am currently interested in (usually math or physics related). I'm a musician and love music. I have studied a lot of compositional theory, but I wish I knew more about historical theory and artist's intention. The ideas you shared about 1812 Overture are wonderful. Some day I will make the time to learn more in that area. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts with me. I am always glad to learn and the things you have so far talked about are quite fascinating. 👍🏾
Oh, I REALLY enjoyed this!
Thanks for your detailed review! I'd throw an honorary mention to 'Dhalgren', by Samuel R. Delaney. It's far more understandable than the one's you've listed, but to gain that understanding you have to suffer through some significant psychological torment, including embarrassing and uncomfortable dinner parties in nearly empty housing developments. It borrows from Finnegan's Wake by starting with the last half of a sentence and ending (after perhaps a thousand pages) with the first half of the same sentence. I read it every few years - it is a painful literary masterpiece.
I read dhalgren last year, it took me like seven months and I feel like an absolute idiot for not understanding it.
read delaney's times square red--times square blue and dahlgren makes more sense
@@appaatemomo-freePalestine Maybe, but the porn was hot; I'm pretty sure that's why it was Delany's best-selling novel. Also, yes. Free Palestine.
Try Nova and Einstein Intersection (both quite short)@@richardkatz2811
@@talastra Fair, though the sex scenes were definitely a mixed bag for me. Thanks for your support for Palestine
I'm currently reading Finnegans Wake, and it is much easier to read than I initially thought. It is pretty much impossible to understand everything thats going on, but if you are willing to go through a few pages without much comprehension, then you'll still be rewarded with a ton of poetic language and very witty puns. It's only as hard as you want it to be, I guess, depending on how deep you want to go.
Exactly, it's a book to "read" not a book to read.
I've been reading it for over 20 years, now. I'm about halfway through.
Ahmensch3115 Yes, that is how to read and enjoy Finnegan's Wake. Like dipping into a poetic river of often fun images and symbols, many basic at their heart: like Rivers, Circles of Life, etc., chickens and eggs, birth and seeds, and so on...
Yes it's fun@@carlcushmanhybels8159
Just as we couldn't 'catch and hold' any River, and wouldn't really want to. FW: Better to enjoy the River flow, dipping in where and when one can.
On my fourth read-through of Finnegans Wake currently. The first time took about a year with an average of roughly two pages a day. Felt I understand about 20 pages worth of it, but what I did get was stunningly beautiful, a way of linking what things feel like to experience with the abstract concepts and symbols the words represent.
The second read-through blew my head off. I've never found so much in a single work to enjoy in any piece of art, not just literature.
On the third read-through I compiled my own version of the text out of some of the more poetic and comprehensible passages, which comes in around a hundred pages.
For the fourth read-through I'm now supplementing it with the Naxos recording read by Barry McGovern and Marcella Riordan. At this point it's just an endless wormhole of ideas and inspiration. Hope you get into it one day as it's well worth it!
Wow, four times, that's so cool that you love it so much! I read that it's the kind of book that you can explore for your whole lifetime, I'm just super impressed you understand any of it
@@DrawntoBooks What I've found helpful is not actively trying to understand it. Just try to hear the music in the language itself and let it wash over you. The less you struggle to understand the more clear it becomes with repeated exposure. It's a kaleidoscope, so whatever patterns your mind is able to grab in the moment is what you'll see. Cheers!
Get Joseph Campbell’s Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake.
Was it not Ulysses for which Campbell wrote skeleton key? (What do I know?) May I add, read in a group and read aloud. No requirements for group membership, but the more varied the experience of the members, th3 more fun it will be.
@@TimDchubs1
👍
I thought I'd dislike this video because it would be too subjective. You actually gave a very objective point of view. Bravo!
I've begun Finnegan's Wake a few times. I haven't made it past page 77. I will. In my retirement I hope to start and finish it. Thanks for your insight. Very helpful!
"In my retirement I hope to start and finish it." That's what I said back in 1980. Well, I'm here, and I have to admit it's not going to happen...
There are much better ways to pass your time in terms of books. Michel Tournier's The Ogre, for example. Everything by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (to list the most obvious).
@@talastra Agreed. I just posted a similar comment before seeing yours.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski definitely needs an honorable mention.
I love House of Leaves, but I suspect its reputation is a bit harshly earned. It can definitely be read a fair number of ways, but once you sit down and make an actual choice on how you approach it, it becomes a lot more manageable. I think for most it's the simple fact that you want to read it straight-through as a novel, but the format goes out of its way to distract you from that.
I found myself somewhat disappointed then when I realized how little most of this narratives have to do with the resolution.
House of Leaves is demonstrably less complex or "difficult" than any of these books
That's why I said honorable mention, only. Honestly, you "readers" are the most arrogant lot out there.
Great read.
I had been curious about it from the time it first came out. But I did wonder if it was more "style over substance." I just don't have the mental energy for that. I am willing to deal with an unconventional writing style if the story is well done and has a strong conclusion. But to go through a bunch of hassle just to be disappointed in the end? Ugh.@@melvinshaw7574
Melanie, I stumbled upon this video while browsing TH-cam. Your presentation of these books is so enjoyable! Subscribed and eagerly awaiting more content from you. 📚🎉
Oh my gosh, this is the nicest comment, thank you so much!
Hah - great vlog! These books are some hairy, impenetrable slogs for sure. In my life I've gotten to ~page 42 of Gravity's Rainbow, 50 of Finnegan's Wake, 76 of Ulysses and 120 of Infinite Jest. I will say the footnotes of Infinite Jest are funny, in some parts. And Ulysses can be entertaining in the interstices between all the aimless slogging around Dublin. Appreciate the Faulkner advisory - haven't tried Sound and Fury, can attest that Absalom! Absalom! became a better read after the first few chapters, when I realized character profiles, chronology summary and map of Yoknpatawpha County were in the back of the book (and read them)! You are embedded in some epic reader battles there - thanks for your trenchant observations, quite entertaining!
Perfect countdown. I have never been able to get more than 50 pages in to Finnigan’s Wake.
I would add "Riddley Walker", a post-apocalyptic novel written in a devolved form of English that is difficult to understand at first, but gets easier as you continue to read it...
I first encountered it as a play in Manchester back in the Eighties, starring a young David Threlfall, which made the book easier to understand.
@@PsilocybinCocktail I went to see that at the Royal Exchange as well.
Glad someone mentioned this one.
My copy's on a shelf... gathering dust...
I really enjoyed "Riddley Walker," read it twice so far and the second time was much more comprehensible than the first. A fun fact is that the author, Russell Hoban, wrote a series of children's picture books about a badger named Frances ("Bedtime for Frances" is one - that should give you a sense of the intended audience). When I read "Riddley" the first time, I was astonished that the same man had written both. Check them out, especially to read to a child aloud.
Fantastic book.
I read Gravities Rainbow. I was astounded at the breadth and depth of his knowledge of WW2 history and facts. I enjoyed it very much. I thought remembrance of things past was much more difficult.
One of my favorite books.
Yes, I'm very surprised Remembrance of Things Past is not on this list. The Sound and the Fury is casual beach reading compared to Proust.
It’s a terrific novel.
*Gravity's
Remembrance of Things past is beautiful, but very hard to read.
My father rarely spoke of his college days in the engineering school at Stanford. Everything to do with engineering came easy to him, but he also took a required English class that he mentioned more than once over the years. He was so proud to have gotten through "Ulysses"!
As he should’ve been!
Before I watched this I knew Joyce would be numbers one & two.
Also, I love that you have a copy of Gustav Dore's illustration from Don Quixote on your wall!
Thanks for noticing Dore :)
This may sound a little crazy, but I tried to pour through Joyce's Finnegans Wake a month ago while taking help from my 13-year-old cousin. I seriously took every input he gave, and tried to view each paragraph, heck, each word through that lens. We couldn't get past page one but we did make a couple of fun discoveries on the way 😂😂
*paw through, not pour through.
Pore, not pour.
@@johnkrieger185 This needs pause for thought.
@@johnkrieger185 poor
Por favor. @@yeohi
Samuel Beckett's "Trilogy" - Stream of consciousness, but icy and clipped, with that consciousness slowly dissolving throughout. Joyce's protege, but the minimalist to JJ's maximalist. Beautiful prose!
👍
First book was great, second less so. I can't believe the third was written for any other reason than to make a trilogy.
Fail better!@@johnkrieger185
It's "Finnegans" not "Finnegan's." There's a reason why it's written that way.
I love Infinite Jest and have read it 3 times, and it is a very difficult read. Extremely funny, prescient and unique. The footnotes are really part of the book, not afterthoughts. We lost a great one when DFWallace left this life.
Could not agree more. We are poorer for his absence.
Somewhere at the bottom of the Baltic Sea lies a copy of "House of Leaves", thrown off a cruise ship by a PHD in biochemistry fully capable of completing and understanding it.
He's as green as it gets and still he dispatched it to the deep.
I really liked this. It also reads like a poem. And I don't blame the biochemistry PhD: the sea will claim its own; those that were meant for the deep, like a house of leaves, to the deep will reach
I loved House of Leaves! It's an amazing story about relationships among families, friends, lovers, and people who never truly meet - and it's bursting at the seams with Easter eggs. But I have to admit that it helps to take notes when you're reading it. 😉
Very illegal to throw things off of cruse ships
I actually found House of Leaves very easy to understand. Now granted, it's a thick and involved read but it all made sense to me. But that's my take
So you're the one. 😀@@grapefruitm00n
Hegel deserves to be on the list. I haven't read Phenomenology, but I have read Elements of the Philosophy of Right and it felt like an achievement to be able to dissect and analyse it.
revisiting phenomenology after reading joyce, hegel seems to me to be downright explicit. of course there are concepts which are difficult to grasp, but the language itself, i would argue, is as clear as it could reasonably be expected to be
I wouldn't call it hard in the same way. Hegel is hard because he's unconventional in a way but he's not ambiguous. Once you become acquainted to hegelian philosophy it all becomes pretty clear, not so hard. But I think it's very hard to do it on your own just by reading his works. You have to follow a course on it. At least that's how I became familiar with it. When I started the course, I really thought it would be the hardest of my classes, but now it turns out it might be one of the easiest.
If you're interested I might give you infos and explain stuff to help you in your reading.
Edit : it's also a matter of practice. As my teacher says, it's a bit like a new language you have to learn.
Philosophy isn't really fiction
@@fluffysheap The word ‘(Fiction)’ in the title has been added since I made my comment.
I began “Ulysses” in high school on a sort of dare from my English literature teacher; I finished it the summer between junior and senior years in university. 😂 . I actually read it again a few years ago while on extended vacation and found it to be much more comprehensible. Speaking of university days, I knew a young woman who was a drama student and she memorized “Molly’s soliloquy” for her MFA performance piece.
My father, an amateur Joyce scholar, is the only person I've ever met who read "Finnegan's Wake." The best explanation he had for it was [paraphrasing from recollection] "Using as many different words as possible to tell a bit of everything about everything in a way that sounds good when read aloud."
These books are pretty nuts. Remembrances of Lost Time was the most difficulty book I've ever read personally; there's sentences that go on for entire paragraphs.
I've still never read it, but I read a fascinating book by Lydia Davis where she talks about translating it, and all the challenges Proust's French poses for making it both understandable in English and true to the spirit of the original. Basically, he's as difficult to read in French as in translation!
I read an excerpt of it in World Lit, and that was enough for me. It was the dullest thing I ever read; how can someone write such a long book about trying to fall asleep?
I read the first one. Swann's Way. Definitely some long sentences. But it had its moments, and great prose. Still, it wasn't fun enough to make me want to read the other six or so books. I almost never read a whole book series because I never get drawn in that much. Although I did read the Book of the Dun Cow trilogy.
@@theboombody I'm finishing the Dark Tower series now; it's probably the first series to really hook me in, but some books are better than others. If you're real adventurous, Gormanghast is a bit slow but worth the time because it has such flashes of brilliance
Lists like these always make me appreciate the writing of Virginia Woolf, even when she isn't mentioned. Despite how notoriously difficult stream-of-consciousness writing is to read, I have always found Woolf's writing very readable while still having as much substance as anything by Faulkner who is the only other stream-of-consciousness writer I regard at being at her level (I have yet to read Joyce).
That's why Woolf is great, and also why she doesn't end up here. Because she writes the style so efficiently that it doesn't confuse, it just enhances the story.
@@DrawntoBooks idk - It might be that I came to Joyce first, and therefore am more used to his style with stream of consciousness, but I do find Woolf's style more confusing than Joyce's - I have just recently read "To The Lighthouse" and the fact that you keep switching whose head you are in there made it quite difficult for me to get through.
Funny story. I once almost got into a fistfight over Woolf (I said, “faux intellectual twaddle”) vs Faulkner (she said, “baby talk gibberish “).
Nabokov hated Faulkner's book. And what if he was right?
books
I have read all 5 of these books... I find your evaluations truthful..... 👍👍😉
My BA is in English. Read a lot of stuff just bc it was assigned and would be on the final. Joyce’s “Ulysses” was the only book I ever bought “Clift’s Notes” for. Go through the final. Amen.
I can't believe you only have a thousand followers! The video quality is so good, and I love the fact that you include subtitles; it's really helpful as an English learner.
Great video 💗
Thank you so much! Yesterday I had 250, this is crazy 😭 But I really appreciate your comment on the subtitles, I wondered if it was worth it, so I'm really glad it helped someone!
@@DrawntoBooks Yes. Very good. It's been a long time, but I did get an M,A, in English way back 1984, and I thoroughly enjoyed your review. It took me back. Insightful and engaging.
There's no explanation for why I read Gravity's Rainbow the first time. Without a chart of the characters,
I was adrift for most of it, even as I was catching hold of some of the better vignettes. The second
reading was a revelation as it became as easy as pie to fit not only the characters together, but
their organizations as well. Pynchon runs a pretty tight ship. On the third reading I had the pleasure
of remembering these small stories within the story, as they were coming up for review. In one of
them, the tragedy of an isolated submarine and its skeleton crew sees them "so lonely that their
only hope was that they might die of it."
Something that could be useful to anyone reading GR would be an index, but who ever heard of that
in a novel? Still, if one could look up the entry at Byron The Bulb, the risk of addiction to GR would go
way up. It is an intensely humane and ghastly and hilarious story.
EDIT: The adjectives chosen by the Pulitzer board are an embarrassment; they're finding "unreadable"
a book they haven't read. The "turgid" crack reminds me of William Hazlitt's lamentable misfire while
criticizing Samuel Johnson: "He always writes on stilts," indicating that William looked into Johnson
about as diligently as the board looked into Pynchon.
I agree. Not nearly as difficult as Ulysses or F. Wake. There was a story. One needs to realise it has vignettes, many brilliant. Like the conversation between two skin cells discussing what it will be like to rise to the surface and die. I'm read it only once and need to give it another shot. I admire you for giving it three tries. Couldnt get through Mason and Dixon. Vineland was readable but not fascinating. Same goes for Inherent Vice. At least its a story. I shall have to tryn "Against the Day'.
When I read your title I correctly guessed that the last two you mentioned had to be in the list. I held both of them in my hands, I browsed reading here and there but never made it for a complete reading.
I have to say that maybe the best writer in German language, apart from Goethe, was not even a German but a Bohemian, Franz Kafka. The chapters of two of his novels, The Trial and The Castle are blocks of fully printed pages with no full stops nor periods ending with half lines. Still you car read it well and understand any word, so that many times the reader gets breathless for the precision of how the thougts of the hero are described.
We read The Sound and the Fury in our book club. I loved it because every time I grasped what happened it was a huge triumph. I just let it flow and of course was confused most of the time but didn’t fight to understand everything. Also once Jason’s part arrives you understand most and his bitter humor It was a very interesting experience.
Here's the key to Finnegan's Wake: read it aloud. You'll be surprised at how much you get when you hear the words spoken.
👍
I once tried reading it and didn’t get far. Then I heard a recording of a passage (read, I think, by Joyce himself), and oddly enough, it made perfect sense!
I knew someone that read it aloud on the street. Most people thought he was a preacher, until they listened more carefully!
Such a great video! We had to read Ulysses for class this semester, and while I found it to be a puzzle, it was quite good! I love Thomas Pynchon, I would highly recommend Mason & Dixon by him
Thank you! I think Ulysses would be fun to read in a class, it was probably really nice to have people to talk to about it while reading. Mason & Dixon sound interesting, thanks for the rec, I'd like to read him, just not Gravity's Rainbow 😬
@@DrawntoBooks All Pynchon, including his "lighter" novels The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge, partakes of all the stuff that Pynchon haters hate about Gravity's Rainbow (and Pynchon haters hate _a lot)._ Including buckets of sexual ick and extremely tacky humor. Awesome ;)
what uni ?? what course??
@@sakshamdwivedi4273 it was Modernist era class
This is a great video by someone that truly loves to read. The Don Quixote poster in the background is crooked. The book is a little crooked so I think it works.
I saw Finnegan's Wake in a small Irish Independent film. The context helped my understanding immensely.
I bailed on Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow, and Finnegan's Wake. Life is already too short to read all the books I would like to read. I read Ulysses because it was assigned in an Irish Renaissance class and was glad for the experience. The Sound and the Fury I would not put on the list. I loved how the succeeding narratives filled in the blanks left by Benjy. It remains one of my favorites.
The Sound and the Fury is my favorite Faulkner, although I had to read it in a class.
They endured.
Agree, life is too short for all these dang books!
Also, hello fellow Coloradan 😄
It was Faulkner's favorite book of his, by which I mean, he felt like he came closest to succeeding hin his aims with it.@@Snardbafulator
Nice list. I've read and studied 4 out of 5 (Including my university senior thesis on Ulysses, independent study on Gravity's Rainbow, a graduate class on Finnegan's Wake, and The Sound and the Fury just for fun). Infinite Jest is on my short list to read soon.
Ulysses is fantastic. I loved every page.
Fantastic video :)
Once upon a time, I was tripping on LSD and idly flipped through Ulysses. Up to that point out had been impenetrable. I was not sure that I was really reading what I was reading because it was funny and lucid. Some kind of S&M scene between a husband and wife. So, I bookmarked the page and resolved to look at it again when I was sober. I was astonished that it was definitely there and just as weird and wonderful as it was when I had been tripping.
I took a graduate class that just studied Ulysses. The best way I figured out how to approach it was to first follow along with an audio book, then I read it again while looking at the Gifford Annotations and the Hastings Guide. Then I began to see character motivations, heartbreaking loss, Stephen's entire journey, and I wrote a short screenplay dissecting Molly's "Penelope" episode, and then presented a different paper on why the "Circe" episode was written as a play. Ulysses is my second favorite novel.
What's your first?
@@DrawntoBooks Finally!! I have often thrown out there similar stuff that the OP did here, and almost never is there the proper response. When someone finishes a comment with "...And then she finished second. To another women by the way. A women you may have heard of" the correct thing to do is ask for the name of the winning women! Good job, Drawn2Books.
@@DrawntoBooks Dune by Frank Herbert. I've loved that book since I was fourteen years old and I've read it five times in my life. I'm on the older side. 😉
The golden age of science fiction is need 14@@a.gunter2893
sometimes 13
I’ve not heard of the first 2 books, but Sound and Fury was a great read. The different points of view are challenging to follow but it makes sense in the end. The Joyce books are harder. Ulysses has a lot of difficult references but it follows Homer’s Odyssey so you can make sense of it eventually but it takes time. Finnegan’s Wake I have never read and don’t intend to. Nice review.
Thank you for saying this about Gravity's Rainbow. It was recommended to me by a guy I met in Amsterdam in 1976. I've attempted it a few times, and kept giving up, but thought, 'Maybe it's me...?'
Russel Hoban's novel _Riddley Walker_ deserves mention here. It's written entirely in first person from the title character's viewpoint, but in a hypothetical British dialect of the far distant future. It's definitely a challenging read, though ultimately very rewarding.
I love that book. Most of his work in fact. Vastly underrated writer IMO. :-)
@@nodroGnotlrahC it's a masterpiece. No other work of fiction has had such a powerful effect on me. Amazing originality and imagination of concept!
Thanks for adding dear old Really, once you are four or five pages in, you will pick up Riddley’s speech, and his spelling which is phonetic. The dialect lets Hoban create all sorts of wordplay. He has invented quite an interesting world, with Neolithic farms, except for all the metal to be had everywhere; two religions; mythologies. The place names are all based on Kent, the farm practices on Butser Ancient Farm, the puppet show on Punch, the central legend of Elsa based on a wall painting in Canterbury, the green man is more common in old British churches than the cross.
Readers should also enjoy Hobans book for older children, The Mouse and his Child.
You might like Clockwork Orange then.
The first time I read it, I didn’t know there was a glossary of Nadsat at the back. I managed pretty well. The film is excellent as well. The angry middle aged white guys that descended on the Capitol J6 make me think of Alex and his droogs.@@talastra
I really enjoyed reading Derrida although it's not easy to read full page sentences with heavy footnotes. It was a real mental training to juggle the complex details he includes and relationships between them.♡ Thank you Derrida♡
Having twice attempted to read Derrida's _Of Grammatology_, I consider that book unreadable. As I do Foucault, & numerous other French "literary critics".
But in another way, I would also consider the works of Marquis de Sade unreadable. The man has managed to take a subject that should be endlessly interesting -- bizarre & kinky sex -- & made it BORING. Anyone who defends de Sade as having intellectual value is not talking about what's de Sade wrote, but what they want him to have written. (And said person likely didn't read de Sade.)
@@llywrch7116 Could Sade been trying to keep from running afoul of the censors? Just a thought. Derrida also could have been trying to preserve his legacy...by being obscure.
@@JJ-tu1kg He's a theorist of literature. Beyond that, f*** if I can figure out what he says.
@@raylopez99 De Sade definitely ran afoul of the censors. Spent time in the Bastille for his books.
As for Derrida, the French historian Emmanuel Ladurie once commented in a Q & A session, "Ambiguity has its uses. Look at Derrida."
That some literature faculty continue to assign and even revere Derrida is one of the great mysteries of life on earth. What a waste of time; in graduate school, however, you don’t know any better, and haven’t learned to think for yourself about such authors and their alleged importance. So you struggle to get through one or another such book, and at the end of the day all the jumbled, turgid, incomprehensible prose is gone forever from memory.
LOL So true! I honestly tried to read "Infinite Jest" and just gave up. Same with books by Ayn Rand - I just couldn't get into her style of writing. Good video thanks!
Honorable mention for Ferrum Endjinn, and the ending of Creatures of Light and Darkness? Roadmarks was also tricky.
Both Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest are hilarious. The Sound and the Fury is not as hard as its reputation. Joyce is funny -- and Molly Bloom soliloquy at the end of Ulysses is incredible.
Funny you say that - I actually agree with Nabokov that the last section of Ulysses is the weakest of the 18.
For sure! IJ riffs on GR. In my own mind, I've conflated them into 'Bananas Foster Wallace'.
@@Tolstoy111it’s beautiful and makes the whole novel worth it. It rids itself of all the confusing stylistic choices, and becomes 100% Raw and honest and we finally see what this whole book was about… why were followed these guys wandering the streets for 17 episodes.
@@samw5767 Bannana Breakfast!
@@CalcprofOh, crap. I just realized who Donald Trump and Elon Musk sound like.
Another thing that makes The Sound And The Fury difficult to read: Two characters have the same name, and it being all stream of consciousness, it is really hard to figure out a) that there are two Quentins, and when you know, b) which Quentin is talked about at the moment.
Also two Jasons, and Benji's name was originally Maury, after Mrs. Compson's dissolute brother. His name was changed to Benjamin at age two or three when his mental impediments became too obvious to ignore.
I figured House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski would be on this list when you mentioned footnotes within footnotes.
I thought it would be, too, and was delighted it was not. I feel HOL's 'confusion' is well-designed to be pregnable. Does become a choice of rabbit holes to follow at points, but thoroughly comprehendable.
It's not even close to Infinite Jest's difficulty, let alone belonging on the same list as Ulysses and Finnegan.
Great book though.
The 'footnotes within footnotes' bit made me immediately think of Umberto Eco. Imagine my dismay when, after thoroughly enjoying the movie 'The Name Of The Rose', I rushed out and bought the book. The last page should be a frameable college diploma.
you really know how to tell a story! very captivating
Thank you very much!
I tried reading Gravity's Rainbow one summer, got halfway through and was totally lost. That Xmas my bonus was a big bag of the wacky tabaccy, and I subsequently finished GR in about 3 weeks. It's a blast. Easier to read in the chunky paperback edition than the massive tomes you usually see.
This was a lot of fun. Thank you!
Thank you so much!
I watched this video to see what you might say about Finnegan's Wake. And I wasn't disappointed. The fact that someone would write a book like that vexes me to know end. Out of curiosity I read some of it in a bookstore and got mad at how absurd it was. Pretentious? Yes. A book with made up words that I actually like is A Clockwork Orange, and the version with a glossery in it is something I highly recommend.
I can't believe the two books by Joyce that you feature in this video were published. I also can't believe they are considered classics.
Gertrude Stein was my first experience with a “stream of consciousness” type novel in college, and it was way out there. I love the “Sound and Fury” as my teacher had a great way of explaining the way the book was written in the four stories. She made it so much easier to read and understand.
In the scifi world, Samuel Delany's Dhalgren also hops on the postmodern train. A great term for Gravity's Rainbow: "maximalism" - long and complex, digressive. To me, Gravity's Rainbow isn't much different from an epic fantasy, with lots of subplots and characters and flashbacks, and long descriptions of locations, clothing, and food.
+1 for _Dhalgren._ Imma make my third attempt, probably next year.
Dahlgren was the only book I ever threw into the garbage. Literally. I might have acted in haste, but with conviction.
I love Dahlgren. It's definitely a difficult read though. Hard to get traction and build momentum. Doris Lessing's Canopus In Argos series feels similar to me. Then there are the Burroughs cut-up novels. This are actually easy to read once you learn to read Burroughs. In my experience, reading his books chronologically gets you ready for the cut up novels.
Loved Dhalgren.. it was my second Delany book I think after The Einstein Intersection I seem to remember
Gave this one a try years ago and made it about a third of the way through (IIRC). Tough going for sure. I'd like to try again (maybe with some help) if I can find my copy...
This one is another loop, right?
“The Golden Bowl” by Henry James was probably the most difficult novel I read in college. Probably not as difficult as these 5, but it was still very challenging.
I’ve enjoyed sending sentences from James’s novels to a friend who’s an English professor at a prestigious college and asking him to explain what they, the sentences, mean. I’ve never gotten answer.
I would have said James. I remember looking at one of his novels and finding it took me ages to read even a single page. I can normally speed read. The language was just so opaque.
Good video. The only novel in this list that's not ridiculously long and worth reading several times is The Sound and the Fury. It is definitely difficult, but I would call it an almost perfect novel. It truly doesn't make sense until the third reading and that's a lot to ask of anyone, but the characters and style are so amazing. Finnigan's Wake was Joyce's way of playing a joke on anyone dumb enough to read a single page of it.
Subscribed for your picture in the background.
Other honorable mentions.
Beckett’s trilogy: Molloy, Malone dies, the unnameable
William Gaddis: the recognitions, jr
Robert musil: the man without qualities
Proust: remembrance of things past
Any of the four Chinese classics, especially the story of the stone
Tale of the genji
I'd add Late Henry James to the list as well. I am reading the Recognitions atm and don't get the difficulty hype. JR on the other hand, looks genuinely obtuse,
@@funoolesbian4225 Funny, I was once obsessed with SBeckett, especially his 'Trilogy', yet am unable to read James. Have tried again and again and am simply unable to slip in, as it were.
@@castelodeossos3947 i swear (late) James is the real modernist final boss. Finnegans Wake is a DLC side quest
I was going to suggest all strange away by Beckett, it's short and not necessarily difficult to get through, but from what i remember the language use was quite special(its been a few years since I read it). It always pops into my head when people talk about books that are difficult, even though I really enjoyed it. 😂 I just think a lot of people might not bother after the first page or so.
Clockwork Orange
A clockwork orange is a particular pain in the ass too
I found it fun but challenging in a similar way to Shakespeare. I used a wordlist to help get through the language.
Ulysses and Finnnegans Wake are really worth reading. I never regretted spending two summers reading them.
I read The Sound and the Fury as a high school senior with the book in one hand and the Cliff's Notes in the other to explain it. Not sure I would have stuck with it otherwise, but it was so magnificent, and started me on a Faulkner journey. Read most of his works and even made a pilgrimage to Oxford, MS, to see his home. He's my favorite American author. Intruder in the Dust is a very accessible intro to his works if anyone is interested.
As I Lay Dying drove me damn crazy. All Faulkner is difficult. I LOVE Absalom Absalom but it's difficult also. JOYCE IS PERVERTED and I love literature but I see it that way
I made the same pilgramage. At Faulkner's tombstone, among the empty whiskey bottles, someone had left a pocket watch, face down. I turned it over, thinking.....no....but sure as heck, the hands had been pulled off. Brilliant token of respect.
@@user-rx6ze5uu7n It isn't even past 🙂
The Reivers is straightforward. I remember the Snopes books not being like AA, TS&TF, LIA, AILD@@user-bn7bk5mw4s
I wonder if we as readers should approach books like this with a different perspective. Like how we do with paintings and other artwork.
Often, we may not understand what an artwork means, but we can still enjoy the artwork by enjoying the colours, textures, size or whatever other feature captures our attention. The “true and deep understanding of the work” is not really necessary to participate in the consumption of the art.
Perhaps if we reduce that self-induced stress (or societally-induced stress) of “having to understand everything - every single world in the literature” - these books will become less of an “Everest of sorts” that readers want to conquer.
So, maybe these books will become more “readable” if we are willing to change our expectations of what “reading” looks like. Afterall, literature is also a type of art.
This is beautiful! 😭 Yes, it seems people in the comments who have enjoyed these books all say that you just have to give up on understanding and enjoy the language, of Joyce especially. I definitely fall into the camp of wanting to understand everything I’m reading, especially because of the time commitment required to read a book, but I guess I‘ve never looked at books as a type of abstract art, I love this idea.
I certainly read Sound and the Fury with an adolescent's clueless audacity. Made for a great experience.
I will agree with Benjamin after the first hundred pages it's a lot easier. But I believe Pynchon wrote it for rereading. Every time I pick it up I find a connection I overlooked or a similarity between two sections of the book. It's well worth reading it. I'm actually going to read it for a 6th time in January!
Attempted Finnegans Wake and gave up after one page. Might have to give it another shot sometime.
I do sincerely like Faulkner's writing though.
As someone who once attempted to read Infinite Jest, I knew it would be on this list. I'm not surprised to see Ulysses, as well - I've never read it, but it was my grandfather's favorite book, and my mother has unsuccessfully attempted to read it several times.