Posted on 03/09/2007 11:22:35 PM PST by Blind Eye Jones
What is the most convoluted, opaque, impenetrable book you ever read?
After reading through all of these responses, I have to yell "Uncle!" and accept that y'all are more tenacious than I.
When I start 'em, and the reward doesn't seem to be worth the output, I stop.
And I don't usually pick 'em up again unless I have to.
But "opaque" and "impenetrable" are good words. "Frustrating" would be another. I tried to read Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, when I was young myself. I got what was going on, but at that time, I didn't see the point of it all. Today, I see what Joyce was after, but the it doesn't seem worthwhile to reread the book. Ditto for Proust. He's not that unclear, it's just that his method of approaching his story can be maddening.
More recently, I tried to read Toni Morrison: Beloved, among others. I had trouble figuring out what was going on, and why it was supposed to matter. Ditto for Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. And Virginia Woolf's The Years. Woolf's vision of what a novel could be has some value, but she doesn't really live up to her ideal. Her real talent was as an essayist.
Once you've left school behind for some years the whole Joyce-Faulkner project of writing books that are only accessible with expert decryption comes to look questionable, if not misguided. It might have worked for Joyce himself, but three generations on the game starts to lose its excitement.
Yes, Quality; I too, took that to be the point.
I really liked the two types of mechanics; one so neat and ordered, the other so sloppy, intuitive and quick.
The first one's behavior defined quality as a concept; the second had only a passing use for it as it served him.
No more cheese for you; and put down that wine glass, too.
You [also] have added considerably to the quality of my weekend.
After working at the IRS, I discovered this to be true. Most people there are BSing what they think it is.
I just want to lock Congress in a room and make them read it and then do their own taxes with nothing more than a pencil.
I was given a copy of Naked Lunch for free once. I tried to start reading it about 15 times (on different occasions) on the bus from Tel Avivi to Jerusalem. Couldn't do it.
Well, he does tend to go on for too long. He's another novelist whose real talent is for the essay or the sermon. But it was good to find a writer who wrote about the America that we (more or less) live in, and did so without scorn or abuse. That goes pretty far in making up whatever faults Bellow has.
It really helps to have been in the service;
In my brief seven years I met a real life version of every character in the book and Catch 22 itself.
If I could spell I might have tried to pen a sequel.
Wieland; or, the Transformation.
Christ's Revelation to John is understandable through faith in Christ.
Without faith in Him, the understanding isn't made available by God the Holy Spirit. Without the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, the book isn't as easily understood because it communicates many spiritual things beyond the perception of the senses or the mind. Faith is a system of perception which is preceded by acceptance of God. He does all the work in His grace.
Gravity's Rainbow took a while to read. (Thomas Pynchon)
Independent concurrent testimony. Must have some substance, eh?
"Well, he does tend to go on for too long. He's another novelist whose real talent is for the essay or the sermon. But it was good to find a writer who wrote about the America that we (more or less) live in, and did so without scorn or abuse. That goes pretty far in making up whatever faults Bellow has."
You're right, I should have said "any Novel by Bellow". I've read some of his essays/nonfiction and it was pretty good.
The Report on Iraq.
Some people write as Picasso painted.. "for idiots"..
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