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What is the most convoluted, opaque, impenetrable book you ever read?
Blind Eye Jones
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?
TOPICS: Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: books; zenandtheartofmotorc
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To: Blind Eye Jones
21
posted on
03/09/2007 11:34:07 PM PST
by
Tainan
(Talk is cheap. Silence is golden. All I got is brass...lotsa brass.)
To: Blind Eye Jones
The Gulag Archipelligo
22
posted on
03/09/2007 11:34:44 PM PST
by
BnBlFlag
(Deo Vindice/Semper Fidelis "Ya gotta saddle up your boys; Ya gotta draw a hard line")
To: BnBlFlag
23
posted on
03/09/2007 11:37:25 PM PST
by
DryFly
To: starbase
It took me 26 years to finish The Plague by Camus.
Started it 4 times. Finally read it through and gave the book away to a coworker, telling him not to return it.
To: Blind Eye Jones
James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake." Just way too obscure. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and "Ulysses" are great, though. "Finnegan's Wake" makes Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" seem like light summer reading.
To: Blind Eye Jones
Marvin K.Mooney Will You Please Go Now!
To: DryFly
I second that! Just got rid of my copy. That and DaVinci code- I thought they were obtuse.
27
posted on
03/09/2007 11:42:15 PM PST
by
RushCrush
(Trust in God but tie your camel well.)
To: Allegra
Satanic Verses comes to mind. Bought that to see what all the fuss was about back when it came out.
Just didn't see it. Having a price put on one's head does wonders for book sales, though. ;-)
Rushdie's birthplace, Bombay, plays a big part in that novel as it does in several of his other novels, so familiarity with the city, it's neighborhoods, it's slang, and Bollywood films helps a lot. An understanding of Islam and it's myths is also helpful. Along with Midnight's Children and The Moor's Last Sigh, it's one of my favorite Rushdie novels.
But it isn't an easy read. I'd be amazed if any of the Iranian mullahs who sentenced Rushdie to death had ever read it, let alone understood it.
To: Blind Eye Jones
'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon
To: Blind Eye Jones
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
[from Wikipedia}
In 1974, the three-member Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction supported Gravity's Rainbow for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. However, the other eleven members of the board overturned this decision, branding the book "unreadable, turgid, overwritten, and obscene."
I concurred with the eleven members and consigned my paperback copy to an outhouse in Maine, in hope of transforming it into something useful before the pages returned to their original source.
To: Blind Eye Jones
The book of myself? :-)
31
posted on
03/09/2007 11:45:12 PM PST
by
RunningWolf
(2-1 Cav 1975)
To: KellyAdmirer
A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Marcel Proust's In Search Of Lost Time never gets easier whether on the first read or the hundredth as a result of the author's long and labrinthine sentences that seem to meander on forever. Each sentence contains a complete thought and sometimes a complex thought is expressed in a run on way to capture the full force of its import. The 3,000 page novel is the greatest attempt ever to capture a human lifetime in its totality.
32
posted on
03/09/2007 11:45:15 PM PST
by
goldstategop
(In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
To: Covenantor
Anything by Pynchon (possibly excepting The Crying of Lot 49)
33
posted on
03/09/2007 11:45:44 PM PST
by
WingBolt
To: Lancey Howard
"Quiet Flows the Don', read all five books of it. It about Russiaand there sure were a lot of Vitches around. But strange thing is I enjoyed it
34
posted on
03/09/2007 11:45:56 PM PST
by
BooBoo1000
(Some times I wake up grumpy, other times I let her sleep/)
To: Lancey Howard
LOL! I was still editing while you posted.
To: AnotherUnixGeek
that's funny. I was thinking about Foucault's pendulum myself, except I didn't technically read it - not more than the first couple of chapters anyway, just couldn't get through it. And I did so enjoy the Name of the Rose
36
posted on
03/09/2007 11:47:01 PM PST
by
Mom MD
(The scorn of fools is music to the ears of the wise)
To: Blind Eye Jones
Ulysses by James Joyce.
Regards, Ivan
37
posted on
03/09/2007 11:47:46 PM PST
by
MadIvan
(I aim to misbehave.)
To: Kevmo
As a Christian I've read it beginning to end several times. There are parts of it I can understand; others are totally obscure. (Mark of the Beast, anyone?) And I find it impossible to unify all that's in Revelation, and all other End Time prophecies, into a clear, complete understanding of the End Times.
Although comprehensible, much of Paul's writing is also very deep. There are passages I have to read slowly. Christianity is not a simple religion.
38
posted on
03/09/2007 11:47:59 PM PST
by
Irish Rose
(Will work for chocolate.)
To: OwenKellogg
It took me 26 years to finish The Plague by Camus.
Wow! I flipped through a few of the hundreds and hundreds of pages of Les Miserables, and Notre Dame de Paris, which is the rather uninspired French title of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame".
Beyond that, French novels are always threatening to spin off in philosophical directions which could only interest a cynical Frenchman! Mon Dieu!
39
posted on
03/09/2007 11:48:03 PM PST
by
starbase
(Understanding Written Propaganda (click "starbase" to learn 22 manipulating tricks!!))
To: AnotherUnixGeek
An understanding of Islam and it's myths is also helpful. Well, I have a bit of a grasp on that. And while I haven't been to Bombay, I have enjoyed other novels set in India, particularly during the time of the British Raj. M.M. Kaye's Far Pavilions was great fun to read, for example.
I just found SV to be a bit dry and had a tendency to wander all over the place. But that's just my taste. I did enjoy a couple of his ex-wife Marianne's books, although she's a bit heavy on the liberal symbolism.
40
posted on
03/09/2007 11:48:40 PM PST
by
Allegra
(Hey! Quiet Down Out There!)
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