What is the most convoluted, opaque, impenetrable book you ever read?

Blind Eye Jones

[Blind Eye Jones]

What is the most convoluted, opaque, impenetrable book you ever read?

[Savage Beast]

Jimmy Carter wrote a book of poetry.

Its breathtaking shallowness is metaphorical for the breathtaking shallowness of his admirers.

In this peculiar, convoluted way, the mindless drivel has some kind of meaning.

[bannie]

I LOOOOVE Silas Marner!!!! In fact, it's one of my top, all-time favorites!!!! It's only the first chapter that's a bit heavy...and that one's worth the work.

[Savage Beast]

I liked Silas Marner rather well, but The Mill on the Floss is probably the most boring book I've ever read. I had to read it and write a book report as punishment in high school. It was torture.

[Allegra]

Maybe this will help: Things are going to get worse (as you can see that they actually are), then, the Lord is going to return and take care of the situation.

Uh...yeah, I got that part. Quite a lot of it is clear, but some of it is difficult to decipher.

[SoDak]

On my last attempt to get through that mess, I found I was only feeling more and more hostile. Who needs that? I get that already at staff meetings.

[Allegra]

Zen will always be on of my favorite.

42. ;-)

[SoDak]

I enjoyed everything by Solzhenitysn but especially "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch." That's good to know. I just picked it up on my last business trip.

[Savage Beast]

You're a better man than I am, THSR. I couldn't get through Gödel, Escher, Bach, but it did introduce me to Escher. I was already crazy about J.S. Bach; that's why I bought the book in the first place.

[Allegra]

Hmmm...I certainly understand enough of what I read in the Bible to where I don't go around judging and questioning the faith of others based on one remark. ;-)

[Allegra]

You and me both! I got through maybe 30 pages of that thing. I think I still have it somewhere, maybe in a box in the garage.

You could always add it to the woodpile for use next winter when that first cold snap hits. ;-)

I think I gave mine away...where it's probably festering in some garage as well.

[buccaneer81]

Dianetics, by L. Ron Hubbard. Perhaps Tom Cruise could translate.

[Allegra]

but I think his best work is "The Right Stuff".

I believe that one is my favorite as well. He really nailed it with John Glenn. LOL

[zook]

Herbert Marcuse, "One Dimensional Man."

[zook]

Bidet's "The Fountain."

[Richard Kimball]

Alice in Wonderland, and through the looking glass, by extension, is a series of dream sequences written by a guy who had serious sexual feelings about young girls. Lewis was very upset with the illustrations selected by the publisher, which are the classic illustrations still in use today, because the lead character, based on Alice Liddell, did not look like the girl in the illustrations. She had dark hair and eyes, with bangs. Here's a photo of her taken by Carroll.

I started to post it, but think it's better as a link. It's not nude, but it's clear, at least to me, that the photographer was attracted to the subject. Carroll used to do child nude photography, although at his death, he left in his will that these photos be returned to the subjects or destroyed. There's no evidence he ever molested children, but there's little doubt that he was sexually aroused by young girls to the exclusion of sexual attraction for adult women. As a scholar, his specialties were math and logic, although he also was interested in magic tricks. These preoccupations also show up in his work, in the absurdist logic exercises, and "magic" sequences. He used the magic tricks to attract young girls while he was out at the beach or on cruises. Many of these girls became his photo subjects.

The Alice books are a mixture of his fascination with magic tricks, mathematics, logic, and his sexual attraction for young girls. As such, it's not surprising you found it impenetrable, since it's doubtful you share Mr. Carroll's interests, if you get my drift.

[RightWhale]

That's a good one. 300,000 copies sold, 1000 copies read, 10 past the first chapter. But, it makes more recent comments on the HBO economy seem historically amateurish.

[bkepley]

==There is no structure--he just goes on and on about how evil the system was, in a sarcastic tone.

It's the individual stories that interested me. Thousands of them.

[RightWhale]

It was something by Heidegger, probably Being and Time.

Finally got to where I could read that monster. Comes down to Plato's Timaeus' kineton tina aioonos poiesai.

[zook]

It is a good book, but man! It was hard to read as a college sophomore!

[Bernard Marx]

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

Anything by Pynchon!