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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

The Island of the Day Before by Eco.


61 posted on 03/10/2007 12:09:24 AM PST by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
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To: Blind Eye Jones

I'll also nominate "Moby Dick," simply for the chapter on the whiteness of the whale. It was very white, we get it already!


62 posted on 03/10/2007 12:10:11 AM PST by KellyAdmirer
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To: Blind Eye Jones

Anything by William S. Burroughs.


63 posted on 03/10/2007 12:10:18 AM PST by WestVirginiaRebel ("...Mindless pack of trained Maoist circus seals.")
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To: Blind Eye Jones

The Silmarillion --- by J.R.R. Tolkien


64 posted on 03/10/2007 12:11:19 AM PST by LowOiL (Paul wrote, "Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil" (Rom. 12:9))
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To: KellyAdmirer

I'd add The Mysterious Stranger, in fact most of Sam Clemens' later fiction which bordered on science fiction.


65 posted on 03/10/2007 12:12:20 AM PST by WestVirginiaRebel ("...Mindless pack of trained Maoist circus seals.")
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To: Blind Eye Jones

Aesthetics by Benedetto Croce.


66 posted on 03/10/2007 12:13:30 AM PST by tanuki
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To: WestVirginiaRebel

hehehe...i was going to say the soft machine / nova express / wild boys trilogy ...


67 posted on 03/10/2007 12:15:19 AM PST by sushiman
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To: Lurker

To: Allegra
Anything by Virginia Woolf.
Anything by Tom Wolfe.

Afraid of Anything By Virginia Wolfe


68 posted on 03/10/2007 12:15:32 AM PST by philly-d-kidder (Democratic party is the Party of Anti Americanism and Anti Catholicism)
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To: Grimmy
The Island of the Day Before by Eco.

I made it about half-way through this, until I realized it just wasn't going to get any better. I thought my dad had given it to me, and since he's the most well-read person on, like, the entire planet, I figured it must be worthwhile. A few years ago, I asked him why he gave it to me, and he said he never would have given me, much less actually recommended, anything by Eco.

I read snippets ofIn Search of Lost Time periodically, but so many more interesting books have prevented me from finishing it.

69 posted on 03/10/2007 12:15:35 AM PST by KayEyeDoubleDee (const Tag &referenceToConstTag)
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To: Irish Rose

The price was right. CANCER WARD by Solzhenitsyn is my all time favorite novel. I've learned that the American translator took liberties and it is probably an easy read in English for an American than in Russian for a Russian.


70 posted on 03/10/2007 12:17:28 AM PST by Monterrosa-24 (...even more American than a French bikini and a Russian AK-47.)
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To: sushiman
Also most of Philip K. Dick's stuff. Writing like you're on a drug trip is one thing. Writing while on a drug trip is another.
71 posted on 03/10/2007 12:17:40 AM PST by WestVirginiaRebel ("...Mindless pack of trained Maoist circus seals.")
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To: ARE SOLE
Microsoft tcp/ip

Stevens' book on Unix TCP/IP is pretty good.

72 posted on 03/10/2007 12:18:08 AM PST by KayEyeDoubleDee (const Tag &referenceToConstTag)
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To: Allegra; Kevmo

You can only read such Biblical books by the Power of the Holy Ghost, elsewise you are on the outside looking in!


73 posted on 03/10/2007 12:22:35 AM PST by restornu ("Try to Lead by Example, Not by Trampling on Another!")
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To: WingBolt

Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" is excellent. "Gravity's Rainbow" made me feel like a dummy a lot of the time, took a while to finish, but I enjoyed it. I might even get most of the subplots on a re-reading.


74 posted on 03/10/2007 12:24:30 AM PST by DJtex
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To: Blind Eye Jones
The English Patient... what a waste of time reading it.

Classic Lit: As I lay Dying by William Faulkner - bleh!

Most British poetry - oops - not a book

75 posted on 03/10/2007 12:25:04 AM PST by Maigrey (Here is a quarter. Please buy a personality. It's on Sale at Big Lots! - My Sister)
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To: restornu
I had no problem with the rest of the Bible. Revelation is very mysterious and symbolic and I believe it is meant to be.

Revelation has generated a lot of books by various Biblical scholars. I read one out of curiosity to see how other people were interpreting it.

The conclusion I came to is pretty much what I stated above. It is meant to be difficult to decipher, but there are also several passages that are very clear.

76 posted on 03/10/2007 12:29:22 AM PST by Allegra (Hey! Quiet Down Out There!)
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To: Blind Eye Jones

Anything by Keynes


77 posted on 03/10/2007 12:30:36 AM PST by Entrepreneur
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To: LowOiL

I liked that one, though Lord of the Rings is definitely better.


78 posted on 03/10/2007 12:32:22 AM PST by Irish Rose (Will work for chocolate.)
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To: saganite

"I gave Kant's Critique of Pure Reason a shot. It was totally impenetrable."

Hard to understand, but a model of clarity compared to Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind (or Heidegger's Being and Time).



79 posted on 03/10/2007 12:32:50 AM PST by Stirner
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To: Covenantor

Man am I with you guys on this one. You can call "Gravity's Rainbow" indulgent, you can call it turgid, you can call it anything you want, but bottom line is that it is sheer torture to read. It is PUNISHMENT.

Also, anything by Soren Kierkegaard. Take this short but ever so typical example from "The Sickness unto Death": "The self is a self which relates itself to itself or is a relation relating itself to itself in the relation."

Say, what?


80 posted on 03/10/2007 12:37:19 AM PST by John Valentine
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