This past week The Guardian printed a small article on the supposed ten most difficult reads. This list has been compiled by two book worms at the literary website, the Millions: Emily Colette Wilkinson and Garth Risk Hallberg. Admittedly a top ten would be difficult to nail down, however, the duo apparently took three years to reach the final selection. And here the tough ten:
Nightwood (1936)– Djuna Barnes
A Tale of a Tub (1704) – Jonathan Swift
The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) – G.F. Hegel
To the Lighthouse (1927) – Virgina Woolf
Clarissa (1748) – Samuel Richardson
Finnegans Wake (1939) – James Joyce
Being and Time (1927) – Martin Heidegger
The Faerie Queene (1596) – Edmund Spenser
Women and Men (1987) – Joseph McElroy
The article writer – Alison Food – laid claim to having read two and a half of these books. The Worm can only meekly note a modest one: Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Furthermore, little is known of many of these books. Of course, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is a notoriously difficult read, with a group in New York regularly meeting up to dissect a couple of pages of text a time.
Some light research has revealed a world of possible marvels. Nightwood is a 1930s novel that is one of the earliest to deal with homosexuality; Swift’s A Tale of a Tub is a parody on religion; Clarissa lays claim to being a rather long novel; Spenser’s Faerie Queene appears to be warm applause in aid of Queen Elizabeth; Women and Time appears to be a very chaotic and intriguing book centring on New York of the 1970s; whilst the two philosophical works centre on Hegel’s critique of consciousness and Heidegger’s book on the purpose of a person. But as stated, these are only the basic impressions from some light reading. Needless to say, the Worm is hooked and wishes to find out more.
But what actually makes a tough read? The criteria for this top ten was the following: ‘books that are hard to read for their length, or their syntax and style, or their structural and generic strangeness, or their odd experimental techniques, or their abstraction.’ Readers of the Millions website appear to be scornful of the inclusion of To the Lighthouse (one particular comment: “If you think To the Lighthouse is a difficult read you shouldn’t be writing for a literary website”). The Worm cannot comment on the other reads, but has laid down a new challenge for the forthcoming book reading season: to read one further book on this list and to bestow upon it a nod fitting for its quality, and not its notoriety.
Read the review here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/aug/07/most-difficult-books-top-10
Visit the Millions here:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/tip-sheet/article/53409-the-top-10-most-difficult-books.html
