'Difficult' books

[smittims]

The exchange on whether or why one has not read Proust made me think it might be fun to name books we've tried to read and maybe failed, maybe struggled through.

I've read that Stephen Hawking's A brief history of time' is the book most likely to be begun but not finished, or even bought but never read. I don't know if that assertion was based on research.

The hardest book I've ever read was Rowan Williams' 'The Edge of Words'. I kept thinking I thought I saw what he was on about but gradually fell behind and had to stop and re-read a paragraph, eventually wondering if it was worth the effort. I also wondered if it had occurred to him that he was expecting too much of his readers. Yet others may have breezed through it and say 'what's the problem? I couldn't put it down.'

[RichardB]

I've never attempted Proust, but I've failed with both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, not, I think, because they're "difficult", but because they're so, I can't find the exact work for what I think, but "self-indulgent" might come close.

Stephen Hawking's book is really not difficult at all, certainly in comparison with the "popular" writings of other theoretical physicists like Roger Penrose and Lee Smolin, but I guess that if A Brief History of Time is the only book about physics you ever read, which is probably the case for many people, you might find it hard going.

I've tried and failed to get through anything by Dostoyevsky, having attempted at least three of his novels and despite strong encouragement from my OH who is a big fan.

While I have much admiration for several of Thomas Mann's novels like Doctor Faustus and Death in Venice, I got heavily bogged down in The Magic Mountain and at one point skipped to the end thinking I wouldn't have missed much of importance. But that was a long time ago and maybe I wouldn't have a problem any more.

[smittims]

Yes, it seems to me that there's no sort of 'snob-badge' in saying 'I've read this or that' since one person might find book A 'hard' and book B 'easy' where another would have the opposite experience. For instance, I love Dostoievsky but I failed with 'Doctor Faustus'!

Though here there is the added problem of translation: I've often wondered if the immense regard felt by so many for Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister' is due to something that has been lost in translation; I found it (in English) readable and enjoyable but couldn't see why anyone (e'g Otto Klemperer) should never travel without a volume of it in his pocket.

[RichardB]

For instance, I love Dostoievsky but I failed with 'Doctor Faustus'!

The difficulty for me with Demons, for example, which is fresh in my mind since my failed attempt was made quite recently, was firstly a great multiplication of characters with complicated relationships that I found it tedious to try and keep track of, and secondly the way it seemed that no kind of meaningful narrative had even got started in the first hundred pages or so, after which I still had little sense of what the book was supposed to be about. This may be the result of translation from Russian, culturally as well as linguistically, but I've never had this kind of problem with Chekhov, although admittedly he has to get to the point more concisely because his works are on a much smaller scale.

[ChandlersFord]

The difficulty for me with Demons, for example, which is fresh in my mind since my failed attempt was made quite recently, was firstly a great multiplication of characters with complicated relationships that I found it tedious to try and keep track of, and secondly the way it seemed that no kind of meaningful narrative had even got started in the first hundred pages or so, after which I still had little sense of what the book was supposed to be about. This may be the result of translation from Russian, culturally as well as linguistically, but I've never had this kind of problem with Chekhov, although admittedly he has to get to the point more concisely because his works are on a much smaller scale.

I had the same problem with Demons (or The Possessed, as it used to be known in the English-speaking world) - a vast cast of characters who were difficult to distinguish one from another; there was also the unreliable narrator, something of a Dostoyevsky staple, which compounded the difficulty. However, I did get to the end and found the second half more rewarding than the first. Hst, I tried to re-read it a few years ago, and gave up after about 200 pages! I also found The Idiot hard-going, but FD himself felt that one was 'a failure.'

Karamazov and Crime & Punishment are, I'd say, the most approachable Dostoyevksy novels.

[ChandlersFord]

I gave up on:

Wolf Solent - John Cowper Powys: can't recall why, though. Lack of interest in the characters and situations, most probably.


Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad: I've attempted this twice, the second time earlier this year. It's not a long book, but I found Conrad's mis en scene distracting. I blow hot and cold on him: I enjoyed The Secret Agent and (to a lesser extent) Nostromo.


The Gift - Vladimir Nabokov: I don't like Nabokov. He always seems to be looking down his nose at the reader. I enjoyed Laughter In The Dark and could tolerate Despair, but I barely got three pages into this one.


Middlemarch - George Eliot: OK, I know this isn't supposed to be a 'difficult book', but there's something about the author's personality, as expressed in her prose, that I find deeply off-putting. I can't help perceiving her as the Victorian equivalent of one of those dreadful female hacks who write for today's Guardian.

[french frank]

I guess that if A Brief History of Time is the only book about physics you ever read, which is probably the case for many people, you might find it hard going.

The one work so far which isn't a novel! It really is brief and I, a non-scienced-based reader, found it fascinating and regret the fact that my copy has disappeared (I suspect my brother's copy is really mine since he can't remember when he bought his). I genuinely am interested in science but find most of the works I have a go at beyond my ability to understand.

I do find long works harder to get through because I have a short memory … I'm ashamed to say I haven't read the whole of Proust, partly because my pride (ex-French literature teacher) won't let me read it in English when I already have it in French. I did recently try to take it up where I left off years ago but its literary excellence escaped me.

Richard, we've mentioned Ishiguro's The Unconsoled recently which was so intriguing it kept me reading to the end, whereas many people found it 'difficult' and unIshiguro-like when it was first published. Another long one I found 'difficult' at first but finally raced through is Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, but I haven't managed to read it a second time.

ChandlersFord: ditto on Wolf Solent.

[ChandlersFord]

Re: Thomas Mann. If you have to read him in translation (as I have to), please avoid the ones done by Boris Johnson's grifting grandmother (Lowe-Porter) and go for the ones done more recently by John Woods. Woods has his faults (he is translating for an American readership, so the crass vulgarian in Buddenbrooks becomes a southern states hick) but he is at least readable, something Lowe-Porter never was.

This reminds me - the only Mann I gave up on was one of his shortest: Royal Highness, which bored me to tears.

[ChandlersFord]

The one work so far which isn't a novel! It really is brief and I, a non-scienced-based reader, found it fascinating and regret the fact that my copy has disappeared (I suspect my brother's copy is really mine since he can't remember when he bought his). I genuinely am interested in science but find most of the works I have a go at beyond my ability to understand.

I do find long works harder to get through because I have a short memory … I'm ashamed to say I haven't read the whole of Proust, partly because my pride (ex-French literature teacher) won't let me read it in English when I already have it in French. I did recently try to take it up where I left off years ago but its literary excellence escaped me.

Richard, we've mentioned Ishiguro's The Unconsoled recently which was so intriguing it kept me reading to the end, whereas many people found it 'difficult' and unIshiguro-like when it was first published. Another long one I found 'difficult' at first but finally raced through is Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, but I haven't managed to read it a second time.

ChandlersFord: ditto on Wolf Solent.

Ishiguro peaked early with that book. I don't think he's written anything since which even approaches its quality. The only issue I have with it is that the debt to Kafka is a bit too obvious, though I'd say The Unconsoled is better than anything Kafka ever wrote.

I can understand the reluctance of someone who is fluent in French to read Proust in translation. I read him in translation because my French will never (I suspect) be good enough to appreciate A La Recherche in the original.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Russian books in general. Getting to grips with the seemingly unnecessary variations in the characters' names, really plays tricks with my brain.

[RichardB]

Re: Thomas Mann. If you have to read him in translation (as I have to), please avoid the ones done by Boris Johnson's grifting grandmother (Lowe-Porter) and go for the ones done more recently by John Woods. Woods has his faults (he is translating for an American readership, so the crass vulgarian in Buddenbrooks becomes a southern states hick) but he is at least readable, something Lowe-Porter never was.

That's interesting - I think it might make a difference to my appreciation of The Magic Mountain, because I remember getting on well with Doctor Faustus despite the wooden translation rather than because of it. Having myself produced a published English translation of a "difficult" German book (Gottfried Michael Koenig's Process and Form), I'm ashamed to say I've never attempted to read a German novel in the original. This will have to be addressed some time!

[Joseph K]

I struggled through War & Peace, disliking the war parts but not the peace bits, but the long peroration on the nature of history I really could've done without, I am fairly certain I skipped most of that.

Finnegans Wake is an ongoing project (not very going for the most part). Despite not getting a lot or most of it, I enjoyed what I understood of Ulysses, which I finished on a second attempt.

I finished In Search of Lost Time and enjoyed it.

Enjoyed Crime & Punishment (the first part more than the latter half) and The Brothers Karamazov. Enjoyed Anna Karenina (more than W&P).

Obviously I love Kafka, but, come to think of it, the only novel I've read by a German author is The Sorrows of Young Werther, and a long time ago at that. I have a few German texts in the original but never attempted them...

[LHC]

I struggled through War & Peace, disliking the war parts but not the peace bits, but the long peroration on the nature of history I really could've done without, I am fairly certain I skipped most of that.

Finnegans Wake is an ongoing project (not very going for the most part). Despite not getting a lot or most of it, I enjoyed what I understood of Ulysses, which I finished on a second attempt.

I finished In Search of Lost Time and enjoyed it.

Enjoyed Crime & Punishment (the first part more than the latter half) and The Brothers Karamazov. Enjoyed Anna Karenina (more than W&P).

Obviously I love Kafka, but, come to think of it, the only novel I've read by a German author is The Sorrows of Young Werther, and a long time ago at that. I have a few German texts in the original but never attempted them...

Everyone I know who has read War and Peace admits to giving up on the essay on history, so you are not alone in that.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Everyone I know who has read War and Peace admits to giving up on the essay on history, so you are not alone in that.

I read it . Compared to the opening chapter of Joseph and His Brothers it’s a walk in the park. Now that is tedious …

[smittims]

Some lovely replies so far. Keep'em coming, folks.

We could try 'poems' next