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Hard to read, the fiction.

LabelKing

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Originally Posted by johnapril
Still we know how Day the Dyer works, in dims and deeps and dusks and darks.
Nora Joyce wrote that she would find James Joyce writing Finnegans Wake at night, giggling to himself.
 

Nico Samuel Pleninsek

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Franz Kafka's Amerika, horrible book; I read to around 135, and I just couldn't finish it. I've tried to love Mr. Kafka, but frankly I'm coming to the realization of why he wasn't a published author during his lifetime.
 

topbroker

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Originally Posted by Baron
Gravity's Rainbow ground to a halt in my brain about 50 pages in. I think I could read it if I just poured myself into it without stopping over a weekend. There's a tipping point that needs to be reached with books like that. I read Absalom, Absalom! that way and it worked.

I think this is a very good point. I was having problems with Under the Volcano until about 100 pages in, and suddenly the style just clicked for me, and I read the rest of the book with mounting excitement and admiration.

Gravity's Rainbow is worth another try. Great novel.
 

topbroker

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Originally Posted by denimdestroyedmylife
Yay! I read GR too.
tongue.gif


Strangely, I could not make it through Pynchon's V, which is much shorter, and supposedly more accessible. When I lose track of characters, and I have to keep backtracking, that is the death knell.

EDIT: there is a Jonathan Franzen essay in How To Be Alone about difficult books; he compares reading them to mountain-climbing. I forgot the rest. He mentions Gravity's Rainbow and uh... uh... that other guy. Uh......


The mountain-climbing metaphor is apt. I felt just exactly that way as I got closer to the end of William Gaddis's 1000 pages + The Recognitions -- like I had no oxygen left. I haven't had the nerve to tackle JR yet, although I'm sure I will do so eventually.
 

topbroker

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Originally Posted by Fuuma
I tried reading Moby Dick twice and never even got through to the point when the boat left, probably the only book I've never finished.

Then don't even think about trying Melville's Mardi, which is, against heavy competition, the weirdest novel I have ever read.
 

topbroker

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Here are a few titles that no one has mentioned yet.

These I haven't read all the way through myself, but based on my dipping into them, their reputation for difficulty (because of style, length, philosophy, whatever) is well-deserved:

Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans
Marguerite Young, Miss Macintosh My Darling
William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land
E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros
Samuel Delany, Dhalgren
Joseph McElroy, Lookout Cartridge
D. Keith Mano, Take Five
John Dos Passos, USA
William Gass, The Tunnel
John Barth, Letters
Gilbert Sorrentino, Mulligan Stew
Alexander Theroux, Darconville's Cat
Harold Brodkey, The Runaway Soul
Gil Orlovitz, Milkbottle H
Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil

These I have read, and they are also challenging:

Robert Coover, The Public Burning
William Gass, Omensetter's Luck
David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus
John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy
Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
 

DocHolliday

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Originally Posted by Fuuma
I tried reading Moby Dick twice and never even got through to the point when the boat left, probably the only book I've never finished.

My favorite book. But it's not about narrative, really, so much as a meditation on, well, everything. Best to get a good annotated edition and savor it like a fine meal. The goal isn't to get "full," but to enjoy the experience.

It's also fun to read some of the crazier passages out loud. Ahab's very quotable:

"I'll chase him 'round Good Hope, and 'round the Horn, and 'round the Norway maelstrom, and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up! And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of Earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now?"
 

Tokyo Slim

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Plus, Queequeg is a badass.
 

eg1

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Originally Posted by lawyerdad
If that wasn't your cup of tea, I'd avoid the rest of Pynchon's stuff. Vineland is about as linear as he gets.

Yeah, and at least The Crying of Lot 49 was short, unlike the rest of them. I notice that Pynchon is not getting a lot of love on this thread, eh?
laugh.gif


Originally Posted by Fuuma
I tried reading Moby Dick twice and never even got through to the point when the boat left, probably the only book I've never finished.

I forced my way through that one on the advice of a colleague. It was meh.
plain.gif
 

Baron

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Originally Posted by Saucemaster
Once Nabokov came along, that stopped being an excuse for ANYONE writing in his(/her) second language.

I'd say Conrad and Beckett beat Vlade to the punch on this.
 

lawyerdad

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Originally Posted by topbroker
The mountain-climbing metaphor is apt. I felt just exactly that way as I got closer to the end of William Gaddis's 1000 pages + The Recognitions -- like I had no oxygen left. I haven't had the nerve to tackle JR yet, although I'm sure I will do so eventually.

Do. And it's very much a "pour yourself in" book. I enjoyed JR and Frolic much more than Recognitions.
 

lawyerdad

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Originally Posted by Baron
I'd say Conrad and Beckett beat Vlade to the punch on this.

Good point, although Beckett is sort of a different case. Writing in a second language was a conscious attempt to eschew the kind of verbal laziness that can come with the excessive comfort in writing's in one's native language.
 

Saucemaster

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Originally Posted by Baron
I'd say Conrad and Beckett beat Vlade to the punch on this.

It's the sheer virtuousity of Nabokov's prose that blows me away. I actually like Beckett's prose more than Nabokov's, but since I don't speak or read French, I can't speak to how well he wrote in a second language. Conrad was brilliant, and a great prose stylist, but he doesn't leave my jaw on the floor like Nabokov does. You're right, though, he probably should get top billing on the ESL All Stars list.
smile.gif
 

injung

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For me, I always finish a book, but my brain kind of goes on auto-pilot at some point if it's boring - I know I've read it, but I completely blank on what the book was about. I think the most extreme case of this was for Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man...I honestly can't remember a single thing about it.
 

romafan

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Originally Posted by lawyerdad
As a fan of Italy, have you read Donna Leon, Michael Dibdin, or Gianrico Carofiglio? I read a lot of murder mystery/police procedural stuff for relaxation, and over the past year or two I've been mining the Italian or at least set in Italy vein.

What about Andrea Camilleri? On a Scottish note, I'm slowly working through to the end of the Rebus stories....

Originally Posted by DocHolliday
My favorite book. But it's not about narrative, really, so much as a meditation on, well, everything. Best to get a good annotated edition and savor it like a fine meal. The goal isn't to get "full," but to enjoy the experience.

It's also fun to read some of the crazier passages out loud. Ahab's very quotable:

"I'll chase him 'round Good Hope, and 'round the Horn, and 'round the Norway maelstrom, and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up! And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of Earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now?"


Freakin' decent movie, too. I can just hear G. Peck bellowing those words! You speak the truth re: the book - there are enntire chapters that can be skipped and you'll miss nothing of the narrative....

"The Sound and the Fury"
devil.gif
 

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