My year in reading involved a couple dozen or so books, most of which I wrote about here, but it also involved, to a large extent, my favorite magazine, the New Yorker. I spent three or four out of every seven days this year reading that magazine. So, for my "Year in Reading" post, I thought I'd revisit all the time I spent reading the New Yorker this year, and in particular, the fiction. It turns out that nearly every one of the 52 stories that the New Yorker published this year is available online. I thought it might be fun to briefly revisit each story. It ended up taking quite a while, but it was rewarding to go back through all the stories. What you'll find below is more an exercise in listing and linking than any real attempt at summary, but hopefully some folks will enjoy having links to all of this year's stories on one page. I also wanted to highlight a couple of blogs that did a great job of reacting to New Yorker fiction this year - you'll find many links to them below - Both "Grendel" at
Earthgoat and "SD Byrd" at
Short Story Craft put together quality critiques of these stories. Now, without further ado, on to the fiction:January 3, "I am a Novelist" (not available online) by Ryu Murakami: This story by the other Murakami is about a famous novelist who is being impersonated by a man who frequents a "club" of the type often described in Japanese stories. The impostor runs up a huge bar tab and gets one of the hostesses pregnant. Murakami is best-known for his novel,
Coin Locker Babies. Links:
I Read a Short Story TodayJanuary 10, "
Reading Lessons" by Edwidge Danticat: A Haitian immigrant elementary school teacher, a resident of Miami's Little Haiti, is asked by her boss - and lover, "Principal Boyfriend" - to tutor the illiterate mothers of two of her students. In 2004, Danticat received much praise for her novel,
The Dew Breaker and this year she put out a young adult novel called
Anacaona, Golden Flower.January 17, "
The Juniper Tree" by Lorrie Moore: I really had to jog my memory to remember this one. It starts out with a woman who puts off visiting her dying friend Robin in the hospital. She plans to go in the morning but Robin has already died.
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital is Moore's most recent collection. Links:
Tingle Alley,
Elegant VariationJanuary 24 & 31,"
Ice" by Thomas McGuane: This story was more memorable. A young protagonist with a paper route is intimidated by a drum major. To overcome his fears he skates toward Canada on frozen Lake Erie as far as he dares. Presumably, this story will appear in McGuane's upcoming collection,
Gallatin Canyon. Links:
I Read A Short Story TodayFebruary 7, "
The Roads of Home" by John Updike: The middle-aged absentee owner of his family's Pennsylvania farm, David Kern returns to his childhood home after a long absence, feeling guilty and a little disoriented. A standard Updike story. Updike has a new book coming out this year called
Terrorist. Links: This story has inspired
a field trip sponsored by The Alton Chronicles - AKA The John Updike Reality Project.February 14 & 21, "
Up North" by Charles D'Ambrosio: City guy visits the inlaws for Thanksgiving at their hunting lodge. He goes hunting with the family men and finds out about some skeletons in the closet. I remember liking this story. I'm guessing this story will appear in D'Ambrosio's new collection,
The Dead Fish Museum.
February 28,"
The Conductor" by Aleksandar Hemon: The narrator and Dedo, two Bosnian poets, are reunited in America after the war. This memorable story contrasts the hardness of their Bosnian experience with their new lives on the American academic circuit. Touching and funny. Hemon's written a novel,
Nowhere Man, and a collection of stories,
The Question of Bruno. Links:
3quarksdailyMarch 7, "
The Gorge" by
Umberto Eco: Italian boy and anarchist help Cassocks escape from Germans in war-torn Italy. Pretty straight-forward for a story by Eco, it turns out this piece was culled from his then-forthcoming novel,
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Links:
Conversational Reading,
A Roguish Chrestomathy, Unhappy with the
New Yorker's editing:
The LaboratoriumMarch 14, "
Della" by
Anne Enright: I'd completely forgotten this story. It made no impression at all, but upon rereading I see that it's a sad story about two old folks living next door to each other, one worrying the other is dead, and beneath its somber surface, there's a little humor to it. Enright's most recent book is
The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch.
March 21, "
Men of Ireland" by
William Trevor: I've never been a big fan of Trevor, his stories are a little too gray for my taste, but it can't be denied that he's a great storyteller. In this one a destitute man accuses his childhood priest of long ago improprieties. Though we can't know the truth for sure, somehow, in this telling, both seem guilty. Trevor's most recent collection is
A Bit on the Side. Links:
James Tata.
March 28, "
A Secret Station" by
David Gates: A classic
New Yorker story: An old man ruminates on his wasted life - multiple marriages and infidelities, dabbling in prescription drugs to dull the pain. But Gates paints the characters well and this is a good read. Gates is best known for his novel
Preston Falls. Links:
shes-krafty.com.April 4, "
Solace" by Donald Antrim: I've always enjoyed Antrim's stories. This one is sort of a romantic comedy about two disfunctional people who, due to difficult housing arrangements, must conduct their relationship only in borrowed apartments. Antrim's memoir,
The Afterlife, pieces of which have appeared in the New Yorker, will be published in May.April 11, "
Mallam Sile" by Mohammed Naseehu Ali: Another good story, especially if you like exotic locales. This one is about the original 40-year-old virgin, a tea seller in Ghana. It is included in Ali's recent collection,
The Prophet of Zongo Street. Links:
James Tata.April 18, "
The Orlov-Sokolovs" by Ludmila Ulitskaya: I've had the impression for a while now that the New Yorker publishes a lot of stories by Russians, but perhaps it just seems this way because they loom so large on the page. This story is about a young couple that falls prey to Soviet bureaucracy. The story appears in Ulitskaya's collection
Sonechka.April 25, the only issue of the year with no fiction. Instead,
a remembrance of Saul Bellow by Philip Roth.May 2, "
Where I'm Likely to Find It" by Haruki Murakami: The first of three Murakami stories that appeared in the New Yorker (Yes, he does get in there a lot.) In this one, we have a typically-Murakami detached narrator who investigates missing people, but, this being Murakami, it's not a typical mystery story. Murakami has a book coming out this year called
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Links:
Earthgoat.May 9, "
Along the Highways" by Nick Arvin: A sad fellow named Graham follows his brother's widow and some guy named Doug as they drive out of Detroit for a weekend getaway. Graham does this out of jealousy and a misplaced protective instinct. It does not end well for him. Arvin's debut novel,
Articles of War, came out in 2005. Links:
Earthgoat.May 16, "
The Room" by William Trevor: The second of three Trevor stories in the New Yorker this year (Yes, he gets in there a lot, too.) Another gray story, but, of course, well-crafted. It's about a woman who covered for her murderer husband and is now admitting everything to her the man she's cheating on the murderer with. It sounds more thriller-like than it is. Links:
Earthgoat.May 23, "
Two's Company" by Jonathan Franzen: Franzen goes Hollywood in this tight little story about a screenwriting couple that battles over a script that celebrates monogamy. There's no Franzen fiction in the pipeline that I'm aware of, so if you haven't read it already, ignore the hype and read
The Corrections. It's that good. Links:
James Tata.May 30, "
The Russian Riviera" by David Bezmozgis: This is a great story. One that I still remember well more than six months after I read it. There's something about boxers. It seems they're always getting suckered when all they want is a shot at the big time, like in a favorite movie of mine,
On the Waterfront. Bezmozgis received much praise for his debut collection,
Natasha. Links:
Earthgoat.June 6 "
A Mouthful of Cut Glass" by Tessa Hadley: Normally, I dislike Hadley's stories, but this one stands out as better than the others I've read. It's about being young and in love and the tendency that those so afflicted have to romanticize their partners. No false notes in this story. Hadley's most recent book is
Everything Will Be All Right. Links:
Simply Wait,
Earthgoat.June 13 & 20. Then came the Debut Fiction issue in which three stories appeared, "
An Ex-Mas Feast" by Uwem Akpan, "
The Laser Age" by Justin Tussing and "
Haunting Olivia" by Karen Russell. I discussed
the issue here. My favorite was the Akpan for its exotic setting. I was also impressed to learn that Russell was just 23. Of the three, only Tussing has a book on the way,
The Best People in the World.June 27, "The Blow" by J.M. Coetzee (not available online): This novel excerpt (from
Slow Man) is about an elderly amputee who, after at first resenting his caretaker, allows himself to be fatherly to her son. Good, but too long. I wish the New Yorker would do away with these novel excerpts. They're not really short stories. Links:
Conversational Reading,
Earthgoat.July 4, "
Ashes" by Cristina Henriquez: This story is set in Panama City and it's about a young woman whose mother dies. Her family is already in tatters so it's up to her to try to keep everything together. Henriquez's debut collection,
Come Together, Fall Apart comes out this year. Links:
Simply Wait.July 11 & 18, "
Long-Distance Client" by Allegra Goodman: This, I think, was my favorite story in the New Yorker this year. In it, Mel, the oldest employee at a tech start-up, bewildered by his coworkers, finds himself misaligned and in severe pain. He goes to an odd sort of chiropractor, Bobby, who, when not giving Mel the runaround, is able to straighten him out. But Bobby claims to have a client that he treats over the phone, and the truth behind Bobby's claim becomes the quirky question at the heart of this story. Goodman has a new novel coming out soon,
Intuition. Links:
Earthgoat.July 25, "
Awaiting Orders" by Tobias Wolff: The masterful Wolff puts together a brief story that deftly circles the topic of gays in the military. It's funny that now that we're at war, the once popular gays in the military controversy is old, old news, and, somehow, without being obvious, Wolff manages to highlight that irony. Wolff's most recent book is
Old School. Links:
Earthgoat.August 1, "
Commcomm" by George Saunders: There's no one writing like George Saunders. "Commcomm" is too weird to briefly summarize, but in typical Saunders fashion, he places us in an alternate and oddly terrifying universe where people talk like zombies yet somehow remind us of people we interact with every day. "Commcomm" includes an element I'd never seen before in a Saunders story: ghosts. Saunders' new collection,
In Persuasion Nation will come out this summer. Links:
standBy Bert (featuring an appearance by Saunders in the comments),
Earthgoat.August 8 & 15, "Gomez Palacio" by Roberto Bolano (Not available online): A somewhat oblique story, this one is about a young man teaching in Gomez Palacio. Both he and the director of the school are poets and they're a little odd. They go for a long drive together. That's about all that happens. A new book by Bolano is coming out this year:
The Last Evenings on Earth. Links:
Earthgoat.August 22, "
Thicker Than Water" by Gina Ochsner: This story is about a Latvian girl who lives across the street from a family of Jews. Latvia being what it is I suppose, her parents are suspicious of these people, but she is fascinated by them. In the end, there is an ill-fated chess tournament. Ochsner's most recent book is
People I Wanted to Be. Links:
Earthgoat. August 29, "
The View from Castle Rock" by Alice Munro: An unusual setting for a Munroe story - a ship heading for Canada in 1818. I like Munroe's stories generally and this one is no exception, though the drama at the center of this long story - a young man who meets a well off father and daughter who tantalizingly offer to lift him from his poorer circumstances so that he must choose between his family and the promise of a better life - it's a bit trite. Munro's most recent collection is
Runaway. Links:
literarylover,
mike.whybark.com,
Earthgoat.September 5, "
Club Des Amis" by Tony D'Souza: Mr. Wu, who lies at the center of this story, is a Chinese man in Africa. The narrator is a Western aid worker, and he relates how Wu's son "went native" and died in the bush and now Wu is trying to be a distant benefactor to the son his son had with a native woman. I'm a fan of exotic locales, so I liked this one. This story appears to be an excerpt from D'Souza's forthcoming novel,
Whiteman.September 12, "
Coping Stones" by Ann Beattie: A very good story that asks how well do we really know the people we think we know. A widower, Dr. Cahill, rents a house on his property to a young man, Matt, who he treats as a son, but one day the authorities come looking for Matt. Beattie's most recent collection of stories is
Follies.September 19, "
Cowboy" by Thomas McGuane: This story is about An old cowboy who hires a young cowboy to work with him. Both exist under the watchful eye of the old cowboy's sister, who eventually dies. I think this story is about friendship, really, one that grows slowly over many years. This story will appear in McGuane's collection,
Gallatin Canyon. Links:
Literarylover.September 26, "
The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day" by Haruki Murakami: What if you knew in advance that you would only love three women (or men) in your life? Would you worry, with each new person you met, whether he or she was one of three. This is Junpei's problem and it makes relationships pretty tough for him. Links:
shake it off.October 3, "
Companion" by Sana Krasikov: I enjoyed this story. Ilona, thrice divorced we quickly learn, is living with Earl, a man much her senior, not because she is "with" him but because she is in financial straits and he has offered her a room. This makes pursuing her love life difficult and all of her friends somewhat snidely assume Ilona and Earl are together. Earl's family meanwhile is quite suspicious of her. I like the desperation in this story. A sample description: "The air was stale with the yeasty scent of bread."October 10, "
Early Music" by Jeffrey Eugenides: Another story of desperation. Rodney just wants to play "early music" on his clavichord, but he and his wife Rebecca are in serious debt. She is trying to make ends meet with her ridiculous invention, Mice 'n' Warm. His precious clavichord on the verge of being repossessed, Rodney watches his life's dream slipping away. Eugenides' most recent book is
Middlesex.October 17, "
Path Lights" by Tom Drury: A bottle falls out of the sky - no, it's not
The Gods Must Be Crazy - and almost hits Bobby. He becomes obsessed with this bottle, Blind Street Ale, and eventually tracks down the bottle-thrower, but it's awkward. This story may be an excerpt from Drury's forthcoming novel,
Driftless Area. Links:
Short Story Craft.October 24, "Summer Crossing" by Truman Capote (not available online): This is an excerpt from
a long-lost, recently found Capote novel. The story is well-crafted, if a bit formulaic. Rich girl gets mixed up with tough guy who she thinks she can "save." You can tell that Capote wrote this when he was young - he was only 19 - but still, his talent is evident. Links:
Earthgoat.October 31, "
The Children" by William Trevor: Another Trevor story, the final one of the year, and he uses the same palate we're used to, the scrubby Irish countryside. Young Connie and her father Robert suffer the death of a mother and wife and when he decides to marry the mother of Connie's friend, we think all might be well, but as Robert new wife Theresa discovers, "nothing was as tidy as she'd imagined."November 7, "
God of War" by Marisa Silver: A daring choice of main character, the troubled child Ares, is at the heart of this story. Set near the desolate Salton Sea, this story covers Ares' relationship with his brother Malcolm, whose inability to speak Ares may have caused, thus dooming them both. Silver's most recent book is
No Direction Home. Links:
Wuff.November 14, "
The Best Year of My Life" by Paul Theroux: A young man and woman are in love but nonetheless, she is pregnant with his baby. To escape scrutiny (the story is set in an earlier time), they hide out in Puerto Rico, where they are miserable, but somehow find the experience heartening. If there's anything I enjoy as much as stories with exotic locales, it's stories in which the protagonists travel. Theroux's most recent book is
Blinding Light. Links:
Short Story CraftNovember 21, "
The Year of Spaghetti" by Haruki Murakami: One of the weakest stories to appear in the New Yorker this year. Murakami brings us a guy who eats a lot of spaghetti, then a girl calls looking for an old friend of his, the narrator demurs and returns to cooking spaghetti. That's about the extent of it. Murakami has a book coming out this year called
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Links:
Earthgoat,
Short Story Craft.November 28, "
Love and Obstacles" by Aleksandar Hemon: I loved this story; exotic locale,traveling, etc. An adolescent Croatian (I think) narrator is sent by his family to buy a freezer in Slovenia. Desperate for adventure, he treats this errand as though he were a wandering poet, but he turns out to be more bumbling than anything else. Funny and poignant. Hemon's written a novel,
Nowhere Man, and a collection of stories,
The Question of Bruno. Links:
Short Story Craft,
The Glory of Carniola.December 5, "
Wenlock Edge" by Alice Munro: This was one of my favorite stories of the year. It starts out very predictably before taking a deliciously strange turn. I won't ruin it for you, but basically our narrator gets thrown in with an oddball roommate in college, and this roommate lures her into some odd situations. Munro's most recent collection is
Runaway. Links:
Short Story Craft.December 12, "
La Conchita" by T.C. Boyle: Boyle, a California resident, loves to make use of his home state's frequent natural disasters in his fiction. In this story, we're dealing with mudslides, which impede the route of the narrator who is delivering a kidney for transplantation. He is on a journey to save a life but he stops on the way to try to save another. Boyle has a book coming out this year called
Talk Talk.December 19, "
Twenty Grand" by Rebecca Curtis: A pretty good story. A harried young mother is forced to give away an old coin - a family heirloom - at a toll booth, only later discovering the coin's real value. The story is told from the perspective of the young daughter. Links:
Short Story CraftDecember 26 & January 2, The year ended with the International Fiction Issue. It contains five stories. In lieu of descriptions, I'll rank them in order of my favorite to least favorite and provide links when available. "Last Evenings on Earth" by Roberto Bolano, "
The Albanian Writers' Union as Mirrored by a Woman" by Ismail Kadare, "Beauty is a Fate Better Than Death" by Tahar Ben Jelloun, "
Pregnancy Diary" by Yoko Ogawa, "
The Word" by Vladimir Nabokov. Links:
Literary Saloon.If you want to keep up with the fiction next year,
you can always subscribe.
There will, doubtless, be those readers who look scornfully on our choices (“Psh. These aren’t that hard, you’re just not smart enough to read them“). Indeed, for myself, that is probably true. And to those so brilliant that not a one of these tomes challenged or vexed them more than a People magazine, we tip our hats. This list is for the mere mortals among us—who have found themselves reading and rereading the same paragraph of James Joyce’s Ulysses to no avail, who have been reduced to tears by Faulkner’s one-line chapter, “My mother is a fish,” in As I Lay Dying, who may have spitefully broken the brittle spine of her first used copy of Tristram Shandy, who use a volume of Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a doorstop and eye it with a wary distrust when she walks past it (for it is fond of stubbing toes).
William Gass’s The Tunnel is just brutal, but the people I know who have finished it claim that it’s one of the best things they’ve ever read. Go figure.
I’m one of those people, Saul. I think that should be the front cover blurb: “Just brutal.”
most frustrating and difficult book for me was Women and Men by Mcelroy, i was never able to crack the code and enter the world. Most challenging books to me are like a maze or like learning a new language, with sustained effort i can usually sort of solve it or start to understand it’s rythms and then it flows pretty well, but Women and Men just completely eluded me. Only Revolutions was a little like that for me too but i didn’t try as hard, the whole structure thing i found annoying, i don’t really want to have to put in manual labor while reading.
I found My Name is Red, for all its richness, an incredibly difficult book. The most brutal book I’ve ever read, however, remains the slim Narrative of Sojourner Truth.
What about something by Heidegger? Being and Time? He really makes Kant and Hegel look easy.
After forcing myself to read Ulysses about a dozen years ago because of all the best-book-of-the-20th-century hype I decided slogging through a long book that you are not enjoying is stupid.
So, after about 50 pages of Infinite Jest I decided it was the new Ulysses and unceremoniously put it down.
The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch. I have read the English translation, which “unfolds” the German into a confusing hypnotic and intoxicating reading. Very difficult and quite rewarding.
I found _Women and Men_ though it took a year to finish it, a novel that has grown on me over time, and it changed the way I looked at how sentences can be written. McElroy’s humanity and compassion, attributes not easily spotted amongst Usian or other post-modernists, are evident in this book as he tries to show his characters living on multiple levels, just like we do in our daily lives. Forster’s “only connect” came repeatedly to mind as I read this book, and his most recent, _Actress in the House_, which is similar but easier to understand.
Difficult? Yes. Readable and eventually comprehensible? Also yes. It requires patience and interest. McElroy’s not for everyone, perhaps, but few writers are.
Nice to see Gass mentioned, though if anyone ever wanted a reason to read Burton, Woolf, Gaddis, Musil, Kant, Joyce, (and authors not on the above list), Alfau, O’Brien, Elkin, Mann… ah, the list goes on, Gass’s books of loving criticism are a good place to start.
And the Tunnel is amazing. Wish there was someone of Gass’s abilities to speak for the Tunnel.
I think Michael Brodsky is probably the most demanding novelist I’ve read, followed closely by Robbe-Grillet, Gaddis, early Beckett and Malcolm Lowry. I recommend cleansing your palate in between difficult books with Richard Yates, whose style is so limpid that it almost feels like you’re not reading.
Tristram Shandy is laugh aloud funny. I picked it up a few years ago with no prior knowledge–just wanted a novel from the 18th C. It’s a real treat. At one point, Sterne gets 8 pp. out of a piping hot chestnut falling into a guy’s breeches. This is lofty stuff.
As for difficult, I nominate JR by Wm. Gaddis. Seven hundred pages, virtually all dialog with no attributions. You have to pretend you’re sitting in a dark room with headphones on, listening to unidentified voices–but soon you recognize who’s talking. There are also, on the Web, guides that will break it all down into scenes by page. This book is a hoot. You just have to let it have its way with you.
At Swim -Two -Birds was unscalable for me. I’ve climbed Ulysses, The Recognitions, Gravity’s Rainbow, Tristram Shandy and enjoyed them all, but O’Brien leaves me gasping.
For sheer length, Richardson’s Clarissa should be a contender here. It’s supposedly the longest book ever written in English.
And though it wasn’t difficult to read, the 12-volume Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell should also qualify. It took me from November 2007 until June 2009 to get through the whole thing, but I took some long breaks from it.
I must second the nomination for Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa. When I first started it, I thought I would never finish. It is now my favorite book and I have read it many times. For cunning, wit, pure wickedness, and above all, charm, few villains in English literature equal Robert Lovelace.
Add to your list (or reading list): Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus.Difficult, wonderfully bizarre.
Though I love all of his stuff, it will do many readers a service to take a look at The Master’s last three: The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and especially, The Golden Bowl. Pages would go by and I would not have known what he was saying.
“Mulligan Stew” by Gilbert Sorrentino was just about worth the read with some wonderful jousts with language. The sum greater than the parts? Probably not.
Clarissa isn’t that challenging – it’s essentially a bodice ripper dressed up as moral improvement. But it is loooong. That’s the trouble, right there.
Hands down has to be The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Utterly, totally and completely batshit crazy and baffling from start to finish.
Don’t forget Patrick White. Murky, baroque, and baffling, with flashes of brilliance that keep you reading in the hope that all will eventually become clear…which it never does.
I found Fredric Jameson “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” to still be a little out of my reach a few years back. I am getting ready to try it out again… It should be a bit more accessible in light of the understanding I have gained since my last whack at it.
All books by Gerald Murnane, if you can find them, are fascinating. Obscure and fascinating. One feels as though the grit in one’s reading eye has been thoroughly cleaned out with…something. They are fictions, sometimes_about_ the act of writing, in many cases, though not always.
He has a newie, Barley Patch, available from Giramondo Press in Australia, that opens, “Must I write?” As my kids might say, intense.
Carlyle’s a good suggestion. And how about Samuel R. Delaney’s Dhalgren? Still working on that one…
If we’re chucking in works of philosophy (Kant, Hegel, et al.), surely Wittgenstein’s Tractatus goes flying in at the top? Head-in-the-microwave hard.
During my late teens I devoured ‘Wolf Solent’ by John Cowper Powys, identifying powerfully with the author’s depiction of the protagonist’s inner world. Subsequently I choked on Cowper Powys’ magnum opus, ‘A Glastonbury Romance’ and the various other Cowper Powys doorsteps over which I attempted to clamber with increasing dispmay. I now have a modest collection of John Cowper Powys first editions, none of which I have read beyond their indigestible first few pages.
For something modern I suggest Theroux’s Darconville’s Cat.
thank god someone else mentioned the difficulty of as i lay dying! i thought I was the only one. i’d also like to nominate the man without qualities, and for something more contemporary, 2666. I read the first four books and just couldnt bring myself to finish the fifth.
Kirk, please give Infinite Jest five or six weeks of your attention – it’s a rich, rewarding book. Just keep three bookmarks inside it (one to mark your place in the text, one for the endnotes and one for words to look up). I finished it last weekend and haven’t been able to pick up anything else since. Nothing I’ve read describes entertainment or addiction so clearly and thoroughly.
May I suggest “The Decline of the West” by Oswald Spengler?
Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! is one of the few books I’ve ever thrown across a room from frustration. I picked it up and continued, threw it across the room again, picked it up again … and now it’s my answer to anybody when they ask me my favorite American novel. As with so many “difficult” books, once you figure your way in, once you begin to get a foothold, then the magic starts.
William Gaddis’ “JR” is indeed difficult and wonderful but even more complex, and again all dialogue with no character identification was his next one, “A Frolic of His Own,” which takes on the American’s craze for suing one another to the nth degree.
But for sheer intensity of writing, I suggest “Miss MacIntosh, My Darling” by Marguerite Young, two volumes (Dalkey Archive Press), 1300 pages of paragraphless prose poetry and essentially plot-less. It’s that aspect that allows you decades to finish it (it took me four).
It also happens to be one of Anne Tyler’s favorite books, which she says she dips into during episodes of writer’s block. The book even had a few seconds of fame in the film version of her “The Accidental Tourist.”
Looking at the list of Difficult Books covered so far, it looks like they are going in chronological order. That means Ill have to wait for my favorites: Vollmann, Gass, and DFW.
@Otto At Swim-Two-Birds harder than Ulysses?!? You must be joking. Without the footnotes, I never would have stood a chance with Ulysses. I never even felt the need for footnotes with O’Brien (and At Swim-Two-Birds is far and away his toughest book).
‘apologies for getting all epistemological, but “hard” is really (really) subjective in this context…..
I read Ulysses at age 15, and I don’t regret it.
Now I’m 16, and on to Gravity’s Rainbow.
The Cat in the Hat really blew my preconceptions away.
What is it with that tall, anthropomorphic, mischievous cat, wearing a tall, red and white-striped hat and a red bow tie.
I have a few white whales that I will dominate. Did I miss it in the comments? Did no one mention Proust? I’ve read Swann’s Way, but I feel uncomfortable making that statement. I just don’t feel like I paid enough attention. Oh also, Auerbach’s Mimesis. Maybe one day, I’ll figure that one out.
Sorry I just realize my previous first sentence made no sense. (I call the books that truly challenge me white whales…usually in my best grizzly old sea captain voice.)
I’m 2/12 on that list. I’ve read both Paradise Lost & Ada. Tristram Shandy is next on that list, but not for some while. I just spent an entire summer blogging my way through Ada with a good friend: http://readingardor.tumblr.com
Have read 2/12: Moby-Dick and Paradise Lost. I have to say that, for me, both are superseded in difficulty by Bronte’s ‘Villette’. It’s long, jumps in and out of French during speeches, and has a very devious narrator — the reader has a task to work ahead of her.
If “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski is not on this list when its done, it cant be taken seriously…
Ashamed to say I’ve read not a single one on that list…BUT (I saved a lot on my car insurance) I DID make it through The Royal Family by William Vollman. I’ll choose waterboarding next time.
Several books by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Or Kant.
i am surprise that the bible is not number one , very difficult to read and everybody have a different interpretation
it have all murder ,mystery, science fiction , mass murder ,jealousy ,erotic poems ,magic.
plus not many have read it covert to covert , one problem though no jokes !
I’ve read (and felt I understood) quite a few difficult philosophers like Derrida, Heidegger, Hegel, Adorno, Baudrillard and even Lacan, but nothing could get me through Being and Nothingness, by Sartre.
Great project, sweet feeling of investment paying off when you have suffered through some entry on the list.
If the flood gates are opened to french philosophy, well, there are many… but Lacan and his Écrits should definitly be considered. Derrida just need a friendly explanation, but Lacan never intended something as mundane as being understood. Even Zizek admits it: unreadable.
I second two books: Darconville’s Cat-moreover, you
reach the point of increasing returns.
And Oswald Spengler’s Decline-the 2 volume unabridged set with fold-out
charts will make for instant discombobulation.
Also Laura Warholic by Theroux.
I loved “Moby Dick” when I read it in the 1980s, but that was because I had the now out-of-print Harold Beaver edition from Penguin with its 300 pages of notes telling you what you need to know.
I have loved the first 3 pages of “Ulysses” each and every time I have read them.
Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus”, ugh.
Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus” is actually supposed to be funny, rather than impenetrable. Melville was inspired by Carlyle but lightened up the prose.
Wright’s “Arabic Grammar” (Dover reprint) is easily the best Arabic grammar I know, but the author assumes the reader already reads Arabic, as well as German, French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic and Ethiopic, so people who had trouble with Spanish …
My nominee is Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Clarissa is a walk in the park compared to this.
And of course the unpublished Chiliad by Simon Otius at unhappened [dot] com.
I’d nominate Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, and The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson and Shea. The former due to its postmodern and semi-experimental semiotics; the latter due to its length. The people I’ve met who have abandoned these works far outweigh those who have completed them.
Cloud Atlas, however, is a higher achievement. Amazing work.
i guess the books were too difficult to complete the list.