Difficult Books Archives

Difficult Books: Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany

Garth Risk Hallberg - 6.29.2010 | 38

Though Dhalgren sold a million copies as science-fiction, it seems at many points no more distant from our own reality than that other trippy whopper from the mid-'70s, Gravity's Rainbow. For Bellona, read Detroit.

Garth Risk Hallberg - 6.29.2010 | 38

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Difficult Books

Difficult Books: Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov

Garth Risk Hallberg - 1.28.2010 | 15

Ada is "about" incest only in the way that Lolita is "about" pedophilia, or Moby-Dick is "about" fishing. Which is to say, it isn't.

Garth Risk Hallberg - 1.28.2010 | 15

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Difficult Books

Difficult Books: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Emily Colette Wilkinson - 12.29.2009 | 6

Woolf’s writing can feel disconcerting, confusing, and frustrating; It can also seem numinous, exquisite, utterly absorbing.

Emily Colette Wilkinson - 12.29.2009 | 6

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Difficult Books

Difficult Books: The Cantos, The Dream Songs, The Sonnets

Garth Risk Hallberg - 11.12.2009 | 10

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Difficult Books

Difficult Books: Richardson, Sterne, Melville

Emily Colette Wilkinson - 11.2.2009 | 15

I have a feeling with Melville that the allegory at work in the novel is a little out of my league as a contemporary person.

Emily Colette Wilkinson - 11.2.2009 | 15

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Difficult Books

Difficult Books: Burton, Milton, Swift

Emily Colette Wilkinson - 10.29.2009 | 4

Milton reverses the normal order of words and clauses, Yoda-ish, only more complex.

Emily Colette Wilkinson - 10.29.2009 | 4

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Difficult Books Notable Articles

Introducing Difficult Books, A Descriptive List

Emily Colette Wilkinson - 10.29.2009 | 69

perhaps, now that we think on it again, having finished, Could it be that it was worth the struggle? Could it be that in the pain of it was a tinge of pleasure, of value (not to mention pride)

Emily Colette Wilkinson - 10.29.2009 | 69

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