The Worlds' Most Difficult Books

[pynch]

Originally Posted by Namekuseijin

... reading as fun as unfolding Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

Hilarious, that should be the blurb for every V. Woolf novel!

[pynch]

Virginia Woolf in a letter to John Lehmann about The Waves, which might also be applicable, at least partly, to the delights of To the Lighthouse:

“[...] a difficult attempt—I wanted to eliminate all detail; all fact; and analysis; and my self; and yet not be frigid and rhetorical; and not monotonous (which I am) and to keep the swiftness of prose and yet strike one or two sparks, and not write poetical, but purebred prose, and keep the elements of character; [...]”

[Namekuseijin]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Here's an example of the original Shakespeare followed by Shakespeare translated into the current vernacular:

that's not a translation into current vernacular, it's a translation from verses into (minutely explained) prose

poetry is really impenetrable to some. the beauty of it lies in the interpretation of the ideas therein, not in giving right away yet another story with characters and scenes mechanically described for voracious pac-man readers

[Namekuseijin]

Originally Posted by pynch

Virginia Woolf in a letter to John Lehmann about The Waves, which might also be applicable, at least partly, to the delights of To the Lighthouse:

“[...] a difficult attempt—I wanted to eliminate all detail; all fact; and analysis; and my self; and yet not be frigid and rhetorical; and not monotonous (which I am) and to keep the swiftness of prose and yet strike one or two sparks, and not write poetical, but purebred prose, and keep the elements of character; [...]”

indeed

She does read a bit like Poe, in the sense that there's a lot of description of the characters psychological motives and reasoning. Scenes are not described visually much and still you have then all pretty much laid out and unfolded before your eyes a few paragraphs after much of a character's reasoning...

[snarkophilus]

I still have nightmares about The Wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis - easily the most difficult book that I had to read in high school. For such a short book it just seemed to drag on insufferably.