Short Little Difficult Books

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Attitudes Toward “Difficult” Books

  • Some readers embrace difficulty as a kind of intellectual “Dark Souls” hobby; others insist they read fiction for fun and reject any implied moral superiority in preferring hard books.
  • Several note the article caricatures people who dismiss difficult books as “fraudulent” or “pretentious,” and argue that criticism is aimed at anti‑intellectual sneering, not at casual readers.
  • Others observe that many “difficult” books don’t feel hard once you’re attuned to their style; the main friction is often length, required attention, or confusing plots.

Moby‑Dick and Reading at the Wrong Age

  • Multiple commenters love Moby‑Dick, especially its humor and digressive whale lore, and recommend shorter Melville (“Billy Budd,” “Bartleby,” “Typee,” “Omoo”) as on‑ramps.
  • Several recount hating it (or plays like A Raisin in the Sun, Shakespeare, Gatsby, Animal Farm) when forced in school, then finding them profound or funny as adults.
  • Debate over curriculum: some argue teens lack the historical or emotional context for certain classics; others respond that allegory (e.g., Animal Farm) is precisely how context is built.

Specific “Short, Difficult” Fiction

  • Enthusiastic, mixed, and hostile takes on:
    • Blood Meridian: for some, a gory, nihilistic but page‑turning contender for “Great American Novel”; for others, needlessly obscure or just horrifying.
    • The Road, Blindness, Death with Interruptions, The Queue: initially disorienting forms (sparse punctuation, unattributed dialogue, long paragraphs) that become immersive.
    • Ionesco’s short plays, Banks’s Feersum Endjinn, Calvino, Philip K. Dick, Borges, Delillo, Pynchon, DFW, Ballard, Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Gene Wolfe, Queneau’s Exercises in Style as rich, often playful difficulty.

Finnegans Wake and Experimental Prose

  • On Finnegans Wake, advice includes: nothing “prepares” you; just submit to it, treat it as poetry, or listen aloud.
  • Some recommend a brief guide or “skeleton key” only after a first pass, to preserve pleasure rather than turn it into thesis work.

Language, Age, and Non‑Fiction Difficulty

  • Readers highlight “old” versions of modern languages (Rabelais, La Chanson de Roland, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Don Quixote in Spanish, Old/Ancient Greek) as a separate, rewarding kind of difficulty.
  • Others propose short, dense non‑fiction as analogues: Landau’s physics, Soviet Mir handbooks, Rudin’s analysis text, primary historical/philosophical sources, and social‑science works.
  • One notes Cal Newport–style strategies: use secondary sources to ease into hard primary texts.

Reading Strategies and Media

  • Audiobooks are praised for carrying readers through dense prose like Blood Meridian.
  • Some describe “training” on difficult literature over years, finding once‑impenetrable books suddenly accessible and enjoyable.