The 5 Most Difficult Books Ever! (Fiction)

In this video, we're talking about the most difficult books, and what exactly it is that makes them so hard to get through.

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BOOKS MENTIONED:
(These are Amazon Affiliate links, If you buy anything through these it will support the channel):

📚 Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

📚 Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

📚 The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

📚 Ulysses - James Joyce

📚 Finnegans Wake - James Joyce

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FURTHER READING:
I found A LOT of commentary on these books, here are the things directly referenced in the video.

🎞️ How to Read Gravity's Rainbow

🎞️ How to Pronounce all of Finnegans Wake thunderwords

🎞️ The Sound and the Fury Movie (watch the 1959 version, the James Franco version got TERRIBLE reviews)

📚 An online guide to each chapter of Ulysses

📍 Infinite Jest Map

OTHER SOURCES:

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CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:22 Infinite Jest
01:12 Gravity's Rainbow
02:15 Stream-of-consciousness
02:44 The Sound and the Fury
03:54 Ulysses
05:57 Finnegans Wake

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Music from Epidemic Sound
Stock Footage from Pexels, Unsplash

[nighm]

I once read the first page of “Finnegan’s Wake” out loud to show someone how absurd it is, but when I got to the “koaxkoax” they said “Wait, isn’t that how the frogs speak in Aristophanes’ ‘The Frogs’.” They were correct. They had identified an allusion, though what it mattered in context remained a mystery.

[pillmuncher]

A German critic once praised a German translation of Finnegan's Wake, saying the translator had done the utmost right thing by translating it from Non-English into Non-German.

[crito]

four easy steps to appreciating Finnegans Wake:

1. Figure out if you appreciate the basic musicality of it, if the sound and vibe of the language alone pleases you. Look up the video of Joyce himself reading the section where washer women are laying out laundry and gossiping. Follow along with the text while he speaks (the video I'm thinking of has a link). You'll get a sense of the bare rhythm of the text and pronunciation wordplay. On the second page Finn McCool is said to have "lived in the broadest way immarginable." Does the idea of a book stuffed with puns like this tickle you? You may be interested.

2. Read everything and anything. Read Joyce's previous books. Read Ellmann's biography of Joyce to get a whole lot of context and analysis you wouldn't otherwise get. Read Samuel Beckett, Joyce's apprentice, who borrows a lot from FW era Joyce but in a far more pared down way (also amazing in his own right). Read some secondaries if you want, like Joseph Campbell's book. Read a bunch about myth and folklore while you're at it, as the themes and story of FW work the way myths do.

3. Get the Oxford edition, not the Penguin. Oxford has a great introductory essay going over the general themes and recurring symbols, as well as a section by section outline of what is actually happening plot-wise in a given set of pages.

4. Read it, enjoying the basic rhythms of the language; don't worry about getting lost so long as you are generally following the outline and recognizing the story beats as they happen while recognizing the thematic point of the language and the story beats. The challenge now will just be connecting your sentence by sentence reading with all of the above; it helps to loosen control and just vibe to it, knowing you have your whole life ahead of you to grind out every minute detail if you want; right now you're just reading it. Read out loud in your worst approximation of an Irish accent.

And really that's the

[diamonddavewonfor]

There is a book club in California that read "Finnegan's Wake".

It took them 28 years.

[BrettWMcCoy]

On the other hand, "Dubliners" by James Joyce, a collection of short stories, is very readable and quite good. It's hard to believe it's even the same author as Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.

[lawrencelewis]

In the St Patrick's day parade in Toronto in 2004, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, there was a float celebrating it, followed by groups such as "People That Tried to Read Ulysses"where there were about 100 people marching. Then it was "People That Finished Ulysses" with about 20 people in that group. Then there was the group, "People That Understood Ulysses." There was no one in that group.

[heathermcdonald]

I read Gravity's Rainbow and I can honestly say the only thing I remember about it is that I finished.

[okpaul]

Hegel's "The Phenomenology of Spirit" also deserves a mention.

[davidhancock]

Infinite Jest is my favorite novel of all time. My first time through I had never read anything like it before and I was enthralled. Like Gravity's Rainbow, it rewards you the second time through. These authors chopped up the narrative in a way that significant details are presented before sometimes many pages later you are provided a reason to recognize their significance. While overall I enjoyed GR, the obscene scenes in that book are over the top for me. I got most of the way through Ulysses and enjoyed it for the most part, but I had help from an explanatory text that I read at the same time. I appreciated Joyce's experimentation, helping usher in modernist literature. Truly, Ulysses has humor as you say - but so does Infinite Jest, in spades - and Gravity's Rainbow as well. I like works of art that make me think, that don't reveal their mysteries so easily, that I can return to again and again and find new things each time. I am now intrigued to check out Finnegan's Wake.

[nbenefiel]

I read Ulysses while living in Dublin. I think you need a knowledge of Dublin and it helps if you’re familiar with Irish music. My friends and I did Bloomsday one year. We hit every pub mentioned in Ulysses, one drink allowed in each pub. By the time the pubs closed, always after the last bus, we staggered home. It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

[lins]

Once I asked my literature teatcher what was the hardest book he ever tried to read, he said immediatly "Ulysses, I took 6 years to finish and I still dont get it".
And just for curiosity, here in Brazil we have a writter called João Guimarães Rosa, who is our James Joyce, he also spoke several lenguages and made a truly masterpiece called "Grande Sertão Veredas", maybe the greatest and hardest brazilian novel.

[virgilflowers]

I don’t mean to be that obnoxious guy here, and I’m not trashing anyone who struggled with this book, but I don’t find Sound and the Fury to be nearly as difficult as many people claim. By the end of the book, you will start to understand everything. Upon a second read, you will get it. It’s fragmented and stream of consciousness, but the answers are mostly all there. If I would pick a Faulkner book to put on this list, it would without a doubt be Absalom Absalom; a brilliant novel, truly, but one of the more difficult books I’ve read. That said, it is worth your time but I would recommend doing Sound and the Fury first for story reasons. If you’re unfamiliar with Faulkner, try As I Lay Dying, The Hamlet, or Sanctuary.

[danstracner]

This was a lucid and well-written survey of difficult books. In graduate school, I spent an entire semester on “Ulysses, ” starting by carefully reading Homer’s “The Odyssey.” If you’re reasonably familiar with that classic, Joyce’s cascade of allusions makes more sense. This was pre-internet, so I had to rely on published articles and guidebooks to decipher the multitude of other allusions and languages. It would be easier to solve the puzzles today by using online material. But (as others have pointed out), the real pleasure of reading this difficult book is Joyce’s masterful wordplay, which often is more accessible if read aloud. Doing so definitely increased my appreciation. Joyce’s quip about professors spending their lives on his book has turned out to be so true. As for “Finnegans Wake, ” I agree with William Faulkner’s assessment: “This is a case of the artist getting too close to the divine fire and being electrocuted by it!”

[JamesWrightLBC]

The best way to experience Finnegan's Wake is to have a properly drunk Irishman read it to you.

[kevinbergin]

"The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works." James Joyce

[annaphallactic]

James Joyce was an author who was designed for audiobooks. I've read Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake twice, the first time in paper and the second time by audio, and the listening experience was so rich and satisfying.

[charlesajones]

My father used to say that Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" was the hardest book he had ever attempted to read. This is a person who read the entire dictionary from start to finish. Multiple times.

[zerozeroren]

I remember loving The Sound and The Fury So Much. Thank you for bringing it up, time for a good old reread

[oldpossum]

At the high school where I worked, there was a paper bound Finnegan’s Wake in the fiction section. It survived “weeding” by three long serving librarians. I hope it is still there. A librarian’s little joke.

[dbob]

After the first read through, Sound And Fury is not that bad. I have gotten to the point where I can tell where we are and who is telling the story in about any part. The beauty of the writing is what got me through the first read. The writing is intoxicating. It is one of the books that has shaped the way I think about reality since I first read it almost 50 years ago.