Difficult Books

[Paul Mackin]

On 8/9/2012 9:36 AM, Madeleine Maudlin wrote:
> I find the I Ching very difficult, borderline incomprehensible.
>
> Also, I had a rough time completing Dan Brown's Lost Symbol.

I imagine I've  reread most of these books within the last decade. Many 
of the titles seems familiar.

P
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 7:09 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com 
> <mailto:markekohut at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>     One of the two folks who wrote the 'most difficult' list, Garth,
>     did a nice piece on Women & Men not long ago.
>     I have a stored copy somewhere.
>     I have a friend who knows him and I got to meet him in the most
>     superficial way at a big book event once.
>     Nice guy, genial at this.
>     Lookout Cartridge, started within the last pentade, read so much
>     like Pynchon in the beginning, to me, mentally touched reader as
>     we know, that I stopped out. The anxiety
>     of readership. That should be a recommendation and is although I
>     have failed my own reader-response.
>
>     *From:* Phillip Grayson <phillip.grayson at gmail.com
>     <mailto:phillip.grayson at gmail.com>>
>     *To:* John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com <mailto:sundayjb at gmail.com>>
>     *Cc:* Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com
>     <mailto:against.the.dave at gmail.com>>; Keith Davis
>     <kbob42 at gmail.com <mailto:kbob42 at gmail.com>>; pynchon -l
>     <pynchon-l at waste.org <mailto:pynchon-l at waste.org>>
>     *Sent:* Thursday, August 9, 2012 12:40 AM
>     *Subject:* Re: Difficult Books
>
>     On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 10:27 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com
>     <mailto:sundayjb at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         Can anyone give a Pynchonista's appraisal of Joseph McElroy? He's
>         never really made it onto my radar but sounds intriguing.
>         Worth it?
>
>
>     I've read /Smuggler's Bible /and /Women and Men/. /Smuggler's
>     Bible /was good, but I don't remember it especially well a year
>     later.  It's a lot of nested stories that compound on each other
>     and add and play off themselves.  I remember liking it a lot, but
>     it wasn't too earth-shattering.
>
>     /Women and Men/, on the other hand, definitely does deserve to be
>     on a list of difficult books.  It's superlong and very obliquely
>     told, difficult to follow, but in my opinion worth it.  The topics
>     and themes and what can be discerned of the plot are all really
>     interesting.  There're astronauts and operas and all that good
>     stuff, and the prose is very good, if difficult to parse at times
>     (the perspective just changes unannounced and pretty constantly,
>     so there's a lot of retracing your steps after being confused for
>     half a page), and I actually enjoyed it a lot.  It's much more
>     staid and less accessible than Pynchon, and I found it more
>     effective and enjoyable to just let a lot slip by with a befuddled
>     look on my face and trust that it would resolve itself later on in
>     the story, and for the most part it did.
>
>     It's a real experience of a book, it took me a few months to read
>     it, and I prolly went through six other (shortish, funnish) books
>     in the meantime just to take a break from it and feel literate
>     again, but I found it a really unique and interesting book.  I'd
>     be loathe to recommend it, just because it is so huge and such a
>     slog, and I can easily imagine someone hating it, but for me it
>     was worth it, and I'd bet if you could get the e-book and just
>     open it every day and approach it as a short avant garde work
>     without having to hold 5 pounds of it in your hands it might be
>     easier to get after.
>
>     I guess that''s not too helpful at all, but that's my experience
>     with McElroy.
>
>     phllp
>
>
>

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