8 Writers and Books I Find Extremely Difficult to Read

I forget where the quip came from: "Hamlet isn't so great; it's full of cliches you hear all the time."

I just discovered you tonight and already watched about 15 of your videos. I have to express my gratitude for your efforts and for sharing your inspirinig insights with us. You, sir, are a great great man! Thank you!

Hello Benjamin ! I am a Moroccan poet and I taught British and American Literature to English teacher trainees. Interestingly enough I discovered you through my son who has just read Wuthering Heights and sent me your video on it . It was one of the books I taught 40 years ago and had my then students to work on 14 different reading tracks on that novel. Only great novels can stand deep analysis. I truly appreciate your great depth and your keen sense of analysis along with your sensitiveness and genuine knowledge of the world literature. I also really the simplicity and directness and passion with which you present your videos far from any presumptuous academic attitude. Yesterday I watch your video on Dickens since I have a workshop on Dickens with school kids in three weeks. This video on difficult writers really helps apprehend writers generally categorised as difficult. Isn't difficulty a nice challenge for a teacher or a reader?

Are you a fan of Cormac McCarthy? I'm admittedly not well read. I read in school, but for whatever reason stopped after. For my 31st birthday a couple years ago, my partner bought me a copy of The Road by McCarthy. I had heard about it in passing. The ending made me weep. I've never had a piece of media hit me in such an emotional way. I've read everyday since. I'll forever be grateful to that book for making me love literature.

A writer that is quite challenging that I love: William Faulkner.

The trick for me reading Shakespeare is I focus on one character and imagine I'm acting that part. I know I can't act, not even interesting in it, but reading his plays is easier for me if I act out one part in my head.

How did I ever get along as a book dork without your channel? You're doing a great service to book lovers far and wide, the classics have always been my favorite but I rarely got to discuss them with other literature geeks. Every time I finish a classic I feel more kinship for my fellow man across time and space. I have done what you recommended by imagining the characters are real people and the author is alive right here in front of me personally handing over a copy of their book. It helps remind me that the authors were real people with real intentions.

I began reading Proust when I was around 20 or so and thought I was intellectual. I gave up after 30 pages and ended up selling the book at a flea market a couple of years later. Now when I’m on the wrong side of 50 I’ve finally come back to Proust and love reading him. I work in the stressful world of IT and 5-10 pages of Proust in the evening really clears my mind. You can’t get any further away from my day job than Proust. As you point out, the key is slowing down and letting the book take the time it requires. So I really think you need to read ”difficult” writers at the right moment in life. Then they are perhaps not all that difficult. The exception is Joyce who I will never get my head around! I started out with Proust an e-book, but it just felt wrong. I didn’t want a paperback edition either, which is the only one in print here in Sweden, so ended up scouting the second hand book shops and again bought the same edition I had sold 25 years ago. I am close to end of The Guermentes Way, but think I will a break before going on to part IV. Do you have any suggestions?

Pierre Bezukhov will always live in my soul. War and Peace affected me more than any book I'd ever read and I just couldn't stop thinking about it after I'd finished. So I'll be reading it again along with you this year. There are so many classics I haven't read though. I used to read tons, but somehow that dwindled away as I got older (I blame the internet which didn't exist in my youth). I regret that now, so I'm on a mission to make up for lost time. I just discovered your channel, and have binge watched loads. So along with my daily reading I now have a goal to watch one of your videos every day. I'm so happy I found you!

I always find Moby-Dick at least moderately difficult. Definitely demanding. But never a slog.

Just finished Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. I cried my heart out.

I recently discovered you and am thrilled. After being an avid reader for years, I stopped reading much of anything. Listening to your videos has given me a new start. Now that I'm 71, I'm going to revisit many of the books I've read. , it's time for a new perspective.

It is ten months since I first followed Virgil and and Dante into the Inferno. I am now on Canto 4 of Paradiso. I will read this work for the rest of my life. It requires a detailed understanding of 13th and 14th century Italian politics and the medieval intellectual and spiritual milieu. I have never encountered a work that required me to read three different translations simultaneously, as well as Aristotle, Ovid and Virgil. Yowzah! Glad I am retired and ave an bundance of time for it.

Your channel is a blessing for book readers! Still waiting for my mail of 'In Search of Lost Time' and can't wait to tackle it, slooowly 😉

Gravity’s rainbow has to be an all time (equal parts) phenomenal and difficult novel (if you can even call it that)

The best way to read Proust is just to open it to a random page, and read a paragraph. It’s always perfect.

Reading Nietzsche is a particular pleasure of mine. Reading him requires multiple reads.

What you said about “… Tolstoy wants you to keep the characters in your soul” resonates so deeply with me. The first piece of literature i have ever read at the age of 6 was Martin the Cobbler, a parable by him. And i always, always go back to those parables, whether it be “what men live by”, “god sees the truth but waits”, “walk in the light whenever there is light” etc etc… these stories shaped who i am today!

Thank you for this video, Ben. One of the many interesting thoughts you shared stood out to me because it happened to me, long before I knew you and most likely before you even had read your first word. In the 70ties for the first time I read H. Manns two volumes of Henri Quatre. (Montaigne appears in there and showed his kind character and free spirit) . Ever since I’d see Catherine Medici, her face half covered by a curtain looking down from one of the upper windows of the Louvre when I walked by. These books! One really lives in them. Fairly voluminous but towards the end one wishes he’d go on and on.

I struggled with Melville's "Moby Dick," but just finished it after three earlier failures at different stages in my life thanks to your and Harold Bloom's deep praise of the work. It requires an immediate re-read, I believe, to absorb it properly. So many different voices, some of which I could not decipher. It's narrative style shifts so often as well. Other difficult reads in my life: Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying." That required another immediate re-read, and has frightened me off other Faulkner, to date, sadly. Anything by Pynchon is a challenge; but I found him rather witty when I read him in college. I failed at Palisser's "Quincunx" when I first attempted it (I picked up from a recommendation and found it dull then), but I think I've gained enough patience and reading experience for it now. I do believe a modern pinnacle might be DFW's "Infinite Jest." I have it, I did venture a couple pages when I first bought it but set it aside. I realize that it might take a few months to complete. The Bible. Might that be the beginning of Harold Bloom's "Western Canon"? You've an impressive body of work here on YouTube. You are an inspiration to anyone who wants to elevate their reading into the classics.