What is the most difficult modern English book to understand?

I agree with the Finnegan’s Wake nomination. A friend of mine who majored in English confessed to me once that it’s the only assigned novel he never finished, and he was a very conscientious student. I’ve never even tried after flicking through the first few pages.

I’ve read The Glass Bead Game and Gravity’s Rainbow and to my mind while Hesse is a bit tedious the sheer mind fuck of Pynchon is harder to get through. I swear I was in a bit of an altered state for a good week or two after finishing Gravity’s Rainbow.

As for the non-fiction I’d argue that Russell and Whitehead’s Principia isn’t actually in English. I can’t decide what the most difficult non-fiction book I’ve encountered is though.

To be fair, maybe Das Glasperlenspiel reads better and it’s all the translator’s fault. But knowing German, probably not.

It didn’t have more pages than some other books I read, nor more chapters. But it is the longest book I’ve ever read. Took me a good part of a year, on and off. There’s a Song of Ice and Fire-sized cast and the language itself isn’t too bad or esoteric, but it’s one of those books that requires a ledger to figure out what is going on (there’s a website for that, too). I first checked it out of a library, read a few pages, and realized that there would be no way I could finish in time without buying it. I also read V., which was difficult too but not nearly as much.

This.

I’ve been halfway through it for two years.

If my students are any indication, it would be either the MLA Handbook or the general rules of grammar and style manual they are required to use for their freshman gut English class.

You just know they were meant to be together and when they finally make it through all the obstacles along the way … call me sentimental but I tear up every time I see that little = sign and know they’ve finally joined together.

I thought the full phrase included all 362 pages. I remember a talking head in a documentary on mathematics saying something that I thought implied that. (The first half or more of the documentary got taped over (probably by an episode of Doctor Who (old version)), so I don’t remember the title.)

I’d be willing to stipulate that.

For anyone who doubts Finnegan’s Wake’s claim to the title:

Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle was a real hoot, let me tell you.

Apropos of nothing… this reminds me of when I was hunkered down in the library stacks one day trying to skim a musicology article in Dutch about a Renaissance era Flemish organist, knowing English and German, and getting this close to understanding it, but not quite because I was missing a few words here and there of technical language.

Only Joyce has puns too and general silliness. But it helps to read it out loud, I find.

There are any number of textbooks most here would have absolutely no purchase on were they to assay them because they assume you have technical knowledge most here do not have. It is frustrating unto madness to be attempting to read a math book and find notation you don’t know that the author is not going to explain. It’s completely opaque in a way not even Finnegans Wake can match. You might as well try to scramble up a smooth glass window. However, once you have the requisite background, most mathematical books aren’t difficult to read; they require care, attention, and time, but they’re not insurmountable.

If you dismiss mathematics, Hegel has a terrible reputation of having written some real slogs. How much of this is due to sub-par translations from the German and how much is due to Hegel I don’t know; Boltzmann seemed to think Hegel’s work was inherently muddy, and he presumably read it in the original.

Moving over to Cafe Society.

Well, I guess the thread has been won but still I’ll add:
Pygmy
by Chuck Palahniuk

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robt. Pirsig

::swoon::

Aww…I thought I was gonna make it to the end of the thread and have something to contribute, but you beat me to it! :stuck_out_tongue:

Actually, though, I found Pygmy to be easier than I expected to read once I got the hang of the language.

I’ve read Gravity’s Rainbow more than seven times. I lost count after that. I’m not sure if I’m proud or ashamed, but don’t ask me what it’s about. Still, it’s my favorite modern novel.

I was a (sexual) virgin the first time. Warped me for life, it did.

If books requiring or causing altered states count, then I nominate The Illuminatus Trillogy. I managed to slog through it without the aid of pot or hallucinogenics (thanks, or maybe not, to being pretty much locked in by snow with an extremely slow and highly filtered internet connection for several weeks), but the book itself should probably be handled only under controlled conditions.

I’m afraid to approach Finnegan’s Wake… I’m wondering whether it is the book that inspired Miguel Delibes’ opera prima, the much-lauded and absolutely horrible Five Hours with Mario (and I love every single other one of his books).
Having now read Nemo’s contribution, ok, it was not what inspired Delibes, but - bloody hell! That’s legal to own, distribute and sell?

It was YOU who caused all those disasters in England soon after you visited!?
Since we’re talking about Finnegans Wake, and it’s now in CS, I will take the time to mention Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s “Headless Corpses Reenactment”, which consists of lyrics taken from the novel to scary effect.

Not too long ago, I was considering whether I should give Roger Penrose’s The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe a shot. Then, I read some of its reviews (many of which were by people with rather advanced training in math and physics). “On second thought, maybe not”.

The hardest novels are those that mix a tough prose style with challenging themes and ideas. Books like Ulysses and The sound and the fury are chewy as hell in places, but they’re thematically pretty simple. Ulysses is at heart just a book about people.
Someone like Pynchon is on another level - you’ve got the same dense prose that can be a real battle, but used to describe fantastical theories of world governance and order. I think Gravity’s Rainbow benefits from being so dazzling that it keeps the pages turning - something like Mason and Dixon is more subtle and, to be honest, a real ballache.

Finnegan’s Wake does sort of stand alone - although I await the, er, pleasure of reading it. There must be a few of these type of books self-published by nobodies - can’t be too many examples where a revered author just decides to take things to their logical conclusion and dish up total impenetrability.

Bob Dylan’s Tarantula was pretty heavy going - all bizarre imagery and nonsense! Some quite memorable but it was almost like reading pages of random words at times…
(I read it back in the 70s so I might be mis-remembering and doing it an injustice, but I don’t think so!)

The Universe in A Nutshell by Stephen Hawking went so far over my head the trees swayed. I liked it just didn’t understand it…

I’ve tried twice on Ancient Evenings, but I suspect that’s more a failing of mine than Mailer’s…