John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy. Read it cover to cover.
I knew by osmosis not to tackle Finnegan’s Wake, etc.
I have attempted to read Joyce’s Finnegans Wake about 4 or 5 times in my life, and have always given up quickly in despair and disgust.
A Clockwork Orange baffled me twenty-five years ago… but then it made perfect sense to me three years ago. Go figure.
Faulkner’s ***The Sound and the Fury *** was gobbledygook for 20 minutes… then something clicked, and I found it made sense. I have no idea why.
I think a few questions, perhaps even the major ones, are left unresolved.The very beginning of the book, which takes place after everything else, has Hal babbling incoherently. I know one theory is that his toothbrush was dosed with a nasty drug by someone at the academy, but I think I picked up a reference to Hal and Don digging up a copy of one of Hal’s father’s films, something his father created especially to get Hal to come out of his shell. For that matter, how do Hal and Don eventually meet? They’re arguably the two main characters, and spend most of the book practically neighbors, but never encounter one another.It’s been years since I read it. I don’t recall what happened to the Quebecois separatists, where they got the Entertainment, etc.
I haven’t picked up a copy of The Waste Land in years, but I am with you on that, I was clueless and I really don’t think another attempt would do me much good.
Then you should definitely read The Children’s Home and see if you understand it. It makes way, way less sense to me than either The Crying of Lot 49 or The Books of the New Sun did.
from what I managed to take away from the ending, it ultimately had something to do with the holocaust, alternate dimensions, and cabbage patch kids being real children. Yes, I’m actually serious about all three things.
For what it’s worth, it isn’t the finale. Dickson wrote a few more books in the series. In particular, The Chantry Guild continues on after the end of The Final Encyclopedia.
Too Like the Lighting by Ada Palmer. I could probably manage to give a reasonable description of the premise and plot, but I still feel like I … missed more than I got, somehow, especially in the last third or so.
Long, long ago I read Robert Shea’s and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus Trilogy.
I did not realize it was a trilogy when I purchased and read book one The Eye in the Pyramid, which left me befuddled. Then I discovered there was a second book, The Golden Apple, which I was sure would help make sense of everything. Nope. Then I read book three Leviathan. I was still hopelessly confused.
ETA: from Wikipedia,
“The Bead Game”, by Herman Hesse
It’s such slow slogging, and it’s not short. I made it past 3/4 through. But then I almost lost the will to live, and gave up. Ugh.
I kind of liked that one, but then I made the mistake of trying to read Steppenwolf. I couldn’t even get interested.
I don’t think you’re really supposed to understand that trilogy. I enjoyed it anyway.
Cat’s Cradle was better, IMO.
Speaking of Finnegans Wake, widely acknowledged to be… complex, is there an edition with simple footnotes giving variant readings for each word? For example, if the text reads, “wipe your glosses with what you know”, then on the bottom half of the page one would find glosses = glasses, asses, etc. Seems to me that would go a long way towards helping the otherwise intelligent reader not miss something just because they are not fluent in German or Irish or whatever is packed into a particular word. Maybe a 50/50 mix of text and apparatus on each page?
Another vote for As I Lay Dying here. I tried to read it 3 times and could not even grasp what was happening on a basic level. The stream of consciousness writing style and the constant perspective switching between characters who all seemed a few sandwiches short of a picnic left me utterly confused.
I keep waiting for someone else to mention “House of Leaves” but maybe I’m the only one who couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on there.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel I didn’t understand, but I have read novels that puzzled me until I read them again.
My best example is The Source, by James Michener. I read it and didn’t understand why I didn’t like it, as I did most of his novels. Then I read a lot more history, particularly Biblical history, and things were more clear, and I actually ended up liking the book very much.
Confession Time: many years ago. Years before it became a TV series, I made three attempts to read Game of Thrones (I mean the actual book of that title) and gave up around page 60ish or so because I couldn’t tell who was who or what was going on.
It doesn’t help that it’s part of a series (trilogy?), so that you don’t really reach the end at the end. I’m not even sure it had reached the beginning at the end.
If you can’t put up with an exposition-laden, digressive narrative voice pretending that you, the reader, are arguing with him about his narrative choices, then this isn’t the book for you.
Goodnight Moon.