[dundarious]

Having a “completionist” mindset (wanting to understand every reference and insight, and spending hundreds of hours to achieve it) is not the only way to read it, and draw meaning and enjoyment from it. I think a lot of people do “finish” it, but have barely scratched the surface — nevertheless, they enjoy it.

No harm in not enjoying it, or recognizing you’d be unlikely to, either.

However, there is a tendency among people using your logic (but coming to different conclusions so I’m not lumping you in with them) to end up disparaging almost anyone for reading Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow or even Infinite Jest.

[bitshiftfaced]

> No harm in not enjoying it,

In a way, I do assign a kind of "harm" to books that I don't enjoy. You must invest time into a book and give it a fair chance before you can write it off. What's at risk is potentially hours of wasted leisure time.

> Having a “completionist” mindset (wanting to understand every reference and insight, and spending hundreds of hours to achieve it) is not the only way to read it, and draw meaning and enjoyment from it.

I've actually read more than one account of people saying they just sort of accepted that they don't understand what's going on and just power through it. Personally, that doesn't seem like something I'd enjoy, but apparently some people do, so I won't debate that.

I do think there's something to be said for readability in general. Whenever the reader has to stop because something is confusing (and not because it's thought-provoking or important), this interruption tends to jolt the reader back out of the story and into "ok now I gotta look up this word" or "ok let me re-read this last paragraph because that sentence was very long and full of ambiguous pronouns." To me, this sort of thing is not enjoyable in any book.

[dundarious]

I think it’s a bit funny to judge it so forcefully along the axis of “readability”, especially with a huge bias towards “readability for a 2022 non-Irish audience outside the art scene” — you’re assigning “harm” to the book itself, so I no longer think you’re just giving your 2c about your experience. It’s famously and I’d say even canonically one of the most dense and quasi-academic pieces of literary fiction of its era — it’s not for everyone (I haven’t attempted it).

Even then, there are novels for all permutations of “readable (to me)” and not, and “good (to me)” and not. Fair enough though in the sense that I wouldn’t take a “barely readable (to me) but very good (to me)” novel to the beach.

[bitshiftfaced]

> you’re assigning “harm” to the book itself, so I no longer think you’re just giving your 2c about your experience.

Only to the extent in which I've defined "harm" (in quotations), which was to say that I don't like to invest free time into books that I probably won't finish.

In any case, while I do care about readability, it does look like I've stepped a bit too far over the line. Believe me, I have no desire in forming any sort of literary criticism against a book that many famous writers have said is great, especially having not read it.

[jprd]

Well said, and totally with you until Infinite Jest. Hanging your hat on that should haunt you like mentioning it within the same breath as Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow or even Blood Meridian.

Infinite Jest is the Jared Kushner of literary works. BEFORE the Saudi money for selling the PDB.

[dundarious]

They weren’t listed together because I think they’re all great. They each have something “difficult” or “pretentious” about them in the popular imagination, and people get criticized for “putting on airs” when seen reading them in public, people are classified as “oh, one of those guys...” if they have it on their shelf/nightstand.