In July of 2022, after graduating high school and with months to go before university began, I decided to dedicate a significant amount of time to ‘serious’ literature. Reading, particularly fiction, has been a big part of my life for nearly as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is crying while my father insisted I read a Russian language translation of Winnie-the-Pooh out loud.
By the time high school ended, I liked to think my taste had evolved a bit. With ample spare time, I wanted to understand if literature was ‘worth it.’ I was attempting to figure out if all the hours spent hunched over a book alone could have been better spent playing sports and making homoerotic jokes in a locker room — the so-called pursuits of a ‘real man.’
To begin my endeavour, I found a list of the greatest books ever written and started working through it in no particular order. I found myself in awe of Vladimir Nabokov’s mastery of English, trapped in the grittiness of James Joyce’s character work, and captivated by Ernest Hemingway’s depictions of Paris in the ’20s.
I did not find a justification for reading; the original question slipped my mind entirely as my enjoyment of the books washed away any need for a reason to read them.
The question returned to me during a recent conversation with a friend. We were discussing literature, and I mentioned the two books I had recently read: Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. I explained how both books were challenging to get through — the former due to its length and the wide variety of topics it covers, and the latter because of the obscure prose style and intentionally difficult plot.
My friend then challenged me: What’s the point of reading fiction at all? If there is anything particular about literature that motivates one to read, what is it? And what makes it different from or more desirable than nonfiction or academic writing?
My intuition is that one ought to read for its own sake — reading broadens our cultural horizons and deepens our relationships with others and the world around us. Though, if this is the case, does it follow that we should seek out difficult literature? Specifically, I pondered the value of engaging with texts that were intentionally written to be challenging.
Indeed, there are great works of fiction that have a captivating plot, linear plot structure, and are, in all respects, generally easy to follow, yet still regarded as compelling works of art. Think of what is typically included in a high school curriculum: George Orwell’s 1984, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. All three have confidently earned the title of timeless works while remaining quite accessible for the average reader.
If this is the case, why bother with something like Ulysses, a novel in which Joyce himself said he “put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant?” Or The Waves, which Woolf intended to be “something abstract[ly] poetic,” and in private letters, expressed surprise that “low-brow” readers found it simple?
The answer I found for myself depends on my own conception of what literature is, or does, as an art form. Literature reflects the “real” world through the mirror of the author’s perception. By engaging with literature, one engages with a particular representation of reality that would otherwise be inaccessible, thereby broadening one’s perception of reality itself.
In his justification for reading slowly, journalist Benny Carts noted that “the value of a text does not depend upon the speed with which I finish, but upon the depth of my relationship with it.” How deep can one’s relationship be with a text that lacks depth? How can one expect to develop a more profound understanding of the world when only engaging with literature that presents reality in a linear, simplistic, and straightforward fashion?
Writer and Professor Will Self argued that what drove writers of “difficult” literature in the twentieth century was “a desire to render in language the effects of modernity on human perception and cognition,” which inevitably led to unconventional, challenging texts.
The beauty of fiction lies not only in the ideas it presents but in how those ideas are presented. It is specifically the “combination of some form of stream-of-consciousness, or mono-perspectival narration with the continuous or historic present” that Self mentioned as characteristic of difficult writing — the form of the story, not just its content.
There is where the beauty of difficult fiction lies: few other written mediums, except for fiction, have the license to experiment with the form in which content is presented. One would certainly not open a history book expecting an unreliable narrator or stream-of-consciousness writing. By engaging with unconventional forms of idea presentation, we gain the ability to engage with the world in ways we had not previously considered.
Here, I am reminded of an old quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. — “Man’s mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension.” We ought to aim to continuously stretch our minds, and difficult literature provides an excellent opportunity for that.
I am very much aware of how much of a bourgeois perspective this is. I am by no means insisting that all the books one reads must have the aforementioned characteristics of difficult texts, or be difficult in any way at all. A construction worker or a doctor might prefer to unwind with a detective novel or a breezy non-fiction book rather than tackling the complexity of Joyce or Faulkner after a long day of incredible physical strain.
But for those of us not in those conditions, with a bit more time on our hands, I firmly believe that at least one endeavour into difficult literature is worth attempting.
