Literary Blog Hop: Hard Reading

This blog hop is open to blogs that primarily feature book reviews of literary fiction, classic literature, and general literary discussion. This week's question comes from Debbie Nance at Readerbuzz

What is the most difficult literary work you've ever read? What made it so difficult?

This is my first time participating in the Literary Blog Hop, but I just found the question so intriguing, in part because nothing immediately came to mind. I've read many difficult reads, I know that, but for the life of me, I couldn't think of a single one the first few times I read the question.

A quick look through some "Most Difficult Reads" lists gave me a few ideas: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Middlemarch by George Elliot, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, and blah blah blah.

These books do not feel like the most difficult reads to me, so I headed over to my bookshelves to solve the conundrum. Five seconds later I was convinced of my most difficult read:

Rhetorica ad Herennium, possibly by Cicero but maybe not, was written in the first century BCE and details the uses of rhetoric, particularly in regards to persuasion. It's some heavy shit people. Brilliant lessons written artfully abound. Of course, the translation plays a large role in the prose; sentence construction and word usage most likely vary from one translator to the next. Mine was...complex. At the same time, regardless of how the content is written, the concepts articulated are weighty and require careful consideration for complete understanding. You must turn the brain on to process. An interesting overview plus the complete outline can be found at Brigham Young University.

I read this and Cicero's De Oratore, all three books, for a Classical Rhetoric course while in my Masters program. Not exactly pleasure reading, but I do have to say that the ideas presented are rather awesome. I probably would do well to remember the lessons, but alas I have blocked them from memory due to the pain of learning them. :P

Oddly enough - and I swear I didn't plan this - my choice of books works with my Echoes of Man theme this month where I journey through ancient times. How serendipitous!

Now, of course, this probably doesn't count as "LITERARY", so I'll add in another difficult read with a more literary bent ( as in text for the purposes of storytelling ).  The only one that really comes to mind is Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose:

For full thoughts, read my review of The Name of the Rose. Of The Name of the Rose's 502 pages, I probably only fully comprehended half. This was not just a murder mystery, but also a lengthy discourse on religious politics, literary theory, the nature of truth, semiotics, logic, the validity of inquisitions, syllogisms, and history. I was fascinated even as I was confused. Overall though, the book is a good story with many and diverse characters, beautiful language, and intriguing philosophies.

While I acknowledge the difficulty of the book, I must say that reading it does not resonate as a "difficult experience" because I enjoyed it so much. In other words, don't let the rating of difficult keep you from reading this one!