I often have a feeling like this when teaching a work I’ve taught many times before (Shakespeare is the easiest example): I measure a work’s greatness by its ability to present me with a new problem, question, or reading each time.
These moments are when it occurs to me I was misreading something are the little moments that make me feel lucky to be a teacher of literature.
100% agree—the best works are the ones that don't yield up all their treasures at once but can be revisited over and over again as sources of seemingly endless delight & wisdom
I've been yearning for more 'difficult' books recently, in the way you yearn for a proper meal after eating too many sweets. I read a lot of genre fiction because that's what I write, but getting to grips with something more complex is a different pleasure. I wrote a Substack last week on 'discomfort reads' and would love to hear about other people's recommendations.
Years ago for a graduate seminar, I was reading “Conversation in the Cathedral” by Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel had the reputation for “big and difficult,” and after reading the first 150 pages, I agreed. I couldn’t figure out what was actually going on. It was only when I stopped reading and started over, outlining each chapter, that I suddenly realized what Vargas Llosa had done. He was telling four interconnected stories, giving each a chapter and then moving to the next one, eventually coming back to the first story in chapter 5. Once I cracked the structural code, the novel more than made sense; it became one of my favorite works of fiction.
Great example. Along the same lines, anything by William Gaddis (JR is my favorite): the entire book composed in unmarked dialog, so you can't at first glance tell who is speaking to whom or where one scene changes to another. But once you understand the technique, you quickly get into the rhythm of it - it never becomes "easy", but it is totally compelling and not too hard to follow.
I listened to Ulysses on Audible. I came to think it had been written for the very purpose of being read aloud. Not difficult at all, enchanting and beautiful
I think it's important to read "difficult" novels if one really is going to say one loves literature, which makes my wife call me a snob! But I get great joy out of it. Most recent example I can think of is Chilean writer Roberto Bolano. Even what I didn't understand I was blown away by the craft!!
The idea of literature being where 'words don't quite work' reminds me of TS Eliot's asides in the Four Quartets where he struggles with words, that words are insufficient for the subject.
This essay pairs really well with your thoughts on pleasure and I think it's best to think of them as a piece. Challenging literature operates on a different wavelength than that of a formulaic thriller or the quick beach read. It's like comparing Avengers to The Seventh Seal, both have their place and purpose. Perhaps the problem is that the difficult is disappearing because the pleasure we can derive from it is not immediately apparent. Delay is something our modern world has no patience for. Years ago I read Absalom, Absalom! and was confounded, upset and found the experience unenjoyable. A week after finishing the novel and ruminating on it, its brilliance hit me like a wave. In that moment the entire experience, the suffered reading, the week long pondering, became pleasurable. That feeling and experience was earned and who's got time for that anymore?
I am currently reading Ulysses with @elizabethgrahammadden Multiple Joyce which I recommend to everyone who wishes to read or re read Ulysses. Elizabeth encourages close reading and frequent re reading and also presents key ideas and stylistic points with great clarity.
"For some poets, like A.R. Ammons and Wallace Stevens, keeping you in the state of difficulty is almost the point. To reach a full explanation is almost to miss the point—these poets are trying to put something into words that cannot, fully, be expressed. The sense of difficulty should be where we understand that. We will only ever be able to get so close to reality through words. After that, we must accept the sensation of difficulty as the next best thing—the next true thing—
"
This almost reminds me of Zen teaching. There, texts will sometimes be intentionally written in seemingly confusing ways, and zen koans initially appear like difficult puzzles to be solved. Instead, they are intended to get one out of the mode of purely propositionally and analytic understanding --they are attempts to trigger changes in your conscious experience that help you connect better to the real world, help you see the moon rather than the finger pointing to the moon to use the now cliche zen metaphor.
As a disclaimer, I find many of these ideas interesting even though I am not a Zen Buddhist. I also do not have good knowledge of existing research into the effectiveness of various methods they use. However, I find it interesting that they independently came to a similar conclusion that the feeling of difficulty in text can bring one closer to truth/reality. I think one potential mechanism behind this might be that trying to understand something difficult funnels you down a much more specific experience, one where you are forced to start to inhabit more of the tensions and frictions in the work. One can interpret easier works via existing shortcuts for pattern recognition in one's brain that doesn't require directly grappling with the tensions and considerations that led a writer to writing something a particular way. Now, many different interpretations of these difficult passages is still possible given that specific experience, but it's like rubbing up against the difficulties leaves you with better traces of the actual territory compared to casual viewing of the map.
In rereading what I wrote I’d like to make another caveat — my reading into the parallels with Zen methods may have been a little premature. I am often overly eager to make grand connections like this between ideas…only to feel deflated after more carefully work out the resonances I am detecting. Hopefully something of interest to you still survives the correction.
If I am understanding what you say about those like Stevens correctly, the difficulty arises because you’re trying to say something that resists being said, and the strain itself becomes meaningful content. The zen tradition is perhaps different in ways I didn’t properly think through earlier, in that the master will use what appears to be difficult language, but the difficulty doesn’t arise o think on the same way. In the literary case, the difficulties themselves almost structurally map out the gaps between what can be expressed and the real. In the zen case, it’s more like the difficulty is engineered to break a cognitive habit. It’s a tool designed to make the student’s ordinary meaning-making machinery seize up. The difficulty in the literary is to be met with sitting with and wrestling with the difficulty, leading to greater insight. In the zen case, the insight has more oblique relationship to the literal meaning of text and its difficulties, in a way I find that I find difficult to explain…
If you’re still interested, given the weaker connection than I originally thought, I think a lot of how koan practice works is better introduced in:
The introductory chapters to Zen Sand by Victor Soren Hori (the rest after the intro is anthology of what are called “jakugo,” which isn’t necessary for this discussion. I think you’ll especially enjoy the following facts he presents, which is why I picked this recommendation above others:
1.jakugo are meant to be responses from students to teachers to demonstrate understanding of a koan, and apparently they used to be required to be composed by the students as Classical Chinese verse! They now pick from anthologies of curated relevant verses already composed, a change mainly caused by the decline in classical education leading to the composition requirements starting to get too steep. This touches on the “difficulties” of poetry that you discuss and its value. The idea that they wanted you to write poetry to show true understanding indicates strong belief in the power for poetry to communicate something deeply experiential.
2. Chapter 4 goes into (mostly hypothesized) links between koan practice and Chinese literary “games” from contexts in which these koans supposedly arise from. That chapter made me learn a lot about tang Chinese literary culture I didn’t know about and I think you might also enjoy.
and for non fiction/I am reading Janet Sarbanes'book "letters on the autonomy project"
influenced by the greek philosopher ,Cornelius Castoriadis and I reread chapters and after a while I am understanding more and more [publishedby punctum books
I'll always be here for your love of Austen. Re: Brideshead, my first encounter was listening to the audiobook (fantastic). Reading the hardcopy simply deepened my love and admiration. I will gladly repeat both.
I often have a feeling like this when teaching a work I’ve taught many times before (Shakespeare is the easiest example): I measure a work’s greatness by its ability to present me with a new problem, question, or reading each time.
These moments are when it occurs to me I was misreading something are the little moments that make me feel lucky to be a teacher of literature.
A great feeling
Absolutely! I have exactly the same feeling with Virgil. And as a teacher I have loved how the class + me = a different reading every time.
🙏
100% agree—the best works are the ones that don't yield up all their treasures at once but can be revisited over and over again as sources of seemingly endless delight & wisdom
I've been yearning for more 'difficult' books recently, in the way you yearn for a proper meal after eating too many sweets. I read a lot of genre fiction because that's what I write, but getting to grips with something more complex is a different pleasure. I wrote a Substack last week on 'discomfort reads' and would love to hear about other people's recommendations.
Years ago for a graduate seminar, I was reading “Conversation in the Cathedral” by Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel had the reputation for “big and difficult,” and after reading the first 150 pages, I agreed. I couldn’t figure out what was actually going on. It was only when I stopped reading and started over, outlining each chapter, that I suddenly realized what Vargas Llosa had done. He was telling four interconnected stories, giving each a chapter and then moving to the next one, eventually coming back to the first story in chapter 5. Once I cracked the structural code, the novel more than made sense; it became one of my favorite works of fiction.
Perfect example!
Great example. Along the same lines, anything by William Gaddis (JR is my favorite): the entire book composed in unmarked dialog, so you can't at first glance tell who is speaking to whom or where one scene changes to another. But once you understand the technique, you quickly get into the rhythm of it - it never becomes "easy", but it is totally compelling and not too hard to follow.
I listened to Ulysses on Audible. I came to think it had been written for the very purpose of being read aloud. Not difficult at all, enchanting and beautiful
I think it's important to read "difficult" novels if one really is going to say one loves literature, which makes my wife call me a snob! But I get great joy out of it. Most recent example I can think of is Chilean writer Roberto Bolano. Even what I didn't understand I was blown away by the craft!!
The idea of literature being where 'words don't quite work' reminds me of TS Eliot's asides in the Four Quartets where he struggles with words, that words are insufficient for the subject.
This essay pairs really well with your thoughts on pleasure and I think it's best to think of them as a piece. Challenging literature operates on a different wavelength than that of a formulaic thriller or the quick beach read. It's like comparing Avengers to The Seventh Seal, both have their place and purpose. Perhaps the problem is that the difficult is disappearing because the pleasure we can derive from it is not immediately apparent. Delay is something our modern world has no patience for. Years ago I read Absalom, Absalom! and was confounded, upset and found the experience unenjoyable. A week after finishing the novel and ruminating on it, its brilliance hit me like a wave. In that moment the entire experience, the suffered reading, the week long pondering, became pleasurable. That feeling and experience was earned and who's got time for that anymore?
I am currently reading Ulysses with @elizabethgrahammadden Multiple Joyce which I recommend to everyone who wishes to read or re read Ulysses. Elizabeth encourages close reading and frequent re reading and also presents key ideas and stylistic points with great clarity.
"For some poets, like A.R. Ammons and Wallace Stevens, keeping you in the state of difficulty is almost the point. To reach a full explanation is almost to miss the point—these poets are trying to put something into words that cannot, fully, be expressed. The sense of difficulty should be where we understand that. We will only ever be able to get so close to reality through words. After that, we must accept the sensation of difficulty as the next best thing—the next true thing—
"
This almost reminds me of Zen teaching. There, texts will sometimes be intentionally written in seemingly confusing ways, and zen koans initially appear like difficult puzzles to be solved. Instead, they are intended to get one out of the mode of purely propositionally and analytic understanding --they are attempts to trigger changes in your conscious experience that help you connect better to the real world, help you see the moon rather than the finger pointing to the moon to use the now cliche zen metaphor.
As a disclaimer, I find many of these ideas interesting even though I am not a Zen Buddhist. I also do not have good knowledge of existing research into the effectiveness of various methods they use. However, I find it interesting that they independently came to a similar conclusion that the feeling of difficulty in text can bring one closer to truth/reality. I think one potential mechanism behind this might be that trying to understand something difficult funnels you down a much more specific experience, one where you are forced to start to inhabit more of the tensions and frictions in the work. One can interpret easier works via existing shortcuts for pattern recognition in one's brain that doesn't require directly grappling with the tensions and considerations that led a writer to writing something a particular way. Now, many different interpretations of these difficult passages is still possible given that specific experience, but it's like rubbing up against the difficulties leaves you with better traces of the actual territory compared to casual viewing of the map.
Can you recommend some reading in this topic
In rereading what I wrote I’d like to make another caveat — my reading into the parallels with Zen methods may have been a little premature. I am often overly eager to make grand connections like this between ideas…only to feel deflated after more carefully work out the resonances I am detecting. Hopefully something of interest to you still survives the correction.
If I am understanding what you say about those like Stevens correctly, the difficulty arises because you’re trying to say something that resists being said, and the strain itself becomes meaningful content. The zen tradition is perhaps different in ways I didn’t properly think through earlier, in that the master will use what appears to be difficult language, but the difficulty doesn’t arise o think on the same way. In the literary case, the difficulties themselves almost structurally map out the gaps between what can be expressed and the real. In the zen case, it’s more like the difficulty is engineered to break a cognitive habit. It’s a tool designed to make the student’s ordinary meaning-making machinery seize up. The difficulty in the literary is to be met with sitting with and wrestling with the difficulty, leading to greater insight. In the zen case, the insight has more oblique relationship to the literal meaning of text and its difficulties, in a way I find that I find difficult to explain…
If you’re still interested, given the weaker connection than I originally thought, I think a lot of how koan practice works is better introduced in:
The introductory chapters to Zen Sand by Victor Soren Hori (the rest after the intro is anthology of what are called “jakugo,” which isn’t necessary for this discussion. I think you’ll especially enjoy the following facts he presents, which is why I picked this recommendation above others:
1.jakugo are meant to be responses from students to teachers to demonstrate understanding of a koan, and apparently they used to be required to be composed by the students as Classical Chinese verse! They now pick from anthologies of curated relevant verses already composed, a change mainly caused by the decline in classical education leading to the composition requirements starting to get too steep. This touches on the “difficulties” of poetry that you discuss and its value. The idea that they wanted you to write poetry to show true understanding indicates strong belief in the power for poetry to communicate something deeply experiential.
2. Chapter 4 goes into (mostly hypothesized) links between koan practice and Chinese literary “games” from contexts in which these koans supposedly arise from. That chapter made me learn a lot about tang Chinese literary culture I didn’t know about and I think you might also enjoy.
and for non fiction/I am reading Janet Sarbanes'book "letters on the autonomy project"
influenced by the greek philosopher ,Cornelius Castoriadis and I reread chapters and after a while I am understanding more and more [publishedby punctum books
I'll always be here for your love of Austen. Re: Brideshead, my first encounter was listening to the audiobook (fantastic). Reading the hardcopy simply deepened my love and admiration. I will gladly repeat both.
Never tried the audiobook who read it?
Jeremy Irons (who is a great reader anyway and for Brideshead perfect)