Who's afraid of those "difficult" novelists ?

[Lisnaholic]

...I picked up Sartre's "Naseua", but a fair amount of it is lost on me because it's intended to create a dialogue within philosophy classrooms.

^ I didn't know that about the bolded bit, and I suppose a person doesn't know what he doesn't know, because I found Nausea a surprisingly easy read: clearly some philosophising going on, but also plenty of easy to follow events/reactions, etc. The Age of Reason, on the other hand, I found impossible to read, because...

"the perspective changes from chapter to chapter throughout... but the viewpoint shifts more rapidly, moving sometimes within a single phrase from one character's perspective to another's... The lack of punctuation, the juxtaposition of perspectives, and the intensity created by the single focus of a multiplicity of characters work together to convey the common humanity and intersubjective experience of the French on the verge of war"

...or in the case of some readers, works together to make a hopelessly confusing mess, which they abandon because it just feels like a lack of courtesy to the reader, that Sartre doesn't supply basic narrative signposts about who and where he's talking about.

[Weekender]

It's easy to follow but it's just boring if you aren't picking up on the philosophical implications of what he's saying. Potentially revolutionary if you are.

But what is difficult for one, might be easy reading for another!

[Trollheart]

Yes well, as was said in Red Dwarf:

Holly (AI Computer, IQ either 6000 or 6, depending on who you listen to): "Wasn't it Jean-Paul Satre who said, hell is being locked in a room with all your friends?"

Dave Lister, space bum: "Holly, all his mates were French!"

[Buck_Mulligan]

A good catalog of modern novels, and more...

https://www.themodernnovel.org

[Lisnaholic]

^ Thanks for that link, BM. I might come back with a comment when I've looked through it a little - probably in about 2035 !