There are so many other stories, and so many other ways to tell them

July 3, 2024 2:00 PM

There are challenging, mystifying, weird-ass books being published all the time. To be fair, a weird-ass, mystifying, challenging book isn’t inherently a good book, or a book you want to spend your finite reading time on. We only get to read so many books in a month, or a year, or a life. There is value in escapism and familiarity and comfort. But I still want to advocate for sometimes, at least sometimes, going out on a limb, out on a genre vacation, or just out into the wilds of a tale you don’t feel like you entirely understand. from The Joy of Reading Books You Don’t Entirely Understand by Molly Templeton
posted by chavenet (24 comments total)

I’ve been reading a book that I don’t entirely understand, and frankly, it’s wonderful
i feel this way about being alive
posted by HearHere at 2:26 PM on July 3 [12 favorites]

There's an exhilaration for me too in reading something I feel is slightly beyond my reach, as if, were I to stretch my mind, I might yet fully grasp it. It's my ideal kind of reading experience. Then again, in some such instances, subsequent understanding has brought disillusion in its wake: "oh, that's all they meant."
posted by misteraitch at 2:30 PM on July 3 [4 favorites]

Some books leave me feeling that I didn't fully understand them, but they were nonetheless brilliant. Some books leave me feeling that I didn't fully understand them, but they were crap anyway. I'm not entirely sure I can rationally explain the difference.
posted by kyrademon at 2:38 PM on July 3 [4 favorites]

I'll put in a good word for Gilman's _Moonwise_ even I'll probably never get the time travel sorted out. It's still vivid and fascinating. I'm even thinking about reading her _Cloud and Ashes_, which is some sort of retelling of _Moonwise_.

It's possible that part of the problem is teaching fiction as though it ought to be understood on the first reading.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:41 PM on July 3 [8 favorites]

A recent one in the "brilliant" category for me was The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington.
posted by kyrademon at 2:41 PM on July 3 [2 favorites]

This is generally my favorite category of books.

(I also loved the Baroque Cycle. It was the first Neal Stephenson I read and was disappointed that I couldn't find another of his books that was like it)

A recent one in the "brilliant" category for me was The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington.

So many times yes. This is maybe one of my favorite books ever.

I'm so glad the author referenced Helen Oyeyemi. She's a treasure. Also, Nicola Barker. Did anyone else read "Darkmans?" I loved it.

If anyone wants to start a "Weird Books We Don't Quite Understand" reading group, I'm in--says the girl who was once accused of hazing because her book club picks were respectively "Ulysses," Cortazar's "Hopscotch," and Donoso's "Obscene Bird of Night."
posted by thivaia at 3:02 PM on July 3 [7 favorites]

Joy in realizing, several chapters into a book, that you could not possibly say what it was “about” until reading to the end, and maybe not even then.

Re-reading Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet, I realize how little I understand about Italian culture, politics, language, society, and history. Nonetheless, I love these books!

I finished 1Q84 and wondered what I had just read. Same with Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. I feel unequal to some of what I read, but in a good way. There's something to learn and be challenged by. (And yes, I would love to hear your picks for "What did I just read?" books.)
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:52 PM on July 3 [4 favorites]

Being a rabid fan of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, for some, the ultimate can’t understand book, I’ve told people that despite all the emphasis on reading comprehension, it’s ok to just read (preferably aloud) and not comprehend fully, as the sound and poetry of the text flows over you and through you. Eventually, things make some sense, maybe not THE sense, and for some of us, you get captured by the book and continue to read and reread for a lifetime. FW is as deep and complex as a whole world to explore. That, and it’s funny as hell. Books can be difficult in a lot of different ways, but there is a good sense of accomplishment when a light goes on in the murky darkness and you begin to get it.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:08 PM on July 3 [6 favorites]

part of the problem is teaching fiction as though it ought to be understood on the first reading

"Understood" is hardly a single thing, though. To be at all satisfying, there should be some comprehension of who the characters are and/or what is going on and/or what the author is trying to convey. Multiple reads should deepen that understanding, but few readers will bother with a stunt like Finnegan's Wake that actively tries to prevent understanding.

The books we come back to again and again are the easy ones (for comfort) and the hard ones (for enlightenment and growth).
posted by rikschell at 4:14 PM on July 3 [2 favorites]

On non-preview, nothing against fans of Finnegan's Wake. I think you have to approach it as non-narrative, though, like a book-length poem, or perhaps something even farther from the written word, like dance. People who want it to be a story will only be frustrated.
posted by rikschell at 4:16 PM on July 3 [4 favorites]

FW is not a story. It is many stories, told and retold, from many points of view, all under the guise of a family. It is nothing but the written word.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:45 PM on July 3 [2 favorites]

Some books leave me feeling that I didn't fully understand them, but they were nonetheless brilliant. Some books leave me feeling that I didn't fully understand them, but they were crap anyway. I'm not entirely sure I can rationally explain the difference.
posted by kyrademon

Yes, Yes! There are some classic doorstops where I can't quite climb the peak, but I do feel the significance about it. Others just seem over-rated.

I think the Baroque Cycle is an odd example? I thought the first book, Quicksilver, was fascinating, but the other titles felt less interesting to me.

As always, I like to recommend the Irish Radio Ulysses Audio Version, which makes much more sense when listened to spoken, rather than reading on mere pages. Ulysses is much more accessible when recited out loud.
posted by ovvl at 4:54 PM on July 3 [3 favorites]

Finnegans Wake first made, as Joyce called it, soundsense, during Margaret Solomonʻs University of Hawaii class Joyce and Beckett during the late ʻ60ʻs. Perhaps it was because her classes were held in the evening at her home, where wine was served as a welcome tool. Specifically, my personal literary epiphany came there, as Ms Solomon recited the Ondt and Gracehoper vignette to us in a delightfully strong Irish brogue.

The effect of her wine helped transport me to the time I tended bar in my fatherʻs neighborhood tavern (shades of HCE haha). In those days, the tavern regulars could safely reach stumbling drunkenness and confidently wander their way home on foot. Inside the bar, they decompressed their day to me as a dear sympathetic friend. In their deep slurring inebriation, they treated me to an experience remarkably similar to that of reading the Wake.

Ms Solomon showed me how to appreciate those baffling labyrinthine excursions of the likes of Beckett, Thomas Pynchon, John Hawkes, and Walter Abish. My stumbling wanderings through first readings of their works gave me the same happiness as first encountering the fresh approaches to the musics and art works of the day, knowing I would revisit them time and again, gaining depths of understanding and beauty each time. She opened my life to a new home. She was the best teacher I ever had.
posted by Droll Lord at 5:23 PM on July 3 [7 favorites]

I think one thing remains certain. We can ALL bond over the experience of reading Finnegans Wake for the first time.

[CW: Trump, Biden, debate]
posted by chavenet at 5:34 PM on July 3 [2 favorites]

if you'd prefer another version, or would simply prefer to avoid the debate above, there is an Open Culture audio. also, there's Internet Archive's text [content note: finnegans wake]
posted by HearHere at 5:45 PM on July 3 [2 favorites]

The Magus
posted by clavdivs at 7:27 PM on July 3 [2 favorites]

This is how I feel about Hunters & Collectors, one of my favourite novels from the past decade. Is it real? Is it all a simulation? We may never know and that's OK.
posted by WhyamIhereagain at 8:04 PM on July 3 [2 favorites]

I'm just earbooking The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: Their stories are better than the bestsellers. by James Patterson & Matt Eversmann.
Lots of heartwarming anecdotes therein. One 8 y.o. girl found herself reading Fearing and Loathing in Las Vegas. She and her Dad concluded that yers it was a sort of Alice in Wonderland for boys and why didn't they agree to pick up this conversation when she turned 18.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:31 AM on July 4 [2 favorites]

Dahlgren fills that role for me.
posted by hypnogogue at 8:28 AM on July 4 [4 favorites]

That was pretty much every adult book I read as a 10 year old - The Shining, Flowers In The Attic, Patriot Games. Even the Hitchhiker's Guide stuff went over my head a lot of the time. But that's how you learn, by encountering things you don't know!
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:56 AM on July 4 [1 favorite]

I used to read (ha-ha) *parts* of Graduate texts in Physics or Math or Engineering when I was an Undergrad (or even back in High School). Seeing the patterns of what I know flicker back and forth among the ones I don't.

It was enjoyable.

And then, over the years, those weird patterns became more understood. Not *known*, just a little more understood.
posted by aleph at 10:57 AM on July 4 [4 favorites]

i'm reading the 3 Body Problem and there's a lot I don't understand, but I'm enjoying it a lot.

I don't usually enjoy books that I don’t understand; I think I'm kind of literal, and if you're the same, it's fine. Just read - there's no end of wonderful books well worth your time.
posted by theora55 at 11:14 AM on July 4 [2 favorites]

I think the Baroque Cycle is an odd example? I thought the first book, Quicksilver, was fascinating, but the other titles felt less interesting to me.

I read two and two-thirds volumes. First book was pretty interesting. Second book was mostly ok, but not up to the first. The third book, though…ugh. I got about 2/3 through it and just walked away. I just didn’t care anymore.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:44 AM on July 4 [2 favorites]

I'm reading a book like this right now! Herta Müller's "Der König verneigt sich und tötet" ("The King Bows and Kills"), but the Chinese translation is titled "In Every Sentence Sits the Eyes of Other People". The images she evokes can be quite elusive and cryptic, but always interesting and carry certain weight somehow. Often I have to re-read sentences and even then can't be sure what she meant exactly.

After the utter predictable and trite "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" it's such a bracing tonic.
posted by of strange foe at 3:06 PM on July 5