I'm looking for a bold, epic, difficult novel, for hardcore readers

> The Man Without Qualities
by Robert Musil

The novel is a "story of ideas", which takes place in the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's last days, and the plot often veers into allegorical dissections on a wide range of existential themes concerning humanity and feelings. It has a particular concern with the values of truth and opinion and how society organizes ideas about life and society, though the book is well over a thousand pages long in its entirety, and so no one single theme dominates.
(source: Wikipedia.org)

qt3.14 optional

Joseph Heller - Something Happened

Style similar to that of Catch-22, but implemented in a far more sophisticated manner. Content similar to something like Babbitt by Sinclair if you've read that, essentially the tedium and soul-draining experience of average middle-class office life for an average middle-aged man with an average family. What makes it difficult to parse through at times is the syntax. He uses ridiculously long chapters, paragraphs, sentences, even parantheticals (I seem to remember one stretching well over a full page). This structure serves an important function in the work, however; it is not just another cheap, post-modern gimmick. Bleak, witty, insightful. Fantastic novel that everyone who either loved or hated Catch-22 should read.

Made me kek.

It really is a good choice for younger readers. It allows for excellent introductions to some common themes, sysmbolism, historical/literary/biblical allusions, irony, paradox, all sorts of techniques and devices that readers will need to understand. I also highly enjoy the characterization in that book (for example, the scene where we meet Dill and he tries to act like he's so mature and older than he is, only to crawl under the fence a moment later always stuck with me as a fantastic example of encapsulating a character quite thoroughly and yet succinctly, not to mention humorously). It's one of the few books ubiquitous to school curricula that I believe deserves its place there.

Petersburg by Andrei Bely

I consider it Russian Ulysses. There's also that really, difficult German novel which is meant to be more complex than Finnegan's Wake I've heard and it's never so much as been translated into English.

J R
The Recognitions
Gravity's Rainbow
Mason & Dixon
Ada, or Ardor
Devils (Dostoevsky)
probably In Search Of Lost Time (haven't yet read it)

>you
>not a pseud

Gud choice my dood

Dis nigga knows.

amazon.com/Bottoms-Dream-German-Literature-Schmidt/dp/1628971592/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468280868&sr=8-1&keywords=bottom's dream

You mean this one?

>qt3.14 optional
it's not really optional if you read the bits that aren't about poe

The Glass Bead Game
Clarissa
Ulysses
Infinite Jest
Moby Dick

The Bard's complete works and the Bible alone should keep you busy for a lifetime desu

The Beetle Leg

I guarantee you that most people here could read it from cover to cover and not have any idea what they just read.

>glass bead game
tell me about that one familia.

read it for yourself, its a masterpiece.

The Man Without Qualities
You Bright and Risen Angels ['Europe Central' gets discussed a bit here but this one doesn't, which is a shame because it's similar to V. and Infinite Jest and other Veeky Forums staples but also profoundly unique]
Your Face Tomorrow [when read together in one go]
The Don novels [when read together in one go]

this is the one time that this recommendation actually works

>reads Musil
>doesn't realize Hermann Broch wrote half the amount Musil did and still managed to be more of an incisive writer/thinker
>mfw

Somehow, people fall for the doorstop meme a lot even when they should know better. It's like there's something instinctive that makes people think every giant-ass book is automatically a masterpiece.

>nobody's mentioned the wake yet
You people make me fucking sick

It just seems like such an obvious thing to mention in this kind of thread though. Like it should go without saying so no one says it.

thank you for your invaluable input, offering a novel that I believe has never been discussed or recommended on this forum before. thanks again, and best regards!

muh dick

JR

>kekk kekk kekk

It's not that difficult. The style just takes some getting used to.

>Like it should go without saying so no one says it.
That is the flaw of communities that sociologists have been whining about for the last forever

I'd say you're wrong in this case because Joyce's reputation is such that you're bound to hear about all of his books at one point or another if you have a sustained, more than passing interest in literature. I heard of him and Ulysses before I even cared about reading.

>novel

nope, try again next thread

Try the Iliad and Odyssey.

Los Sorias, by Alberto Laiseca.
Celia Se Pudre, by Héctor Rojas Herazo
Escolios A Un Texto Implícito, by Nicolás Gómez Dávalos
2666, by Roberto Bolaño (Personal favourite)
Shakespeare's complete works
Plato's complete works
In the Realms of the Unreal by Henry Darger
Infinite Jest by DFW
Essays by Montaigne
Complete works of William Gaddis
ISOLT by Proust
Complete works of Jorge Luis Borges

>Complete works of William Gaddis
Carpenter's Gothic is a very light read compared to everything else he wrote.

>Los Sorias

Seriously considering learning Spanish just to read this beast. My only hope in this world is that this someday gets translated into English.

>In the Realms of the Unreal by Henry Darger
Somehow I've never seen this mentioned here until now. You'd think it'd be more of a meme that no one's read along the lines of Women and Men.

Only a pseud would find Moby-Dick to be difficult in any meaningful sense.

Likewise, only a pseud would force themselves through Moby-Dick if the subject matter didn't appeal to them, which is the only way one could perceive it as "difficult".

This is the truth OP

Pynchons my fav writer for sure because my fav thing in books is goofs, gags, jokes and rambunctious behavior, and his books are full to the brim of it. Every novel is like one of those novelty snake cans, you open the book & POP you get a face fulla snakes and you fall back cackling. The mad mind, the crack genius, to do it! and then you think hmmm whats he gonna do next, this trickster, and you pick the book back up and BZZZZZZZZZZ you get a shock and Hahahahahah you've been pranked again by the old pynchmeister, that card. "Did that Pynch?" he says, laughing yukyukyukyuk. Watch him as he shoves a pair of plastic buck teeth right up into his mouth and displays em for you- left, right, center- "you like dese? Do i look handsome???" Pulls out a mirror. "Ah!" Hand to naughty mouth. And you're on your ass again laughing as he snaps his suspenders, exits stage right, and appears again hauling a huge golden gong.

That's gonna be too hard for this hardcore dood

War and Peace perhaps

its probably the Gregory Berrycone effect. The writer is such a hack that it's impossible to begin to fathom the authorial intent.

Delete this

...

>Hawkes
>a hack
Kill you are self cemya.

>September 23, 2016

cosigning dis

If you can read and fully comprehend Finnegan's Wake, you have won the game.

Eh, IT isn't that special. I'm obviously biased against it but it has too many problems for me to recommend.

Came here to post this. Very challenging, very rewarding too. Comparisons and metaphors in this book are among the best litterature has to offer.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Challenge: Remember each and every character, and be able to summarise who they were and what they did

I loved Babbitt. I have a copy of something happened.. maybe I'll be tackling it sooner than i thought

The Bible is pretty contested.

Always thought Dream of Red Chambers is more of a challenging read

Joyce was a genius.