Why difficult books are worth reading
Image by Ines Sayadi on Unsplash
An old classmate of mine once made a defiant post on social media, declaring that she was getting rid of her copy of The Lord of the Rings without finishing it because “reading is supposed to be fun.” Being a huge Tolkien fan, I was a little offended: How could anyone not enjoy Lord of the Rings?! But when I tried persuading her to give it a second chance, she was insistent. The book was too slow, too dense, too boring – in a word, difficult. Of course, I’ve given up on a challenging book myself more than once, (Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot comes to mind: I couldn’t take one more page of hysterical Russian rambling), so I do understand her point. In an era like ours, when free time seems to be an ever more precious and scarce resource, it is hard to justify spending it on something that forces us to draw on our already depleted energy reserves. But I still think that it’s a mistake to say the only purpose of reading is to be consistently pleasurable. In fact, I would argue that using “fun” as the benchmark for determining whether any activity is worthwhile is a guaranteed recipe for disappointment.
The awkward fact is that while difficult books are not necessarily great, truly great books rarely make for easy reading. They are often densely and intricately written, with plenty of obscure terminology and far slower pacing than your average crime thriller. Sometimes of course, this is just a sign of poor, pretentious writing. However, at other times, we struggle with books because the writer is simply more intelligent than we are; he or she has more life experience and linguistic skill, and a deeper insight into human nature and the mysteries of the world we live in. But this doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from reading their work. In fact, challenging books are our opportunity to enter into conversation with some of the most renowned minds in history – our passcode to a repository containing thousands of years of collected human wisdom.
Of course, an encounter with someone smarter than ourselves is going to be demanding; it’s not going to be fun in the way watching reality television is fun. But if we approach great books with humility and a willingness to learn, they can bring us the delight of acquiring a new skill – in fact, many new skills. Reading a difficult book can teach us to slow down and appreciate small details; by expanding our vocabulary, it can help us to savour the beauty of language; and by not handing us every detail on a silver platter in the kind of bog-standard prose so much in vogue in contemporary bestsellers, it can encourage us to think critically, to make intuitive connections and recognise patterns. What’s more, reading difficult but great books is rarely just an intellectual exercise; if we invest our time and effort in them, they tend to touch us in a more profound way than something simpler and more “fun” can achieve. They can hold up a mirror to hidden emotions and push us to reflect on questions that we may be afraid to explore in our daily lives: do I have a purpose? Am I a good person? Can I ever be happy?
My old friend’s pet peeve, The Lord of the Rings, is actually an excellent example of the “difficult but great” genre: it is infamously slow to get going, it’s peppered with archaic, highly specific terminology and there are some long sequences where very little concrete action takes place. For large swathes of the three volumes, the characters worry about the ordinary details of an arduous journey, like where they will sleep, what they will eat and how they will avoid getting lost. In many cases, the main conflict of the narrative stems from the characters’ inner battles to overcome their own weaknesses and complete the tasks in front of them. A non-stop thrill ride it is not. And yet, this slower pace and wealth of detail allows Tolkien to paint a very subtle portrait of the human spirit under continuous, immense, grinding pressure, something that should be very recognisable to my generation. Watching his characters struggle and sacrifice to keep going under that strain is immensely moving, and the climax, when it finally comes, literally makes the heart soar.
This spiritually uplifting quality is ultimately why I think trying to read great books is worthwhile, even when they go partially over my head. After finishing a book like Lord of the Rings, I always feel enriched, and inspired to make a better effort to live a good life. I am grateful to the book and perhaps a little sad to have finished it, but for the most part, I am heartened and encouraged. However, when I come to the end of an easier, lighter read, I often feel a kind of wrench as the high of escapism fades and I come back to reality. Then I go about my business distractedly and half-resentfully until the grip of the book fades. This is what makes me so suspicious of the attitude that “reading should be fun”; it seems predicated on the belief that the world is an awful place and the most natural pursuit is to try to escape it. By contrast, great books do require some struggle on our part, but they reward us in courage and hope, and equip us to face life as it is.