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Sat 07 Jul 2009A novel to exercise the head
FICTION:
Twenty 16 VisionBy Hugh Maxton Duras, 287pp. €12.99: THIS WAS a difficult one. But what exactly might we mean, asks George Steiner in his 1978 essay
On Difficulty, when we say a work of literature is
difficult?
We can mean an impossible array of things by complaining of literary difficulty, depending on our own individual capacity for insights and blind-spots, but the overarching and simpler question is one of degree. In the way a malcontent couple have their relationship analysed in the self-help format, the question to answer before we can even think about proceeding to the critical group-hug in any particular case of literary difficulty is: who is being most difficult, the writer or the reader?
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