Paradiso probably. Faust p2, Pierre, Ulysses and GR are all more difficult, but they're all to some extent experimental.

>>25192376
THE GOLDEN BOWL FILTERED MY WHITE ASS!!!!!!!! STRAIGHT UP!!!! NO CAP!!! FR FR BRO ON GOD JAMES A HARD AHH WRITER BRUH FR

>>25192376
Moby Dick was tough because of all the naval terminology and some phrasing but Melville's prose is so good I didn't care.

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>>25192389
There's this trend of calling Moby-Dick easy on /lit/ when it's anything but. Colourful language, constant style changes and very erudite writing style make it a fairly difficult book to get through for new readers. It's no Ulysses/GR, but those two are in a league of its own.

>>25192376
“The Nothing” vs. “The Nihilists” - same archetype, different era
In The NeverEnding Story, The Nothing isn’t a villain. It’s a symptom of a world where imagination, meaning, and inner myth are collapsing.
In The Big Lebowski, the Nihilists are the same thing:
- They “believe in nothing”
- They have no story, no inner world, no mythic center
- They are a void wearing human clothes
They’re not a threat because of their competence — they’re a threat because of their absence.
The Nothing = the collapse of meaning
The Nihilists = the collapse of meaning, but with accents and ferrets

Jackie Treehorn as the modern Gmork
Gmork in NeverEnding Story is the agent of The Nothing — a creature who knows the world is collapsing and works to accelerate it.
Jackie Treehorn is the same archetype, but updated for late‑capitalist Los Angeles:
- He wants to replace human eroticism with VR simulacra
- He wants to turn desire into software
- He wants to algorithmically manage fantasy
- He wants to own the imagination rather than participate in it
Treehorn is the emissary of a world where:
“Inner myth is replaced with algorithm.”

He’s not evil. He’s post‑mythic.
He’s the man who believes the map is better than the territory.

The Dude as Atreyu — the reluctant myth‑bearer
Atreyu is chosen not because he’s powerful, but because he’s pure of heart and capable of carrying a story.
The Dude is the same archetype:
- He’s not ambitious
- He’s not violent
- He’s not trying to control anything
- He’s simply being
He is the last carrier of authenticity in a world of collapsing narratives.
Atreyu rides a luck dragon.
The Dude rides a rug that “really tied the room together.”
Both are symbols of continuity, coherence, and identity.

And in both:
- The Nothing = Nihilists
- Gmork = Jackie Treehorn
- Atreyu = The Dude
- The Childlike Empress = Maude
- Bastian = the audience
- The restored world = the Little Lebowski
Both films end with the same message:
Meaning survives only when someone chooses to carry it forward.

>>25192402
I wish I had this tool.

>>25192448
https://github.com/khgiddon/misc/tree/main/book_vocabulary/web_test
He seems to use gutenberg only, but it should be easy enough to use just a plain txt (or epub with epub2txt)

>>25192402
the only people who think moby-dick is difficult are brandon redditson readers
>colorful language
this is an issue if you read fantasyslop, yes
>constant style changes
waaa waaa baby's first postmodernism is too hard for me waaaa
>very erudite writing style
this is why god invented penguin's, owc's, and norton's footnotes

>>25192461
I read Melville after going through the Greeks, Romans and a fair bunch of 19th century lit. I still found him difficult, and to this day I consider him one of the hardest 19th century novelists. 20th century went full retard with the difficulty, and the 19th century is a step down from Burton, Browne etc, but Melville will be a wall for someone used to reading Dickens, Bronte, Tolstoy, Dosto etc.
Feel free to name harder 19th century novelists other than Carlyle.
Also, constant style changes aren't even a pomo thing.

>>25192389
I must point out to you that Moby-Dick is infact an experimental work.

>>25192402
For new readers yes it is "hard" but a lot of the books difficulty comes from it having boring parts that show no mercy for the casual reader. I seriously doubt anyone struggles to read the more normal chapters.

>>25192490
I was engrossed by pretty much every chapter, yet I still found it difficult. The difficulty fluctuates, some chapters are easier than others, but it has fragments like:
>Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of this: that it is an inference from certain canonic teachings, that while some natural enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the other world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of all hell’s despair; whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.

I find Balzac to be extremely difficult

>>25192502
>To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.
even if someone got lost in the middle of the passage they should be able to understand the kino from these two sentences

>>25192684
jfc I have never read Moby Dick and I ordered an English (I'm ESL) copy right now

>>25192691
Enjoy, anon. People love to hate on the 'slower', encyclopedic chapters, but what they neglect to mention is that every single one of them is written in incredibly beautiful language. Maybe not quite as high-flown as the passage I posted, it's about as flowery as it gets, but Melville is a master of rhythm. And that doesn't even cover the philosophical musings and the sheer energy of the Ahab chapters. I think that's precisely what gives him power, you'll get like a dozen of slow, meditative chapters only for Ahab to [Enter] the scene and steal everyone's attention.
Pierre and Confidence-Man are also worth reading but they're not for everyone. Very experimental, they feel almost pomo in their structure.

>>25192684
Stuff like this is an example to me that Melville was an occultist and liked writing pagan poetry as spellcraft. He was upset about having only a small audience during his life, but time has proven he was talented. Hawthorne had a similar thing going on with slightly more success.

>>25192502
This isn't that hard

I’d say Gargantua and Pantagruel but that actually is pretty avant garde when you think about it.
The way in which Milton writes sometimes, as though English is a dead language and his characters speaking almost as if it’s a forgotten tongue can be quite daunting before you get used to his goal.

>>25192389
I was going to say this but I thought I'd get ROASTED. The joke i say to people about it is that "In the last chapter I read, I think he was trying to say the first mate was brave."

im glad its not just me
>>25192402

No such thing.

>>25192376
The Pentateuch.