Number 1 son (14) asked offhandedly if I’d mind listing the hundred best novels in order from easiest to hardest.
It brings to mind a 1950s essay on the difficulty of poetry by Randell Jarrell. People ask why this modern stuff is so difficult, says Jarrell. Critics like Eliot have replied that there is no option for a modern poet, the world is excruciatingly complicated nowadays, patati patata. Whereas, says Jarrell, there is nothing new about the situation – good poetry has always been difficult. Jarrell is right, as anyone who has taught poetry to beginners knows. What reader, however experienced, lazes on the beach with Paradise Lost? Cares to be brisk with a Shakespeare sonnet?
Fiction only seems different. I’ve started by dividing the obvious couple of dozen into bands: easy, medium, difficult.
Jane Austen? Within the canonical six, I’d go for:
Easy: Pride and Prejudice | Medium: Emma | Difficult: Mansfield Park, Persuasion
Yet Persuasion was a surprise hit one (distant) year when we set it for first year English . . .
And in any case, by what standard is Pride and Prejudice ‘easy’? It’s more demanding than, for example, Metamorphosis.