Modernism Without Fear
Modernism has a reputation for being unreadable, and two of these six books earn it. But start at the shallow end and the deep end stops being scary: by the time you reach Ulysses you'll have the muscle for it.
The MetamorphosisFranz Kafka · 1915
Lvl 496ppNinety-six pages, one impossible sentence, zero explanation: the gentlest possible introduction to fiction that refuses to hold your hand.
The Sun Also RisesErnest Hemingway · 1926
Lvl 4251ppHemingway's flat, hungover sentences are modernism's plainest style: proof the movement isn't only about difficulty.
Mrs DallowayVirginia Woolf · 1925
Lvl 7194ppOne day, one party, and a mind that won't stay put: Woolf's stream of consciousness, but still anchored to a clock.
To the LighthouseVirginia Woolf · 1927
Lvl 7256ppWoolf loosens the anchor: plot dissolves into pure passing time, ten years collapsed into a single bracketed paragraph.
The Sound and the FuryWilliam Faulkner · 1929
Lvl 10326ppFaulkner hands the first chapter to a narrator without linear time at all: the hardest pages here, and then it gets easier.
UlyssesJames Joyce · 1922
Lvl 10730ppEverything the previous five steps taught you, deployed at once, for 730 pages, in a single Dublin day. You're ready.