I was talking to a friend about comedic / farcical literature the other day, and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller came up. That made me remember - I first read this book when I was about 15 years old. Or rather I read about 80% of it, didn’t quite finish it that time. I forced myself through it because I had heard it was subversive and intelligent and challenging, and I got nothing out of it. I didn’t see the humor, I didn’t get any political commentary, it was just a series of absurd things happening to absurd characters with no rhyme or reason.
I reread that book two years ago and damn near pissed myself laughing on every other page, but then the ending rolled around and it hit so hard. That sudden switch from absurdist comedy to heavy, bleak, depressing, and then he gives you just this glimmer of hope at the end anyway. I found it absolutely brilliant, and yet I kept thinking back to how none of this connected with me when I first read it.
Do you have books like that? Books that just plain went over your head, that you didn’t have the maturity to appreciate, that were too difficult in style or subject matter, and that you’ve come to appreciate years later?
I think every book I’ve ever read reads differently the more I learn.
But probably the ones that meet your description most clearly would be Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies and Flowers for Algernon. Required reading in grammar school, and I dimly grasped what they were supposed to be about, but I hadn’t a clue what they were really trying to say.
Flowers for Algernon is one of the saddest books I’ve ever read. Remembering Charlie’s decline at the ending is making me almost cry. My 10th grade honors lit teacher gave an unforgettable lecture on Lord of the Flies. The amount of symbolism William Golding can jam into ~200 pages. Many people have theories about the book, and I think Golding intended for all of them to be correct. Fun fact: If you translate Lord of the Flies in Hebrew the word is Beelzebub.