I very, very rarely put down books. It's unusual for me to encounter a book that's so unreadable that I'm forced to abandon the project. And so I figure it's worth mentioning and explaining the case that afflicted me at the start of this year.
The first time I gave up on a book, it was Pilgrim's Progress. The work was, at one point in time, one of the most widely-read stories in the Western World. I wasn't interested in the heavy-handed Christian allegory, but rather the historical impact and import - yet it was so bad I couldn't get through it. Another case: Uncle Tom's Cabin very nearly was too awful (but since I thought I was about to be teaching a class on it, I managed to persist). Again, for historical purposes, I tried to get through Mein Kampf - to try to understand how so many allowed themselves to fall victim to such monstrous ideas - but the first chapters were so terrible I couldn't keep going.
Godel, Escher, Bach is, thankfully, not Nazi propaganda, nor racially troubling, nor heavy-handed allegory. So those are pluses. But, in the minus column, it is the only one of the aforementioned books I actually began punching while reading.
One main problem is that Douglas Hofstadter's work is perhaps the most self-satisfied thing I've ever encountered. It's smug and self-congratulatory tone was overwhelmingly obnoxious. But that, alone, wouldn't necessarily be a death-knell. I've read Nietzsche - egotistical odiousness I can handle if need be.
Thematically, I should have loved this book. I have books on Escher, love his work, and have one of his lithographs on my wall next to my desk as I type this. Bach is another favorite - 19 hours of his works, major and minor, are on my iTunes. His work, St. Matthew's Passion, was a gateway to classical music literacy for me. And Godel I find fascinating. I've looked at his Incompleteness Theorem papers, studied logic in college, and am familiar with the progression of logical concerns in Analytical Philosophy (and Mathematics) at the turn of the century.
Secondary characteristics of the book, including references to Lewis Carroll (whose work I enjoy immensely) and Zen (I used to live in the San Francisco Zen Center monastery) should have also made this a slam dunk.
Logic is wonderful, and once you tune your brain to it, it allows you to process the world in a whole new way. But Hofstadter's treatment of elementary logic if so convoluted, so needlessly obfuscated - so just plain damn stupid - that I violently was attacking the 700+ page tome by 250 pages in. The pointless layering of terminology and a staggering collection of his own made-up jargon was a bridge too far.
Godel's mathematics and the logic that underpins them are mindbogglingly complex - it is downright despicable to, while purporting to make them more clear and elucidate interesting connections and patterns, do exactly the opposite. And then have the nerve to be self-congratulatory - as he decides to heap utterly useless jargon on the reader - is infuriatingly bad writing. Which, ironically, is another area he thinks he excels.
Hofstadter thinks he can write in a variety of styles, and he is wrong. He apes Lewis Carroll so poorly as to be painful, especially as his attempted Carroll-style dialogues bookend every chapter. In his anniversary introduction (the sort of thing I usually avoid, but out of desperation turned to, to see if my assessments were shared with a more mature author) he admits that his invocation of Zen at the time of writing was modish intellectual posturing. Any actual resemblance to Zen is purely coincidental and owes not to Hofstadter's confused attempts of invocation.
Beyond disappointing, beyond boring - and it's both - reading this work is like watching a kid you know who cheated on their essay winning an academic prize for honesty: it's just upsetting and angering. So if you don't get bored or aren't disappointed, then you'll likely be upset. THAT SAID - I gave up hope after 250 pages. Maybe it gets better further on.
But I doubt it.
The first time I gave up on a book, it was Pilgrim's Progress. The work was, at one point in time, one of the most widely-read stories in the Western World. I wasn't interested in the heavy-handed Christian allegory, but rather the historical impact and import - yet it was so bad I couldn't get through it. Another case: Uncle Tom's Cabin very nearly was too awful (but since I thought I was about to be teaching a class on it, I managed to persist). Again, for historical purposes, I tried to get through Mein Kampf - to try to understand how so many allowed themselves to fall victim to such monstrous ideas - but the first chapters were so terrible I couldn't keep going.
Godel, Escher, Bach is, thankfully, not Nazi propaganda, nor racially troubling, nor heavy-handed allegory. So those are pluses. But, in the minus column, it is the only one of the aforementioned books I actually began punching while reading.
One main problem is that Douglas Hofstadter's work is perhaps the most self-satisfied thing I've ever encountered. It's smug and self-congratulatory tone was overwhelmingly obnoxious. But that, alone, wouldn't necessarily be a death-knell. I've read Nietzsche - egotistical odiousness I can handle if need be.
Thematically, I should have loved this book. I have books on Escher, love his work, and have one of his lithographs on my wall next to my desk as I type this. Bach is another favorite - 19 hours of his works, major and minor, are on my iTunes. His work, St. Matthew's Passion, was a gateway to classical music literacy for me. And Godel I find fascinating. I've looked at his Incompleteness Theorem papers, studied logic in college, and am familiar with the progression of logical concerns in Analytical Philosophy (and Mathematics) at the turn of the century.
Secondary characteristics of the book, including references to Lewis Carroll (whose work I enjoy immensely) and Zen (I used to live in the San Francisco Zen Center monastery) should have also made this a slam dunk.
Logic is wonderful, and once you tune your brain to it, it allows you to process the world in a whole new way. But Hofstadter's treatment of elementary logic if so convoluted, so needlessly obfuscated - so just plain damn stupid - that I violently was attacking the 700+ page tome by 250 pages in. The pointless layering of terminology and a staggering collection of his own made-up jargon was a bridge too far.
Godel's mathematics and the logic that underpins them are mindbogglingly complex - it is downright despicable to, while purporting to make them more clear and elucidate interesting connections and patterns, do exactly the opposite. And then have the nerve to be self-congratulatory - as he decides to heap utterly useless jargon on the reader - is infuriatingly bad writing. Which, ironically, is another area he thinks he excels.
Hofstadter thinks he can write in a variety of styles, and he is wrong. He apes Lewis Carroll so poorly as to be painful, especially as his attempted Carroll-style dialogues bookend every chapter. In his anniversary introduction (the sort of thing I usually avoid, but out of desperation turned to, to see if my assessments were shared with a more mature author) he admits that his invocation of Zen at the time of writing was modish intellectual posturing. Any actual resemblance to Zen is purely coincidental and owes not to Hofstadter's confused attempts of invocation.
Beyond disappointing, beyond boring - and it's both - reading this work is like watching a kid you know who cheated on their essay winning an academic prize for honesty: it's just upsetting and angering. So if you don't get bored or aren't disappointed, then you'll likely be upset. THAT SAID - I gave up hope after 250 pages. Maybe it gets better further on.
But I doubt it.
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