Abstruse

I’m still working my way through The Glass Bead Game.

‘Working’ being the operative word.

The author really likes the word ‘abstruse’ which, I had not heard before and took to be a combination of abstract and obtuse. I wasn’t far off.

Abstruse: difficult to understand; obscure

That’s pretty much the book in a nutshell, too.

It’s not that it’s difficult to understand, though, exactly. More that it’s difficult to care about. It is told not as a story, but as a historical account of some important figure told far after the events. On occasion the prose slips from history book style into actual storytelling. Then it is enjoyable and engaging and thoughtful–but those times are islands of interest in a sea of bore.

I am forcing my way through it though, because I’m hoping eventually it will kick into gear and I’ll figure out how the heck the author won a Nobel prize…

But I’m already 1/3 through and so far, it’s just a bunch of abstruse ramblings that I find myself zoning out and forgetting constantly.