Contempt by Alberto Moravia
Published 1954 · 268 pages · 55,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Contempt to read?
Contempt scores 48 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
- Moravia writes clear Italian prose. The vocabulary is psychological rather than technical. Translations preserve the clinical precision.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Riccardo's analysis produces long, introspective passages. Sentences are readable but insistent. The style mirrors obsessive thought.
- Abstraction: 52 out of 100
- Concrete domestic drama carries abstract questions about self-knowledge and authenticity. Moravia's characters think about their predicament constantly.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Simple plot—marriage collapses. The density is psychological: what does each word, each gesture mean? Riccardo analyzes endlessly.
- Narrative indirection: 58 out of 100
- First-person from Riccardo, who understands nothing. The reader may see what he misses; Moravia doesn't signal. You're trapped in his consciousness.
- Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
- The apartment, the screenplay about Odysseus and Penelope, the Italian landscape—symbols operate conventionally. Moravia's method is analytical rather than poetic.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- Riccardo believes he understands; we suspect he doesn't. Moravia's irony is in the gap between self-justification and reality. You judge Riccardo as he judges Emilia.
- Resolution withholding: 52 out of 100
- The marriage ends. Why it ended remains unclear—Riccardo's explanations may all be wrong. The resolution is narrative but not psychological.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- Linear first-person narrative with flashbacks to the marriage's beginning. The structure is simple; the interiority is complex.
How Contempt is regarded
Contempt holds a literary regard score of 56 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.