Facing It: American Literature and the Vietnam War by Thomas Myers
Published 1988 · 100,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is Facing It: American Literature and the Vietnam War to read?
Facing It: American Literature and the Vietnam War scores 55 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. 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: 62 out of 100
- Standard literary-critical vocabulary with some narratological terminology; accessible to advanced readers.
- Sentence structure: 56 out of 100
- Abstraction: 70 out of 100
- Engages narrative theory and cultural criticism while remaining grounded in textual evidence.
- Information density: 74 out of 100
- Close readings are dense; survey chapters more broadly informative.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Direct scholarly argument with clear chapter-level theses.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Analytical throughout; examines symbolic strategies in primary texts rather than deploying its own.
- Ironic distance: 14 out of 100
- Straightforward critical tone with minimal rhetorical irony.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Each chapter concludes with a stated critical position.
- Structural complexity: 36 out of 100
- Organized by author and theme in a standard critical survey format.
How Facing It: American Literature and the Vietnam War is regarded
Facing It: American Literature and the Vietnam War holds a literary regard score of 70 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.