Journal by Jules Renard
Published 1887 · 316 pages · 24,130 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is Journal to read?
Journal scores 56 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: 42 out of 100
- Renard writes epigrammatically, using precise vocabulary. Some period literary references require context. The style is clarity itself.
- Sentence structure: 38 out of 100
- Short entries, short sentences. The aphoristic mode demands compression. Syntax serves wit.
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- Concrete observation predominates. Renard records what he sees and hears. Abstraction emerges from accumulated particular.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with observation and judgment. Every entry is concentrated. The Journal rewards browsing and close reading equally.
- Narrative indirection: 35 out of 100
- Renard records directly. The indirection is in self-knowledge—he sees himself clearly but doesn't always share conclusions.
- Symbolic density: 35 out of 100
- Not symbolically organized. The entries are literal, material. Meaning accumulates from observation, not symbol.
- Ironic distance: 68 out of 100
- Renard views himself and others with constant irony. The wit is defense and weapon. Nothing escapes the ironizing eye.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- A journal doesn't resolve. Renard's death ends it; life doesn't conclude. The form resists closure.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- Daily entries over twenty-three years. The structure is chronological diary. Complexity is in density, not form.
How Journal is regarded
Journal holds a literary regard score of 54 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.