The Order of the Day by Éric Vuillard
Published 2017 · 150 pages · 22,875 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · History, Literary Fiction
How hard is The Order of the Day to read?
The Order of the Day 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: 55 out of 100
- Vuillard writes in precise French (Mark Polizzotti's translation is excellent), the vocabulary of diplomatic history and corporate power. The language is accessible, the effect devastating.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- Short, punchy sentences build toward indictment. Vuillard controls pace for maximum effect, each paragraph a small grenade. The syntax is crisp, the execution merciless.
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- Capitalism's complicity with fascism—Vuillard makes abstract systemic critique concrete through the specific meeting where German industrialists endorsed Hitler. Names, dates, consequences.
- Information density: 65 out of 100
- The Anschluss, the corporate executives, the diplomatic maneuvering—Vuillard packs substantial historical detail into a brief novella. The density is concentrated, every fact pointing toward complicity.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Vuillard tells history directly, following the timeline toward catastrophe. The indirection is in what he reveals—the banality of the decisions that enabled horror.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- The meeting itself becomes symbolic: comfortable men in a room, arranging atrocity. Vuillard makes historical specificity do symbolic work. The names carry the weight.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- Vuillard observes with controlled fury, the irony cutting at respectability. These were not monsters—they were businessmen. The distance enables the accusation.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- History provides the frame: we know what came after. Vuillard provides the ending history wrote. The resolution is historical fact, none the less devastating for being known.
- Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
- Brief, direct narrative of historical events. The structure is journalistic, moving from meeting to annexation to aftermath. Easy to follow; impossible to forget.
How The Order of the Day is regarded
The Order of the Day holds a literary regard score of 64 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.