Septology by Jon Fosse
Published 2019 · 843 pages · 118,596 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Septology to read?
Septology scores 67 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
- Fosse writes in simple, repetitive Norwegian that Damion Searls translates into hypnotic English. The vocabulary is deliberately limited, with the same words and phrases recurring in meditative waves.
- Sentence structure: 78 out of 100
- Sentences flow endlessly, one into the next, without conventional breaks. The syntax is radically unpunctuated, creating a stream of consciousness that demands surrender to its rhythm.
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- The work explores art, faith, mortality, and the relationship between the living and the dead. These themes emerge through Asle's consciousness rather than through explicit discussion.
- Information density: 52 out of 100
- The density is repetitive rather than informational—the same moments, images, and phrases recur in variations. Meaning accumulates through iteration rather than through new content.
- Narrative indirection: 75 out of 100
- Asle and his double, also named Asle, blur together. The reader must navigate the uncertain relationship between the two figures and what each represents.
- Symbolic density: 70 out of 100
- The paintings, the light, the sea, the double—each carries symbolic weight within Fosse's meditation on creativity and mortality. The approaching Christmas becomes symbolic of incarnation and death.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Fosse writes without irony, in a mode of sincere spiritual seeking. The work's tone is contemplative and devotional, taking seriously what contemporary fiction often mocks.
- Resolution withholding: 68 out of 100
- The seven parts reach their end but the meditation continues beyond the final pages. The work offers no conventional closure, only the ongoing mystery of existence.
- Structural complexity: 75 out of 100
- Seven parts that originally appeared separately form one continuous stream. The structure is radically demanding, requiring readers to submit to its repetitive, hypnotic flow.
How Septology is regarded
Septology holds a literary regard score of 69 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.