Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
Published 1981 · 50,000 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism, Media & Technology, Nonfiction, Philosophy
How hard is Simulacra and Simulation to read?
Simulacra and Simulation scores 75 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very 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: 58 out of 100
- Highly specialized philosophical vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- Extreme abstraction. Meta-theoretical.
- Information density: 58 out of 100
- Dense with philosophical argument.
- Narrative indirection: 22 out of 100
- Non-linear, aphoristic structure.
- Symbolic density: 35 out of 100
- The simulacrum is itself a symbol of lost reality.
- Ironic distance: 30 out of 100
- Radical irony throughout.
- Resolution withholding: 25 out of 100
- Baudrillard destabilizes rather than resolves.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Essays of varying length with no linear progression.
How Simulacra and Simulation is regarded
Simulacra and Simulation holds a literary regard score of 61 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.