Steps by Jerzy Kosinski

How hard is Steps to read?

Steps scores 63 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: 38 out of 100

Kosinski's prose is deliberately stripped down and austere, employing a limited, precise vocabulary of mostly common words. The sentences are short and declarative, favoring concrete, sensory language over abstraction or ornamentation. While occasional clinical or anatomical terms appear, the overall lexicon is far simpler than, say, 'Lolita' or 'Moby-Dick,' closer to the controlled simplicity of Hemingway or Camus's 'The Stranger.'

Sentence structure: 30 out of 100

The syntax is strikingly minimalist — short, declarative sentences dominate, often paratactic (placed side by side without subordination). Paragraphs are rarely longer than a few lines. There are almost no complex nested clauses, parenthetical asides, or elaborate periodic structures. This places the text well below 'The Great Gatsby' syntactically and far below Faulkner or Proust, resembling instead the flat, affectless cadences of Kafka's parables.

Abstraction: 52 out of 100

The vignettes are rooted in concrete, often visceral physical experience — bodies, landscapes, acts of violence and sex. However, the unnamed characters, lack of context, and parable-like structure invite the reader to extract broader philosophical meanings about power, freedom, identity, and dehumanization. The italicized dialogue sections between two unnamed lovers add a layer of abstract reflection on intimacy and selfhood, elevating the text above pure narrative realism.

Information density: 42 out of 100

Each vignette is sparse and self-contained, conveying its situation with minimal background information, historical context, or intertextual allusion. There is very little world-building or exposition. However, the compression means every sentence carries weight — there is no padding. The density of implication per word is high, but the density of factual or referential information per page is low compared to encyclopedic novels like 'Ulysses' or '2666.'

Narrative indirection: 78 out of 100

The book's central challenge lies here. Characters are never named, settings are rarely specified, and motivations are almost never explained. The narrator recounts disturbing acts — rape, torture, manipulation, murder — with flat affect, offering no moral commentary or psychological interiority. The reader must construct meaning entirely from juxtaposition and implication. The italicized lover dialogues offer oblique counterpoint to the main vignettes but never resolve into clear thematic statements. This is significantly more indirect than 'Heart of Darkness' and comparable to Beckett's prose.

Symbolic density: 62 out of 100

The fragmentary episodes function as parables or allegories rather than realistic narrative — each vignette embodies themes of domination, survival, and selfhood without ever stating them. Recurring images (the body as object, confinement and escape, the observer-manipulator dynamic) create a symbolic web across the disconnected episodes. The jar of butterflies, the credit card as tool of power, the orphanage children — all carry symbolic freight beyond their literal content, though the symbolism is implicit rather than heavily layered.

Ironic distance: 70 out of 100

There is a profound gap between the narrator's flat, uninflected reportage and the horrifying content of his accounts. He describes acts of cruelty and exploitation with the same dispassionate tone as mundane observations, creating a sustained ironic tension. The reader is never told how to feel — the absence of moral framing is itself a form of irony that implicates the reader in the act of witnessing. This controlled ironic distance recalls Kafka and anticipates the affectless narration of Bret Easton Ellis.

Resolution withholding: 82 out of 100

Each vignette ends abruptly, often mid-situation, without resolution, consequence, or reflection. The book as a whole has no plot arc, no character development, and no conclusion — it simply stops. The reader is given no closure on any episode: did the narrator escape? Was the violence punished? What happened to the victims? This radical withholding of resolution is more extreme than 'Waiting for Godot' and places the book among the most deliberately unresolved works in postwar fiction.

Structural complexity: 72 out of 100

The book's structure is its most distinctive formal feature: dozens of disconnected vignettes of varying length, interspersed with italicized dialogues between unnamed lovers that seem to exist in a separate temporal and emotional register. There is no chronological order, no recurring characters (beyond the narrator), and no causal connections between episodes. The reader must navigate this fragmented collage and decide whether to read it as a picaresque, an allegory, a confession, or an anti-novel. This structural ambiguity is more radical than 'In Our Time' but less formally experimental than 'Pale Fire' or 'Hopscotch.'

How Steps is regarded

Steps holds a literary regard score of 63 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.

About the author

Jerzy Kosinski