The Empty Space by Peter Brook
Published 1968 · 56,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Empty Space to read?
The Empty Space scores 45 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately 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: 55 out of 100
- Plain, direct prose — Brook resists academic jargon on principle.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- Abstract theatrical categories always rooted in Brook's direct experience.
- Information density: 68 out of 100
- Dense with theatrical anecdote, argument, and provocation.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Proceeds by associative argument rather than systematic exposition.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The empty space itself functions as the book's governing symbol.
- Ironic distance: 14 out of 100
- Earnest and direct, with occasional dry humor.
- Resolution withholding: 18 out of 100
- Immediate theatre is evoked rather than fully defined.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Four named chapters each building on the previous.
How The Empty Space is regarded
The Empty Space holds a literary regard score of 48 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.