The Humble Lover by Edmund White
Published 2023
How hard is The Humble Lover to read?
The Humble Lover scores 52 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
- Rich, candid vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- Long, elegant sentences.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Concrete throughout.
- Information density: 52 out of 100
- Moderate.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- A third person close to an older man deceiving himself.
- Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
- The ballet carries modest weight.
- Ironic distance: 62 out of 100
- Steady irony at the lover's expense.
- Resolution withholding: 52 out of 100
- The ending is deliberately unkind.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- Linear.
How The Humble Lover is regarded
The Humble Lover holds a literary regard score of 39 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.