The Language of Inquiry by Lyn Hejinian
Published 2000 · 122,925 words · about 13 hours at an average pace
How hard is The Language of Inquiry to read?
The Language of Inquiry scores 71 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: 70 out of 100
- Poetics and philosophical vocabulary throughout.
- Sentence structure: 72 out of 100
- Long essayistic sentences interleaved with poetry.
- Abstraction: 88 out of 100
- Language treated as the subject of language.
- Information density: 72 out of 100
- Dense with poetics and philosophy together.
How The Language of Inquiry is regarded
The Language of Inquiry holds a literary regard score of 62 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.