The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett
Published 1953 · 106 pages · 189,562 words · about 19 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is The Unnamable to read?
The Unnamable scores 80 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: 72 out of 100
- Beckett philosophical.
- Sentence structure: 85 out of 100
- Single paragraph, no stops.
- Abstraction: 90 out of 100
- Being, voice, nothing.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Minimal world.
- Narrative indirection: 90 out of 100
- Dissolving narrator.
- Symbolic density: 75 out of 100
- Voice, silence.
- Ironic distance: 65 out of 100
- Beckett humor.
- Resolution withholding: 95 out of 100
- I cannot go on I go on.
- Structural complexity: 88 out of 100
- Single monologue.
How The Unnamable is regarded
The Unnamable holds a literary regard score of 88 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.