Them by Joyce Carol Oates
Published 1970 · 508 pages · 127,000 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Them to read?
Them scores 56 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
- Urban working-class vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- Oates intense prose.
- Abstraction: 62 out of 100
- Class, violence, desire.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Detroit 1930s-60s.
- Narrative indirection: 58 out of 100
- Third person.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- City, violence.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Engaged intensity.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Riots, continuation.
- Structural complexity: 58 out of 100
- Generational saga.
How Them is regarded
Them holds a literary regard score of 68 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.