Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis
Published 2007 · 277 pages · 45,000 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Short Fiction
How hard is Varieties of Disturbance to read?
Varieties of Disturbance 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: 45 out of 100
- Precise, unusual word choices.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Highly varied; some experimental.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Language, relationships, and thought.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Each story densely crafted.
- Narrative indirection: 60 out of 100
- Davis reveals obliquely.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- Language itself carries weight.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Davis maintains intellectual distance.
- Resolution withholding: 60 out of 100
- Stories resist closure.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- Highly varied forms.
How Varieties of Disturbance is regarded
Varieties of Disturbance 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.