What Is Literature?

How hard is What Is Literature? to read?

What Is Literature? scores 65 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: 68 out of 100

Sartre deploys a sophisticated philosophical vocabulary throughout — existentialist terminology (transcendence, alienation, praxis, dialectic), phenomenological references to Merleau-Ponty and Hegel, and sustained engagement with literary-critical terminology. Words like 'immanent,' 'inessential,' and 'sublated' appear alongside dense French literary-historical allusions. Elevated but not arcane — more accessible than Gravity's Rainbow (80) but far above contemporary literary fiction.

Sentence structure: 72 out of 100

Sartre writes in long, heavily subordinated sentences with multiple nested clauses and periodic constructions that regularly span five to seven lines. The rhetorical mode involves sustained philosophical argument where each sentence qualifies and extends the previous one, creating extended chains of reasoning that demand sustained attention. Closer to Proustian subordination (78) than to the direct declarative sentences of Orwell (35).

Abstraction: 88 out of 100

The work is almost entirely sustained philosophical abstraction — Sartre's ontological analysis of writing, reading, freedom, and historical situation rarely descends into simple concrete illustration for more than a paragraph before returning to theoretical argument. Extended passages on the co-creative act of reading and the dialectic between author and reader operate entirely at the level of phenomenological analysis. Significantly higher than Brothers Karamazov (75) and approaching the pure abstraction of Waiting for Godot (85).

Information density: 80 out of 100

Every paragraph carries multiple interlocking philosophical claims while simultaneously referencing dozens of writers, historical periods, and political situations. The chapters on literary history from medieval clerks through the Encyclopedists compress centuries of intellectual history into dense argumentative prose requiring readers to track both philosophical argument and historical narrative simultaneously. Comparable to War and Peace (80) in density of reference per page.

How What Is Literature? is regarded

What Is Literature? holds a literary regard score of 84 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.