Try by Dennis Cooper
Published 1994 · 68,475 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, LGBTQ+ Fiction, Modernist & Experimental Fiction
How hard is Try to read?
Try scores 42 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately 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: 30 out of 100
- Reviewers describe Cooper's prose as clinical and taut, which points to plain, controlled diction rather than ornate language. Closer to Beach Read in accessibility than to Lolita, though its subject matter is harsher.
- Sentence structure: 33 out of 100
- The clinical, taut prose reported by reviewers suggests short, direct sentences. It sits near the plain declarative style of 1984.
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- The book follows two concrete days in Ziggy's life, with abuse, a fanzine and drug use rendered as events. Its ideas arrive through specific scenes, as in It Ends with Us, with some emotional abstraction beneath.
- Information density: 32 out of 100
- At roughly 68,000 words and a span of two days, the book is compact. Its cast of Ziggy, Ken, Calhoun and Roger is small and easy to track.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Reviewers note the book avoids moralizing and states events coldly, so readers must supply the emotional and ethical response themselves. That places it above 1984 in inference demanded, though below Pedro Paramo.
- Symbolic density: 35 out of 100
- Ziggy's fanzine "I Apologize" works as a central motif for expression and guilt, but the reported style is literal and clinical. Symbolism stays restrained, near The Remains of the Day.
- Ironic distance: 58 out of 100
- The New York Times Book Review calls the prose ironic, and the deadpan, unmoralizing narration sets a gap between what is shown and what it means. That puts it between The Great Gatsby and Beloved in irony.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- The book is described as a love story that is brutally crushed, which suggests a bleak but definite outcome. A two-day frame implies a closed span, though the moral ambiguity lingers.
- Structural complexity: 38 out of 100
- The novel covers two days in Ziggy's life, which suggests a compact, mostly linear structure. It is simpler than Lolita, closer to The Great Gatsby.
How Try is regarded
Try holds a literary regard score of 43 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.