Is Wuthering Heights a hard book to read?
Wait. Twelve is too young. By all means start it if you want, but I have my doubts. The idea isn’t to get through books but to enjoy them. Maybe you have to force a little bit, but it’s better to read _The Catcher in the Rye_ and love it than to read _Anna Karenina_ and find it dull. _Wuthering Heights_ is a supreme example of a certain kind of pure romantic feeling–of passion fed partly by hatred, the perverse marriage of contraries. This complex of feelings results in a love whose exclusiveness, as the book would have one believe, transcends convention and the limitations of earthly existence. It is pervaded by an intense and a latent eroticism. The points of view and the genealogy are precisely managed–a striking contrast to the emotionality of the narrative. There are sharply and cruelly drawn secondary figures–Lockwood, the narcissistic fop; Joseph, the cantankerous religious crank; Hindley, the drunken self-despiser; Isabella, the willful fool crushed with merciless relish. Ev
