"[Friedrich] Hölderlin deconstructs syntax, [Marcel] Proust's sentences are too long, obliging the reader to slow down.
Toni Morrison only gradually reveals the mystery of their bond through Cosey, obliging the reader to constantly re-evaluate the plot and characters' relationships with one another.
In his new novel, the author of "House of Leaves" is up to his old tricks — multicolored and upside-down text — and some flabbergasting new ones, including a double-ended structure that obliges the reader to flip the book every eight pages.
Yet her writing achieves its own kind of narrative tension, a spell that obliges even the readers already clued in to Tiptree's secret to turn the book's pages with increasing suspense as they wait for its real-life inhabitants to catch up with them.
The legal struggles to publish Joyce's Ulysses, the Lady Chatterley trial, the wild transgressions of books such as Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Burroughs's Naked Lunch persuaded me that to write fiction was to be obliged to take the reader by the hand to the edge – and jump.
1914 is not so remote a date that he has to worry much about period detail, but he is obliged to give the reader quite a lot of information about geology, petroleum deposits, ancient Mesopotamia, how digs are dug and so on.
The answer to the book's chief matter of suspense -- the source of the Zycron stories -- answers itself so obviously and early that Iris, while disclosing the truth in the book's last pages, feels obliged to concede to the reader, "You must have known that for some time".
Nor is this the only incident where the reader is obliged to take on Mrs Bennet's restricted views; compare the verdict on Darcy's standoffishness at his first public appearance: "His character was decided.
And Vidal reliably issues condemnations in almost frivolous fashion, through the gossip of a small clique of wealthy leftist intellectuals, whose grand disquisitions and petty jealousies the reader is obliged to take seriously.
The dessert served up in its early pages is zesty, with lots of good stuff about what happens when you eat only raw food (you starve to death), but then the reader is obliged to champ through a set of dishes heavier on seasoning than on substance.
