Weird Works Of Literature Most Will Never Read

Longest diary ever by Rev. Robert Shields.
There are a number of works of literature that are more famous for other things than the story they tell. Their infamy lies in their insane length, or that they are just simply too indecipherable to most mere mortals to get their heads around. one great example is that of obsessive diarist the Reverend Robert Shields.  When he died in 2007, he left behind a literary legacy that immediately placed him high on the list of weird works that people will never read, but only ever read about. Starting in 1972, Shields recorded everything in his life every five minutes until his death. That's right, he made a diary entry every five minutes for 25 years, culminating in over 500 novels worth of work spread over 3.75 million words. He would spend hours each day recording the most mundane aspects of his life, from his vial signs to his toiletry habits in the most minute detail. He apparently had 30 different categories and ways of describing urination. He would sleep only in 2-hour shifts, so he could wake-up and describe his dreams. He noted down each and every piece of junk mail he ever saw sent. It is thought that Shields suffered from a behavioural condition known as hypergraphia, which is an overwhelming urge to write. 
Now Sheilds' self-obsessed magnum opus of the mundane may be an extreme example, but there are other works of literature that stand as epics that no-one will likely ever read. The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion the 9 million word, 15,000 page, over 15 volume work of insane genius, by the reclusive Henry Darger makes Sheilds' mere 3.75 million words pale into insignificance. Darger had lived in his small one-room apartment for 43 years, obsessively working on this intricate artwork. 

Read the Weird Retro article Henry Darger: In The Realms Of the Unreal. 

Other works that may not have the word count of those two epics, but are seen as so dense, obscure, convoluted and using language inaccessible to the average reader that their reputation is greater than the sum of their indecipherable words. One such example, and one of the most well known of such literary works is Finnegans Wake (1939) by Irish writer James Joyce. The last novel James wrote before his death.
The novel is a full to the brim with wordplay, multiple meanings, layer upon layer of Joyce's own invented neologisms and portmanteau words. A wholly pretentious expansive of at times inexplicable nonsense, stream of conscience thought experiment stuff designed to infuriate the reader. There's no way of summerising the plot, offering a synopsis. Many have tried, and many have differing views on what the novel is about. Joyce's final work thus remains pretty much unread by all but the most masochistic of literary fans. Another example of a novel that has a reputation for being too difficult to read is Gravity's Rainbow the 1973 novel by American writer Thomas Pynchon. The novel was the subject of a Captain's Blog post entitled Has Anyone Ever Read This Novel? A novel once described in the New York Times as "... bonecrushingly dense, compulsively elaborate, silly, obscene, funny, tragic, pastoral, historical, philosophical, poetic, grindingly dull, inspired, horrific, cold, bloated, beached and blasted." Spread over 400 chapters and 300,000 words, all structured along the lines of the supposed squares on graph paper and charting the trajectory of a V-2 rocket, this sci-fi epic is just too much for most people to even be bothered to attempt. Another one on the list of overly long over blown novels is Ayn Rand's final epic novel from 1957 Atlas Shrugged. A pseudo-intellectual quasi-philosophical diatribe that advocates of reason, individualism, capitalism in what Rand developed into her philosophy of Objectivism. On its publication it was dismissed as naive and silly, and little more than a "homage to greed". The difference between Atlas Shrugged and others mentioned so far isn't that people haven't read it, rather that it being a question of why people actually bother reading it.
There are a couple of novels that people have attempted to read but given up, based on the vernacular used in the novel. The two that immediately spring to mind are Anthony Burgess's 1962 dystopian novella A Clockwork Orange and Irvine Welsh's landmark novel Trainspotting (1993). Both which produced seminal cult films based on the literary works. Both great works of fiction, and rightly heralded as two of the best works of the later 20th century. Such accolades don't make either of them any easier to read though. A Clockwork Orange, with its incomprehensible Droog street slang that forces the reader to check the meanings of the words every couple of sentences, makes it a pain the the rear-end to read. That the whole thing is written from the perspective of the main protagonist and Droog leader Alex, really doesn't help with the novella endearing itself to its readers.

Trainspotting is another novel that is mostly narrated by its main protagonist, Mark Renton. Though others do narrate as well, and often telling who is speaking is a bit confusing at first. The main problem lie in the spoken word being written in a phonetic vernacular type of Edinburgh slang. Add to that a non-linear plot, of seeming sometimes disjointed shorter pieces of fiction all tied together into what became the novel, and you are dealing with a literary work that many have given up on. Those that have stuck with it love it, but it does take certain amount of dedication to get through so they say. I must admit it's not a novel I have bothered with, giving up only a few pages in.
One last novel on the list that is recognised as a difficult read, due not only to its surreal drug-fuelled narrative, but that it is utterly non-linear. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, published in 1959 it is a series of vignettes (Burroughs called them "routines"), that he claimed could be read in any order. The story is narrated by junkie William Lee (based on Burroughs himself), who takes on various aliases, from the US to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone. An utter and purposeful literary trip to the edge of insanity.
Go Fuck Yourself! The Ultimate Time Travel Paradox In Science Fiction - A look at two sci-fi stories that take a whole weird different twist on the grandfather paradox. 
Voynich Manuscript: The Most Mysterious Book In The World - A bizarre 13th century manuscript that no-one has ever been able to decipher. Full of weird illustrations and strange text.