A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze
Published 1980 · 180,000 words · about 13 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism, Philosophy, Nonfiction
How hard is A Thousand Plateaus to read?
A Thousand Plateaus scores 93 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very 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: 88 out of 100
- Even denser neologisms than Anti-Oedipus: rhizome, haecceity, faciality, refrain, war machine, nomad thought. Draws on technical vocabulary from dozens of fields.
- Sentence structure: 82 out of 100
- Varied — some plateaus are discursive and relatively clear, others are deliberately vertiginous. The non-linear structure adds to the challenge.
- Abstraction: 90 out of 100
- Among the most abstract philosophical works of the twentieth century. The concepts operate across multiple domains simultaneously.
- Information density: 88 out of 100
- Each plateau synthesizes material from multiple disciplines. The conceptual density is extreme.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- Non-linear, non-hierarchical structure. The reader must construct connections between plateaus rather than following a given path.
- Symbolic density: 40 out of 100
- Concepts like the rhizome, the body without organs, and smooth/striated space function as both analytical tools and quasi-mythic images.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Philosophical playfulness and humor throughout, but the political and theoretical commitments are serious.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- Deliberately refuses closure. The rhizomatic structure means the book can always be entered from new points and generates new connections.
- Structural complexity: 75 out of 100
- Fifteen plateaus designed to be read in any order. The non-linear structure is the book's philosophical point — but it makes navigation genuinely challenging.
How A Thousand Plateaus is regarded
A Thousand Plateaus holds a literary regard score of 83 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.