Yes,” I told him. “I think the guy playing the Pirate King was awesome. ” He stopped where he was. “What?” I asked, frowning at the big smile on his face. “I didn’t say I liked the Pirate King,” he told me. “Oh. ” I closed my eyes—and there he was. A warm, edgy presence right on the edge of my perception. When I opened my eyes, he was standing right in front of me. “Cool,” I told him. “You’re back. ” He kissed me leisurely. When he was finished, I was more than ready to head home. Fast. “You make me laugh,” he told me seriously.
Julian Barnes
Great books are readable anyway. Dickens is readable. Jane Austen is readable. John Updike's readable. Hawthorne's readable. It's a meaningless term. You have to go the very extremes of literature, like Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake," before you get a literary work that literally unreadable.
