---
title: Complexity
date: '2011-05-22T15:58:34-04:00'
permalink: /complexity/
tags:
    - reading
---

I’m in the midst of reading Dominick LaCapra’s [*History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801488982), as I revise [my essay on David Foster Wallace, Infinite Summer, and networked reading](http://docs.plannedobsolescence.net/blog/infinitesummer/), and have been finding a lot there that’s helping me complicate some of my claims about identification and empathy. But I just stumbled across this in a footnote on complexity, and (as I’m also in the midst of reading [*The Pale King*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316074233)) it made my head explode a little:

> I have in mind the complexity of a significant novel or a philosophical or historical text rather than, say, income tax forms, although the latter in their complexity certainly call for critical analysis.