Ramblin' man

I just finished reading Ink by Hal Duncan, and it made me wonder. Do authors think that being difficult to follow and extremely vague about things makes them more "serious"? Honestly, this is the Pynchon theory (anybody out there read V recently), where after spending hundreds of pages telling a story the reader goes away confused as to the point of the story, not that there has to be a point. I used to enjoy these sorts of literary exercises more when I was younger and more pretentious about my reading, now I don't have quite the same patience for it. I guess I have come to see that a book can be just as important, deep, and meaningful without being completely incomprehensible. I think any book a person reads adds to that persons humanity. Some people don't feel this way though. This puts me in mind of a story. I had a supervisor a few years back who was basically a functional illiterate who disliked the fact that I had a college degree. He used to make fun of the fact I read books at break instead of playing Euchre or smoking cigarettes. Treated the rest of his old school tradesmen who liked hunting, fishing, NASCAR and the like better than those of us who didn't. (Hey, when one redneck favors the other rednecks unfairly in the workplace would that be called napeitism?) Anyway, one time he asked me in his most condescending tone, "Hey, you think reading all those books makes you smart don't you?" When I replied, "Naw, but if I die tomorrow I don't want Clifford the Big Red Dog to be the last book I ever read." he seemed to thing that I was insulting him somehow. (I was. . . but I didn't think he'd figure that out.) I had to explain that I had no idea that Clifford had been the last book he read and that I thought that Emily Elizabeth was a hoot. Somehow that didn't make it any better. Shortly after that I got forced to 2nd shift. . . was it something I said?