2014-08-29 09:00:56

Though itself an ______ work, James Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a far easier read than are either his Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake.

(A) obeisant
(B) obsolete
(C) abstruse
(D) absolute
(E) opalescent

The correct answer is C
Explanation:  To find the missing word, try to predict its meaning by using clues in the sentence. Here, the main clue is the word "though," which sets up a contrasting relationship between the two clauses of the sentence. It implies that Portrait is a hard work to read but that it is easier to read than are Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake. Thus, the missing word must mean "difficult to read," making C correct: "abstruse" means "difficult to understand or understood only by a few."

None of the other choices work, either:

obeisant: respectful
obsolete: no longer produced or used
absolute: total or complete
opalescent: showing multiple colors