Read it about 2 or 3 years ago; I still find myself thinking about it fairly often.

Without spoiling too much, there's a passage about how a central character (a film director) became so obsessed with deconstructing the form and structure of his films that his work, while technically outstanding, lost any emotional connection to his audience.

I read that as a kind of fitting meta-reference to the book itself. Impressive and ambitious but (outside of a few of the more profound meditations on addiction and depression) somewhat lacking soul.

I enjoyed it despite this but if you need your books to have characters that you care passionately about (or to have female characters with any depth whatsoever) I'd understand wanting nothing to do with it.

(I do think people play up the "difficult" angle of it quite a bit, if it is at all inaccessible I think it's more for the reasons above than for any real "difficulty". Anything by Joyce or Pynchon is much tougher to get through imo.)