Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On Unread Books

theparisreview.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 59 posts

Re: On Unread Books

#21

Post by WalterBright »

everyone wrote: post #6

Imo a lot of literature has 0 novel content, so this is not suprising. Additional: I'm always shitting on the humanities in the comments here. I dont have anything against them, I both produce them and consume massive quantities of them. My point is simply that they are trivial. If all art suddenly disappeared it wouldnt really matter. If knowledge about, and/or the fruits of STEM stuff disappeared it would be a huge…

I read a lot of books. Is that really better than watching TV? I have my doubts.

Re: On Unread Books

#22

Post by everyone »

lj3 wrote: post #16
everyone wrote: post #6

Imo a lot of literature has 0 novel content, so this is not suprising. Additional: I'm always shitting on the humanities in the comments here. I dont have anything against them, I both produce them and consume massive quantities of them. My point is simply that they are trivial. If all art suddenly disappeared it wouldnt really matter. If knowledge about, and/or the fruits of STEM stuff disappeared it would be a huge…

Arts aren't just entertainment. They're a reflection of the soul of a culture and exist long after that culture is dead. If you look at every culture ever recorded in human history, you'll note there is a direct correlation between a culture's progression in art and a culture's progression in science and technology. That said, I agree with you that most written literature has very little to offer most people. Most pi…

"the medium is the message. The medium a piece of art chooses is significant. TV and movies will rot your brain regardless of whether it's The Big Bang Theory or Citizen Kane. Reading will improve your brain, regardless of whether you're reading Danielle Steel or Chaucer."

I have not heard that before.

The medium a piece of art chooses is significant, yes, (and in a lot of cases the creator chooses the wrong medium, eg. there are plenty of computer games out there that really want to be films, they dont make use of the strengths of the medium and even fight against it.)

The rest, I dont agree with.

Imo big bang, citizen kane, danielle Steel and chaucer are all somewhat equatable, because they are all fiction/entertainment. Personally I'd rate something educational or non-fiction over fiction in any medium

Re: On Unread Books

#23

Post by c22 »

everyone wrote: post #20
sanderjd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If all art suddenly disappeared it wouldnt really matter. Ugh. This is so arrogant. Take a step back, talk to some people outside this bubble, of different ages, from different parts of the world, and not just on the internet. Get a sense for how they want to live their lives, for what's important to them. Then come back to this opinion you hold so strongly and question it honestly.

What bubble? Please do tell. I hope you're not arrogantly making assumptions about me. If all art disappeared, sure almost everyone on the planet would be initially upset and unhappy about it. But we'd just continue to make more, humans make art compulsively and instinctively. Eg. In archaeology the signs of art are often equated with the presence of modern humans. Scientific discovery on the other hand does not come…

> Also art has no endgame, with enough science and technology we could create AI, the technological singularity, explore the galaxy, achieve literal immortality.

It sounds like in your scenario art is the endgame. What else will we do with our immortal selves once we've reached technological singularity?

Re: On Unread Books

#24

Post by paganel »

svat wrote: post #18

When I saw the title here, I immediately thought of the 2007 book How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard. And when I opened the article, I find that it is indeed a review/summary of that book, by Umberto Eco… which I guess goes to show something or the other. Bayard's book is a masterpiece; I found it hilarious and recommended it to a friend, who has taken to it so much he buys copies for others an…

> When I saw the title here, I immediately thought of the 2007 book How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard.

I've started speaking about this book with my gf for about 2 or 3 years now, even though I haven't read it (and will not read it in the near future, as my to-read-next list is quite big and always growing). I find it's an excellent book, and much more so as it's recommended by a writer like Eco, a guy who I did actually read (even though that happened 20 years ago, so the details are fuzzy) and who forever influenced my view on books and how to read and interpret them.

I also heartily recommend Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket". I'm not from an English-speaking country so it wasn't required reading for me while in school, but I nevertheless found its no-ending thingie as the quintessence of modern literature. In fact, Eco has often talked about the Gordon Pym story, one of the characters of one of his novels is named exactly like that.

Re: On Unread Books

#25

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

lj3 wrote: post #16
everyone wrote: post #6

Imo a lot of literature has 0 novel content, so this is not suprising. Additional: I'm always shitting on the humanities in the comments here. I dont have anything against them, I both produce them and consume massive quantities of them. My point is simply that they are trivial. If all art suddenly disappeared it wouldnt really matter. If knowledge about, and/or the fruits of STEM stuff disappeared it would be a huge…

Arts aren't just entertainment. They're a reflection of the soul of a culture and exist long after that culture is dead. If you look at every culture ever recorded in human history, you'll note there is a direct correlation between a culture's progression in art and a culture's progression in science and technology. That said, I agree with you that most written literature has very little to offer most people. Most pi…

> TV and movies will rot your brain regardless of whether it's The Big Bang Theory or Citizen Kane.

I cannot agree with that at all. A great deal of cinema is heavy enough on information to be educational. Think about how much you can learn about history, literature, economics, or politics from watching Jean-Luc Godard’s output from 1962-1968. Even if the medium has flaws in the depth of its presentation, its compilation of citations to important literature that can then be followed up, can be invaluable.

And aren't plays reading? And do they really lose the goodness they have as "reading" when they move from the written page to a performance that just happens to be captured on film instead of before a live audience?

Re: On Unread Books

#26

Post by everyone »

padraic7a wrote: post #11
everyone wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not the same. If all existing art disappeared we would still be able to produce art at our current rate with no discernible or measurable difference in its quality or effect. Scientific or technological progress on the other hand is iterative. More advanced theories are slowly formulated on the backs of older ones. For precision tools for example you need to start off building crude tools with nothing, then use t…

"Its not the same. If all existing art disappeared we would still be able to produce art at our current rate with no discernible or measurable difference in its quality or effect." That's a very strange idea. If all existing novels dissappeared do you think we would produce novels straight away? If all painting dissappeared would we paint with perspective, or in abstract, or just go for rough cave type paintings? How…

Maybe rhyming metre would never be recreated. In some cultures it wasnt. The phase space for what will entertain humans is seemingly almost infinitely detailed, there is no wrong or right way to do it. Eg. people can dance to banging rocks together just as effectively as to Mozart.

On the other hand, there is only one Pythagoras' theorem, and an infinitude of similar incorrect theorems. We postulate that intelligent aliens should discover Pythagoras' theorem but not Jazz or De Stijl.

Re: On Unread Books

#28

Post by everyone »

c22 wrote: post #23
everyone wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bubble? Please do tell. I hope you're not arrogantly making assumptions about me. If all art disappeared, sure almost everyone on the planet would be initially upset and unhappy about it. But we'd just continue to make more, humans make art compulsively and instinctively. Eg. In archaeology the signs of art are often equated with the presence of modern humans. Scientific discovery on the other hand does not come…

> Also art has no endgame, with enough science and technology we could create AI, the technological singularity, explore the galaxy, achieve literal immortality. It sounds like in your scenario art is the endgame. What else will we do with our immortal selves once we've reached technological singularity?

Yeah, once we've done that we can relax. Now, when our very survival is in question is not a good time to squander our limited resources on decadence.

..

Its like, youre starving but instead of going out to hunt you spend all day masturbating. Thats us as a species right now :)

Re: On Unread Books

#29

Post by lj3 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #25
lj3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arts aren't just entertainment. They're a reflection of the soul of a culture and exist long after that culture is dead. If you look at every culture ever recorded in human history, you'll note there is a direct correlation between a culture's progression in art and a culture's progression in science and technology. That said, I agree with you that most written literature has very little to offer most people. Most pi…

> TV and movies will rot your brain regardless of whether it's The Big Bang Theory or Citizen Kane. I cannot agree with that at all. A great deal of cinema is heavy enough on information to be educational. Think about how much you can learn about history, literature, economics, or politics from watching Jean-Luc Godard’s output from 1962-1968. Even if the medium has flaws in the depth of its presentation, its compila…

You're talking content. I'm talking neurobiology.

Re: On Unread Books

#30

Post by [deleted] »

paganel wrote: post #24
svat wrote: post #18

When I saw the title here, I immediately thought of the 2007 book How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard. And when I opened the article, I find that it is indeed a review/summary of that book, by Umberto Eco… which I guess goes to show something or the other. Bayard's book is a masterpiece; I found it hilarious and recommended it to a friend, who has taken to it so much he buys copies for others an…

> When I saw the title here, I immediately thought of the 2007 book How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard. I've started speaking about this book with my gf for about 2 or 3 years now, even though I haven't read it (and will not read it in the near future, as my to-read-next list is quite big and always growing). I find it's an excellent book, and much more so as it's recommended by a writer like E…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN