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Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

residentcontrarian.com

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Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#31

Post by trynewideas »

neil_b wrote: post #6

The History of the Seattle Mariners and Atlanta Falcons are two fantastic documentaries produced by the author of the discussed novel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIgK56cAjfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_ORMhpmoU&list=PLUXSZMIiUf...

As with most Jon Bois stuff, the titles undersell it. Watch this if you're interested in serendipity, community cultures, long-running folk tales, the implausibility of reality, etc.

Also watch it all with the realization that the only visualization tool Jon uses for making these is Google Earth.

(Maybe my favorite Jon Bois real-life video, and a smaller bite than those big docs while still getting to all of the above, is "Randall Cunningham Seizes the Means of Production": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymSrDfLhW8 )

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#32

Post by ss108 »

Herodotus38 wrote: post #25
yodon wrote: post #13

When the author starts their post off insulting David French they lose all credibility in my mind as an arbiter of literature. David French has written an enormous number of posts I disagree strongly with, and an equivalent number that I agree strongly with. That's because he thinks and writes about extremely complex matters of morality and does not reduce his views to the "liberal" or "conservative" orthodoxy. He st…

Your reply made me interested in learning more about David French, so I went to his substack and read his post about John Adams Fear, which I enjoyed and thought was pretty balanced. I was wondering, and maybe someone else can chime in, why the author of this article said: "OK, so, there’s this thing where if you write a bunch you hope you eventually build up some trust with your audience. You try to be generally rel…

It's a bit of a clumsy joke I think; David French's previous followers turned on him, as explained above.

He maintained his moral and intellectual integrity whereas many of his longtime readers and fans betrayed theirs. So it didn't matter that he had built-up trust. He didn't genuflect to Orange Man and go along sheepishly for the ride the Republican Party has decided to take, so they ditched him.

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#33

Post by moolcool »

brimble wrote: post #4

Rather, "Nobody Will Admit that A Novel about Football is the Best Novel of Our Generation". This does not appear to be about people denying that the book is about football. Also, the novel is actually a novella. Also, it seems not to be a book, but a web page: https://www.sbnation.com/2014/8/18/5998715/the-tim-tebow-cfl... [EDIT] Also, from the story: > Raghib Ismail. Call me Raghib. sensible-chuckle.gif [ANOTHER ED…

Jon Bois is fantastic. All of his videos are great and he's a great writer. I highly recommend his "Pretty Good" series.

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#34

Post by kemayo »

Herodotus38 wrote: post #25
yodon wrote: post #13

When the author starts their post off insulting David French they lose all credibility in my mind as an arbiter of literature. David French has written an enormous number of posts I disagree strongly with, and an equivalent number that I agree strongly with. That's because he thinks and writes about extremely complex matters of morality and does not reduce his views to the "liberal" or "conservative" orthodoxy. He st…

Your reply made me interested in learning more about David French, so I went to his substack and read his post about John Adams Fear, which I enjoyed and thought was pretty balanced. I was wondering, and maybe someone else can chime in, why the author of this article said: "OK, so, there’s this thing where if you write a bunch you hope you eventually build up some trust with your audience. You try to be generally rel…

The author does answer this question in the comments: https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/nobody-will-admit-the-b...

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#35

Post by zokier »

I do find the thesis in the ending quite weak:

> For a longer time before the gritty period, we all dedicated ourselves to the idea that anything we’d acknowledge as very good had to be both serious and artsy. People really liked Good Will Hunting (see: very serious); it was also a good movie, so it won an Oscar. Zillions of people love movies like The Princess Bride and Happy Gilmore; it’s incredibly likely both dwarf Good Will Hunting in terms of total views, but you can’t even imagine a world where either could have possibly won an Oscar.

[...]

> This is a short article by my standards, but it does have me thinking: What kind of world could we actually live in, if we were willing to treat works of art made with the goal of making us happy as if they were important? What if we were willing to make them? We’ve seen what happens in a world where all the Oscars go to movies that make you cry, or that we pretend make us think even though they generally don't

There are plenty of widely acclaimed movies that can not be considered "very serious", picking some recent Oscar winners as examples with categorizations from wikipedia:

* Parasite ("black comedy thriller")

* Green Book ("comedy-drama")

* The Shape of Water ("romantic fantasy")

* Birdman ("black comedy drama")

* CODA ("comedy-drama")

* La La Land ("comedy-drama")

* Life Of Pie ("adventure-drama")

Are all those completely feel-good movies intended to make you happy? Maybe not, but still its not like happy/humorous/feel-good is completely disregarded category even among grumpy art critics.

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#36

Post by kemayo »

haswell wrote: post #26
yodon wrote: post #13

When the author starts their post off insulting David French they lose all credibility in my mind as an arbiter of literature. David French has written an enormous number of posts I disagree strongly with, and an equivalent number that I agree strongly with. That's because he thinks and writes about extremely complex matters of morality and does not reduce his views to the "liberal" or "conservative" orthodoxy. He st…

I read the comment as a tongue-in-cheek jab, not an insult. The author made no value judgements about French, and it’s hard to deny that part of French’s audience turned on him. The reasons for that are not examined, and in the context of the reviewer’s opening, it serves as nothing more than a way to say “usually, trust can be built over time, David French’s situation notwithstanding”. To conclude that the author ha…

For what it's worth, I found in the comments to this article a discussion by the author of why he doesn't like David French: https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/nobody-will-admit-the-b...

So I don't know about "hates", but he really does dislike the man.

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#37

Post by aidenn0 »

mherdeg wrote: post #12
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

ah, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776 ?

Same author (Jon Bois). I have trouble reading longform web stuff (like Worm or Homestuck). I did get through HPMOR and All Night Laundry though!

Hey, Worm gets pretty good after the first half-million words :P

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#39

Post by DanHulton »

moolcool wrote: post #33
brimble wrote: post #4

Rather, "Nobody Will Admit that A Novel about Football is the Best Novel of Our Generation". This does not appear to be about people denying that the book is about football. Also, the novel is actually a novella. Also, it seems not to be a book, but a web page: https://www.sbnation.com/2014/8/18/5998715/the-tim-tebow-cfl... [EDIT] Also, from the story: > Raghib Ismail. Call me Raghib. sensible-chuckle.gif [ANOTHER ED…

Jon Bois is fantastic. All of his videos are great and he's a great writer. I highly recommend his "Pretty Good" series.

Oh jeeze, all I needed to read was "Jon Bois" and I knew the story would actually be excellent, despite my skepticism.

Actually, I should really have clued in that he was the author much, MUCH sooner. That's on me.

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#40

Post by Kapura »

scyclow wrote: post #8

When I read the title of this post, Jon Bois was the first thing that came to mind. 17776 is one of my all time favorite websites, and my goto example of amazing hypertext fiction. https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football

17776 was something that I heard recommended by a bunch of game developers before anybody else. It's one of the most inventive pieces of science fiction I've ever read (watched? experienced?)
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