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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

#41

Post by AlbertCory »

zokier wrote: post #35

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 dwa…

You're right. There are certainly some "make you think" movies that win for their portentousness and are promptly forgotten ("Crash" and "The English Patient" -- lookin' at you).

I ran the Google Cinema Club for 10 years. In all that time, no one ever asked for those movies, and we never even seriously considered them.

On the other hand, "The Princess Bride" was constantly being requested, as was "Office Space." There was some reason we couldn't show them; can't remember now what it was.

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

#42

Post by causi »

zokier wrote: post #35

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 dwa…

but you can’t even imagine a world where either could have possibly won an Oscar.

Is this some kind of joke or is he a buffoon? Princess Bride was nominated for an Oscar and won two Saturn awards and one Hugo.

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

#43

Post by wyldfire »

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

This is incredible. I almost closed the tab when the text grew out of control, I thought it was a bug.

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

#44

Post by criddell »

zokier wrote: post #35

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 dwa…

I think the problem with his argument is tied up in the word “we”:

> if we were willing to treat works of art

The Oscars aren’t awarded by us, they come from industry people. If HN readers voted on software awards, it’s pretty likely that the winners wouldn’t reflect choices made by the wider world. Emacs beating Tik Tok might be our version of Good Will Hunting beating Happy Gilmore.

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

#45

Post by meetups323 »

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…

The author [1] merely stated many people distrust David French, in a highly tongue in cheek manner meant to hook people into reading the rest of the essay. You're the leaping to terms like "hate" and "you're either with us or against us", perhaps reflect on why you've done that?

At the very least, reflect on the immense irony of someone "losing all credibility in your mind" because you perceive them to have a "you're either with us or against us" mentality.

[1] who refers to themselves as "Resident Contrarian", to give you an idea of their intended persona

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

#46

Post by ChrisArchitect »

Nobody Will Admit what the title of the book I'm writing about is...... had to read too much of this drivel without even knowing what they were referring to, ridiculous. Also to slowly realize it wasn't about soccer. Why was this submitted here?

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

#47

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#48

Post by haswell »

kemayo wrote: post #36
haswell wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting, thanks for sharing that. He does follow this up to clarify:

> Something like that. Mostly I don't hate him, he just bothers me. I really wish he wasn't the banner-carrier for mainstream Christianity/Conservatism, but I don't wish he'd fall off a cliff or whatever.

I'm not sure if the reviewer's issue with French is rooted in French's willingness to explore nuance in a way that makes christians/conservatives uncomfortable, or if it's because French embraces positions that are really not compatible with the 2022 version of conservatism while still aligning himself with that movement.

In either case, it seems like a position that isn't particularly relevant to the primary content of the review. I will say it was probably an unnecessary distraction to mention him at all, but I don't think that distraction warrants ignoring everything else the reviewer writes.

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

#49

Post by lkxijlewlf »

> Nobody Will Admit The Best Novel of Our Generation is About Football

Just stop. We all have different preferences.

Personally I hate American football (it's too much like a stupid video game now), so you'll never even get me to read whatever book this person is talking about.

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

#50

Post by colechristensen »

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 appreciate your viewpoint but it seems to be a strong reaction to a throwaway joke which isn’t at all the point of the article.
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