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How to Read a Novel

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Re: How to Read a Novel

#51

Post by kstrauser »

altruios wrote: post #46
zabzonk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> breadth and depth of understanding about psychology have improved dramatically Provide one tiny bit of evidence for this. Do you seriously think that Shakespeare (for e.g.) did not have a profound understanding of human psychology?

not who you are replying to - but: Shakespeare was limited by the number of interactions he had with humans. He did not have the internet. We also have neurology as a science now. So that's one bit of evidence for the claim. Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time…

Hard disagree. I made an analogy in another reply to Monet not knowing quantum physics. Lacking that information didn’t deter his famous explorations of light effects.

Humans are great at figuring out how things behave before we have a great model of why they do it. And by Shakespeare’s time, we had a pretty good grasp on practical human psychology, even if we had less understanding of the mechanisms behind it.

Re: How to Read a Novel

#52

Post by KineticLensman »

altruios wrote: post #46
zabzonk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> breadth and depth of understanding about psychology have improved dramatically Provide one tiny bit of evidence for this. Do you seriously think that Shakespeare (for e.g.) did not have a profound understanding of human psychology?

not who you are replying to - but: Shakespeare was limited by the number of interactions he had with humans. He did not have the internet. We also have neurology as a science now. So that's one bit of evidence for the claim. Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time…

> Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time by many humans working together. Two things can be true.

Yes, but this doesn't prove that a modern author could produce a better text than a historically great author, which was the original line of thought. Or is there a specific modern text that you have in mind that proves the point?

Re: How to Read a Novel

#53

Post by altruios »

kstrauser wrote: post #51
altruios wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not who you are replying to - but: Shakespeare was limited by the number of interactions he had with humans. He did not have the internet. We also have neurology as a science now. So that's one bit of evidence for the claim. Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time…

Hard disagree. I made an analogy in another reply to Monet not knowing quantum physics. Lacking that information didn’t deter his famous explorations of light effects. Humans are great at figuring out how things behave before we have a great model of why they do it. And by Shakespeare’s time, we had a pretty good grasp on practical human psychology, even if we had less understanding of the mechanisms behind it.

We are excellent at figuring things out. We get better at it over time, as we grow our collective knowledge base.

I agree that we are great at figuring out things before we have a model of why things work. And we have a mountain of context to work from already. Shakespeare wasn't an idiot, and he wasn't in a vacuum but his 'context window' was 'smaller' than a lot of people today(quotes because dubious terminology).

Art is improving. Science is improving. human understanding, and communication of that understanding is improving too. That is my point.

Re: How to Read a Novel

#54

Post by altruios »

KineticLensman wrote: post #52
altruios wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not who you are replying to - but: Shakespeare was limited by the number of interactions he had with humans. He did not have the internet. We also have neurology as a science now. So that's one bit of evidence for the claim. Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time…

> Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time by many humans working together. Two things can be true. Yes, but this doesn't prove that a modern author could produce a better text than a historically great author, which was the original line of thought. Or is there a s…

Define 'better'...

How about 'more accurate' as a measure...

Then every text book is an example of this measure of better improving over time...

How about 'more representative of the human experience'... (or enjoy/like more)

Then we measure how well a human relates to a book: which is taste, a subjective quality that is notoriously hard to measure in any meaningful way. This measure becomes not a single measure, but a collective measure against the sum of humans who interact with it: an untenable standard - and biased towards the present anyway - which doesn't give charity to your position.

...So how do you measure a book to be 'better'? That's the neat part: you don't. You can measure what you 'like' more, you can measure 'features'... but we probably won't even agree on what makes a book 'better'. We like what we like, and most of us have a hard time even explaining why we like something.

Re: How to Read a Novel

#55

Post by kstrauser »

altruios wrote: post #53
kstrauser wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. I made an analogy in another reply to Monet not knowing quantum physics. Lacking that information didn’t deter his famous explorations of light effects. Humans are great at figuring out how things behave before we have a great model of why they do it. And by Shakespeare’s time, we had a pretty good grasp on practical human psychology, even if we had less understanding of the mechanisms behind it.

We are excellent at figuring things out. We get better at it over time, as we grow our collective knowledge base. I agree that we are great at figuring out things before we have a model of why things work. And we have a mountain of context to work from already. Shakespeare wasn't an idiot, and he wasn't in a vacuum but his 'context window' was 'smaller' than a lot of people today(quotes because dubious terminology).…

I won't argue against that at all. Someday we're going to have someone with Shakespeare's brilliance and modern foundations, and I can't wait to see what that looks like.

(And maybe we already do have that person. I'm shamefully out of date with modern literature.)

Re: How to Read a Novel

#56

Post by vonnik »

nilirl wrote: post #36

The post does not answer 'How to Read a Novel'. Most of the post is devoted to 'Why I think fiction is useful'. The author's answer: vicarious learning. Author answers how to maybe rank and choose a book: Book that provides recognizable experience of human decision making is better than book that does not. Which is fine. But not 'How to Read a Novel'.

This is very true!

I felt like the writer didn't really get what novels are for, and it explains why he decided he's a better fit for non-fiction. He seemed to be explaining novel utility to a bunch of imaginary STEM grads.

Personally, I read for the metempsychosis. Like Zelig but with authors, a briefly shared subjectivity that shapes whatever I go back to when I put the book down.

Reading novels helps me escape the tyranny of my own mind (just like reading history helps us escape the tyranny of our own time, as the man said). In a way I feel like the West meditates through novels.

Re: How to Read a Novel

#57

Post by happytoexplain »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #6
jihadjihad wrote: post #4

> But my admiration for Middlemarch and Bleak House goes beyond their portrayal of the psychological interiority of their characters. [...] Both novels succeed at something else: they invite us to think across multiple scales of experience—and to make causal and associative connections between those different layers. To toss another into the ring, I can't think of any novel I've read that could rival The Brothers Kar…

Lol I always laugh when I see people talk up Dostoevsky and any 19th century writer. It's 2025 now and literature has improved in depth and characterization as much as any other field.

>literature has improved in depth and characterization as much as any other field.

It hasn't.

1. Many fields experiencing development over the past century or two are much newer than literature, which might as well be a synonym for thought. During that time, those newer fields were, or currently are, in their early rapid-growth phase.

2. Literature is deeply on the subjective side of "fields", so it's a lot easier to argue that it has changed, rather than that it has improved.

Re: How to Read a Novel

#58

Post by happytoexplain »

desas wrote: post #19
pickledoyster wrote: post #5

the single takeaway from this book ad of a post: the CEO of Stripe claims to have read 10 novels/yr. Which is either a boast of how much free time he has or how he skimmed through some major novels. Third option: a lie.

This is a ludicrous take. I was on vacation last week and read three books, albeit not weighty novels. I can't remember when I read as few as 10 novels per year. I'm not a CEO, but reading is also far from my only hobby.

To be clear first: The parent is being a little unreasonable.

However.

There's no need to resort to insults, nor to use a single person as an example, which doesn't make sense, regardless of whether it's their "only hobby".

Average novel reading speed is an impossible metric. E.g. WPM measurements are irrelevant to long-form reading, are irrelevant to literary reading, and don't account for processing, tangential thought, or re-reading, which are of course highly variable. And "reading time" (the subset of free time conducive to literary reading) is also basically impossible to quantify broadly. It's also difficult to categorize people by how much they are trying to read. Some people are only a little interested, some not at all. Further, this is one of those fields where the super-humans aren't actually that rare, so you get a situation where the average person reads 8 books per year despite half of all people reading half a book per year (made up numbers).

Point of all that being, "novels a year" is one of the most culturally acceptable brags, because there is no "expected" value for people broadly. It's a hidden value, so we can say things like "yeah, I read 12 books a year, not a lot I know", and people generally won't roll their eyes at risk of appearing stupid.

Look at how many people on otherwise-rational HN are saying "I used to read 30 novels a year," "I used to read a novel a week," as if that means it must be easy to accomplish in Western work and life culture. We're drunk on the ease of implicitly painting people who can't read as much as us as simply dumb modern westerners.

I think it's an easy thing to do, and we shouldn't. It's not classy.

Re: How to Read a Novel

#59

Post by [deleted] »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #6
jihadjihad wrote: post #4

> But my admiration for Middlemarch and Bleak House goes beyond their portrayal of the psychological interiority of their characters. [...] Both novels succeed at something else: they invite us to think across multiple scales of experience—and to make causal and associative connections between those different layers. To toss another into the ring, I can't think of any novel I've read that could rival The Brothers Kar…

Lol I always laugh when I see people talk up Dostoevsky and any 19th century writer. It's 2025 now and literature has improved in depth and characterization as much as any other field.

[deleted]

Re: How to Read a Novel

#60

Post by antithesizer »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #24
kstrauser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re nuts. I read “Crime and Punishment” a couple years ago, and went in knowing literally nothing about it except that it was famous. It was astonishingly good. It felt fresh, modern, and claustrophobically suspenseful in a way I wouldn’t have believed possible for a book that age. If you don’t like it, fine. Preferences are a thing and we don’t all have to enjoy the same stuff. But to dismiss it as obsolete or ou…

I might've conveyed myself poorly. Never said Dostoevsky wasn't great or not a relevant read! I was just reacting to the OP who seemed to say it's still the best ever. But we've improved everything, art, kites, the wheel. It's the same for literature, but you do have to get pretty deep into lit to see though. The main criticism for I have for Dostoevsky is that he's overdramatic. Yes it's great fun fiction and a vast…

To be fair you have to be very deep into literature to criticize dostoevsky as "overdramatic"
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