Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by UncleOxidant » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 5:44 PM UTC

kemayo wrote: post #34

Herodotus38 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

His take seems to assume that French has changed his positions, but it seems (from my reading anyway) that French is still quite conservative. I think this is more about how the definition of "conservative" has changed over the last 5-7 years or so.

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

#62

Post by seshagiric » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 5:44 PM UTC

Somehow made me remember the Dave Secretary stories. Unfortunately, I cannot find any link to those stories...they were really funny.

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

#63

Post by runnerup » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

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…

> Rather, "Nobody Will Admit that A Novel about Football is the Best Novel of Our Generation".

It’s interesting to me that I staunchly agree with your correction, and your interpretation of the original title. I unthinkingly parsed the original title to mean exactly this (to mean the corrected version) and didn’t ever consider its “incorrect” literal meaning.

It makes me wonder if the original title uses a widespread sub-dialect of English grammar which I’ve subconsciously picked up.

Or if it’s just always been common to rearrange words inconsistently/arbitrarily and we learn to rearrange them as correctly as we can manage.

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

#64

Post by universa1 » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 5:46 PM UTC

just skimmed through the article, but it somehow reminded me about "Playing for Pizza" by John Grisham[1], but that one is probably a somewhat lighter read ;-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_for_Pizza

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

#65

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

sharkjacobs wrote: post #11

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

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

No but it is another story by the same author (John Bois) in which > Tim Tebow finds himself able to do the impossible; he gets the ball and runs it to the end zone. It is then that the entire back of the stadium opens up, and it’s revealed that successful Canadian football drives don’t have a defined stopping point. They go “to street”, meaning that the team can move the ball through the city and out to the wilderne…

Based on the dates in the URLs and the synopsis, it sounds like it was a direct predecessor to 17776.

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

#66

Post by jancsika » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

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.

I got the sense the author wanted to construct an example that would be so obvious as to be laughable. But I immediately thought of Christina Hoff Sommers' claim that feminism has changed to the point that she believes she now looks like an outsider because of it.

Is it the truth, or PR? I agree it's annoying that this narrative is so common, but if I spent all my time getting angry about that kind of PR I wouldn't have time to do anything else. I think we just have to bear it and trust people to dig to find out the truth.

Alternatively, we can also just not care too deeply about the answer and blithely ask on HN-- can someone in the know tell me if David French complains about a specific denomination of Christians, or Christians as a whole? If it is a specific denomination, where do I go to find out a) what a critical mass of that specific denomination thinks about the world, and b) what a critical mass of that specific denomination does about the members of their church that seem to be trolling the rest of us?

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

#67

Post by munificent » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

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…

Also, the idea that Good Will Hunting is "very serious" also misses the mark. So much of why that movie worked is because it interleaved humor throughout:

* "How you like them apples."

* Sean talking about his wife farting when she was nervous.

* Will's entire monologue at the NSA interview.

* "My boy is wicked smaht."

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

#68

Post by auto » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

It can't be coincidence that the author mentions Happy Gilmore, and then goes on to describe the point of the book being finding a world built for you not to fail in, when you thought the other world you did fail in was your destiny, which is basically the whole schtick OF Happy Gilmore, right?

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

#69

Post by perardi » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 6:07 PM UTC

I do enjoy the idea of a novel that grossly exaggerates the US stereotypes of Canada.

Although some Canadian facts are so weird that they are nearly impossible to believe until you research them. Like the extremely well-appointed throne room at the top of the CN Tower that is kept in reserve for the British monarchy in case the UK is occupied during a war, and the royal family needs a secure and luxurious backup.

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

#70

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 6:17 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]