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

I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

experimental-history.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 359 posts

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#71

Post by recursive »

nostromo95 wrote: post #65
Bratmon wrote: post #49

In my understanding of literature, I went through the same arc as the poster, but then I made it to the next realization- "thickness" is just your willingness to give authors credit for things they didn't write, and it can be done just as well for works that are considered "schlock" as it can for the canon of works that are considered "great". You can read "Moby Dick" as a story about a fish, and you can read "50 sha…

I'm sure this aesthetic relativism holds up under argument, but this is an 'anti realization' that: -Reduces explanatory power (if Moby-Dick and 50 Shades are the same, why has one been lauded for 100 years, minted the careers of countless academics, etc.?) -Makes the world less interesting

One of them has existed for more than 100 years. One of them has been granted credibility by a small number of academics before becoming a safe conservative choice for subsequent ones.

I don't know, but those sounds like some plausible answers.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#72

Post by krige »

PsylentKnight wrote: post #48
pavel_lishin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It felt even worse when reading Shakespeare, which is nominally the same language you and I speak, but just barely. Add the fact that it's a play, where the performance carries a lot of the meaning. The end result was that I - and as far as I could tell, 99% of my classmates - got basically negative value out of sitting in class and reading lines we didn't understand out loud, without even time to try and parse it ou…

I have heard that Shakespeare is much easier and more enjoyable for non-English speakers, because they get modern translations and we do not Linguist John McWhorter says that Shakespeare is often an "the Emperor has no clothes" situation. No one wants to admit to themselves or others that they don't understand it, and the people who think they understand it are often misunderstanding a lot of it

Well yeah. Look no further than the "brevity is the soul of wit" quote. It's taken at literal value when, in context, you know it's a joke, a potshot at the expense of the character saying it, who's anything but brief in speech.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#73

Post by PsylentKnight »

LPisGood wrote: post #66
PsylentKnight wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that Shakespeare is much easier and more enjoyable for non-English speakers, because they get modern translations and we do not Linguist John McWhorter says that Shakespeare is often an "the Emperor has no clothes" situation. No one wants to admit to themselves or others that they don't understand it, and the people who think they understand it are often misunderstanding a lot of it

Now, maybe I was convincing myself that I understood in high school when I’ve in fact it not, but I found that reading it aloud and trying to say the words, as if you were the character (acting, if you will), made it much more understandable.

I mean, even the most famous line in all of Shakespeare, "wherefore art thou Romeo" is frequently misunderstood because many people reasonably assume "wherefore" means something like "where". Yes, you can figure it out from context, but the context is in the same archaic language. Very possible to untangle all that while you're reading it and perhaps it's a good mental exercise. But it can be really tough to keep up when you're watching in the form it was meant to be enjoyed in, a play

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#74

Post by pavel_lishin »

thrtythreeforty wrote: post #62
pavel_lishin wrote: post #59

> The Met Cloisters has these wooden altarpieces from the 1400s that draw your attention immediately, I think because the mind can subconsciously calculate the time it must have taken to carve them, and it sends a signal back to the eyes: important. You know that you are not just seeing a work of art, but the expenditure of a life. Reminds me of one part of Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky".

The lake?

No, the very first meeting with the Emergents, where ... I forget the character's name (Trixia?), but she's a linguist and she figures out that there's something odd about the painting-carvings in the Emergent habitat. She can't put her finger on it until she spends more time studying their language, and figures out that they... well, we're getting into spoiler territory, so rot13: Fur svtherf bhg gung gurl gnyx nobhg crbcyr nf bowrpgf gb or bjarq.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#75

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Bratmon wrote: post #49

In my understanding of literature, I went through the same arc as the poster, but then I made it to the next realization- "thickness" is just your willingness to give authors credit for things they didn't write, and it can be done just as well for works that are considered "schlock" as it can for the canon of works that are considered "great". You can read "Moby Dick" as a story about a fish, and you can read "50 sha…

I strongly disagree. Sure, I can say story X is about Y, for any arbitrary Y.

But take Hamlet, for example. You can say that it's about revenge destroying the one who takes it. Or you could say it's about failing to seize the moment ultimately making you pay a much higher price. Or you could say it's about insanity, and whether sane people are insane and insane people are sane. And none of those is wrong!

You could even say it's about how tedious it is to have to listen to pompous old windbags, and you'd be at least partially right.

But if you said it was about body thetans, then no, you are objectively wrong. There is no honest reading of Hamlet that reaches that conclusion.

"Thickness" is giving authors credit for things they didn't write, but they did leave breadcrumbs for. That's different from "they didn't write it at all", and it's also different from "I didn't look for breadcrumbs, so I didn't see them".

Here's an example: The song "Welcome to the Future", by Brad Paisley, the third verse says:

  I had a friend in school
  Running back on the football team.
  They burned a cross in his front yard
  For asking out the homecoming queen.
  I thought about him today
  And everybody who'd seen what he'd seen
  From a woman on a bus
  To a man with a dream.
That verse is thick. There are breadcrumbs all over the place, trails leading to things that the author did not say. And yet he did say them, through the breadcrumbs.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#76

Post by iwontberude »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #36
lordnacho wrote: post #33

As an old man I now think the art and humanities classes in school landed at the wrong time. You need context to really understand a book or a work of art. You want to know what kind of environment produced it, what it's talking to. But when you're in school, there isn't time for that. You aren't going to know a bunch of things about history to put things into context, because there simply isn't enough time for it. S…

It felt even worse when reading Shakespeare, which is nominally the same language you and I speak, but just barely. Add the fact that it's a play, where the performance carries a lot of the meaning. The end result was that I - and as far as I could tell, 99% of my classmates - got basically negative value out of sitting in class and reading lines we didn't understand out loud, without even time to try and parse it ou…

[dead]

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#77

Post by ransom_rs »

If you enjoyed this you will probably enjoy Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag[0]. Great piece that discusses why and how art moves us and pushes back a bit against the idea that is presented in this post that real art is art you can ask questions about and get answers from. I think most people including the author can recognize impactful art is more than just being able to get your 'why' questions answered (some might claim modern art is about challenging these assumptions), but it is even more difficult to talk about that concept without sounding extremely snobby, and Sontag has the credentials / writing skills to discuss it well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Interpretation

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#78

Post by fluoridation »

krige wrote: post #72
PsylentKnight wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that Shakespeare is much easier and more enjoyable for non-English speakers, because they get modern translations and we do not Linguist John McWhorter says that Shakespeare is often an "the Emperor has no clothes" situation. No one wants to admit to themselves or others that they don't understand it, and the people who think they understand it are often misunderstanding a lot of it

Well yeah. Look no further than the "brevity is the soul of wit" quote. It's taken at literal value when, in context, you know it's a joke, a potshot at the expense of the character saying it, who's anything but brief in speech.

It sounds like it's still meant in earnest, then. That it's a self-deprecating joke doesn't detract from the sentiment.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#79

Post by yipinwong »

lordnacho wrote: post #33

As an old man I now think the art and humanities classes in school landed at the wrong time. You need context to really understand a book or a work of art. You want to know what kind of environment produced it, what it's talking to. But when you're in school, there isn't time for that. You aren't going to know a bunch of things about history to put things into context, because there simply isn't enough time for it. S…

I learned not to like literatures, and arts learning them in school. There were some kids who did great, and did not like it. Some liked it.

Giving as much experience to students provides a way to decide their own life.

I still am not fond of arts, and literatures, started digging it a bit.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#80

Post by AnimalMuppet »

chaps wrote: post #11

There's a lot of truth to this, but....... fuck they did a great job disincentivizing it. In high school we had to read and annotate this 900p Greek mythology book during our summer break. Our grade reflected how well we annotated it. I didn't do any of it (thanks Ultima Online). The very first in-class assignment we had that year took about an hour and had about a 25% bigger impact on our grade than annotating did.…

What kind of abusive high school gives a 900-page summer assignment?
Post reply on HN