[HN Gopher] Done in by Time
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Done in by Time
Author : lermontov
Score : 16 points
Date : 2025-04-25 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thelampmagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thelampmagazine.com)
| jihadjihad wrote:
| > Alexander Gerschenkron, a labor historian at Harvard, in a 1978
| issue of the American Scholar set out three criteria for a good
| book: It should be intrinsically interesting, it should be
| memorable, and it should be re-readable. Hemingway, alas, passes
| only the second of these tests, and is today probably not worth
| reading much beyond anyone's twenty-first year.
|
| Wow!
|
| > The twentieth century may have widened the subject matter of
| the novel, but it has failed to deepen it.
|
| What about Faulkner? Toni Morrison?
|
| I share the sentiment about the magnitude of the loss of the
| novel, should it occur. Probably the last _truly great_ novel I
| read was _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay_ , and
| that's twenty-some years old.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Much great writing is now actually living in the realm of the
| fanfic and the self-published. This is not the death of art; if
| anything, it speaks to art's creation having become so prolific
| that there is no publishing-house gatekeeper that can contain
| it.
|
| It's hard for me to take seriously a "Where are all the
| novels?" critique when there is currently a very active long-
| novel-title-to-multi-hour-anime pipeline running at white-hot
| intensity. Perhaps the author missed them because they're in
| Japanese.
| glompers wrote:
| > ... the twentieth century may have widened the subject matter
| of the novel, but it has failed to deepen it
|
| Even if we were to deny artistically creative 20C novelists
| their depth as a mere retread of the nineteenth century's,
| whatever that means, I don't think that the same terms of
| dismissal would apply to comic books, graphic novels, hypertext
| novels and hypertext graphic novels, or novels written with
| radio or audiobook dramatization in mind, all of which do allow
| mature thrills to be expressively enhanced and intermingled --
| not only cheap thrills.
|
| Scott Miller had a good idea about the importance of the novel
| form, however: "Maybe I'm just thick ... but whenever novels
| run out of simple intrigue, they tend to fall into a sort of
| formulaic display of personal insightfulness, and beyond the
| scope of about a chapter, one insightful individual carries on
| in fiction a lot like the next. That said, I have nothing
| against intrigue, even porn; if I were honest with myself, I'd
| probably put INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE on a list of 20." [1]
|
| [1] http://www.loudfamily.com/askscott1997.html
| api wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the loss of the novel. Of late, I've started
| reading more than I have in years. I'm trying to find new
| authors and subject matter, and also revisiting some old
| favorites.
|
| Still, there is a huge problem: discoverability of new authors.
| This is a problem in lots of areas, but I feel like it's
| particularly bad here. There are many new authors trying new
| things but how to find them amid a sea of rough drafts that
| should never have been published? Most of the time when I try a
| recent new author's work I am greeted with something that reads
| like fanfic.
|
| Then there's AI slop, which is apparently flooding Kindle
| thanks to grifting influencers like (apparently) Andrew Tate
| teaching people how to do this. That's only going to make it
| harder.
|
| Wondering how people here look for new authors. The best I've
| found has been to look in certain genres or subject areas of
| interest, look for up-and-coming works, then read a sample. I
| can usually dismiss trash within a few pages. But it's still
| time consuming.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > ask yourself the work of which contemporary novelist, poet,
| composer, or painter you are eagerly awaiting
|
| Marathon, by Bungie Studios (and frequently on the composer side
| the work of Christopher Tin), but who's counting?
|
| More seriously: the nature of art has changed and this article
| doesn't seem willing to accept that change. Art _can_ be the work
| of one creative talent, but it can also be the collective work of
| a whole army of people acting on a consensus goal. And right now,
| a lot of the resources of art creation are tied up in large-
| scale, multidisciplinary projects: movies, videogames, studio
| music.
|
| Saying you're waiting for a movie to come out is _precisely_ as
| much a statement about anticipating a work of high art as saying
| you 're interested in what Dostoevsky will write.
| turnsout wrote:
| Exactly. It's also a complete self-own. You know who _can_ name
| several painters with highly anticipated upcoming shows?
| Literally anyone who actually cares about painting.
|
| Sometimes (often) when people get older, they stop listening to
| new music, reading new books, or going to art openings. Then,
| slowly, they start assuming that the world is the problem. That
| art has gotten worse, or there's somehow less of it. But of
| course the thing that has become boring is the person.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| The author is 88 years old (not that advanced age is always a
| barrier to liking new things, but it frequently doesn't help)
| and has been a reactionary for decades. The magazine
| publishing this is, as noted on the page header, Catholic and
| thus also invested in the vision of "cultural decline" that
| the article expresses.
| 72mena wrote:
| > If you doubt this, ask yourself the work of which contemporary
| novelist, poet, composer, or painter you are eagerly awaiting.
| I'll pause here a moment while you fail to find any.
|
| I don't want to use the term "gatekeeping" here, but this type of
| posture on a topic as subjective as personal preferences is quite
| odd. While the author thinks they're "making a pause while you
| fail to find any", I'm here coming up with examples of
| contemporary creators that I can't wait for them to release their
| new stuff. (In painting, writing, and cinema).
|
| I don't consider we're in a "low state" as described, but I think
| we may be coming at this from different definitions about what
| low state means.
| Animats wrote:
| _" But just now the novel of every century is in search of
| readers. For more than two centuries the leading literary
| genre, the novel at the moment seems to have a dim future. No
| other literary form engages so directly with human nature, none
| at its best rises above all other modes of thought in its
| engagement with humanity in all its variety, and none deals so
| deeply with the truths of the heart. The significance of its
| loss would be inestimable."_
|
| And get off my lawn.
|
| There are plenty of new novels. Visit a bookstore. Most of them
| will be forgotten, but some will be read a century from now.
| Novels face more competition from other forms of entertainment
| than they used to. But they still sell in volume. It's not like
| books of poetry.
|
| Young adult novels have become much better over the last decade
| or two. Teenagers are willing to read multiple volume novels
| now. That wasn't the case before Twilight and Harry Potter.
| Yes, there have been multiple volume young adult series for a
| century, such as "Nancy Drew and the ...". But they were pretty
| bad.
|
| Knockoffs are a problem. About fifteen years ago, "Teen
| Paranormal Romance" filled six bookcases at Barnes and Noble.
| That didn't include the vampire content in Romance, Fantasy,
| and Best Sellers. I remarked to one of the store staff goths
| that if they shelved all the vampire books together, they'd be
| half the sales floor. She said the Hunger Games knockoffs were
| starting to come in and would be pushing out the Twilight
| knockoffs. She was right.
| hsshhshshjk wrote:
| Is this just the constant survivorship bias of the present? Only
| the best of the past has survived until now. Only the best of now
| will survive the next two centuries so that someone in that time
| can bemoan the state of their present day literature.
| api wrote:
| I'm sure the 23rd century will have its equivalent of roman
| statue avatar social media accounts citing today's best art and
| asking "why can't we make culture like this anymore?"
|
| There was a _ton_ of disposable literature in the 19th century.
| It 's when the term "pulp" started to be used for trashy
| novels.
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