"My warmest wishes to you Joyce. I can’t follow your banner any more than you can follow mine. But the world is wide and there is room for both of us to be wrong."
An admirable sentiment. I don't think the human mind (including mine) is capable of following it 100%, but I wish more people at least aspired to it, and fewer people saw it as a sign of weakness (which it is not, quite the opposite).
I think you are selling everyone short. All accomplished people can recognise certain outstanding peers, appreciate their intelligence and yet have damning opinions on their particular set of principles. For me, it's the most refreshing thing in life; that someone can stay stedfast to their well-considered trajectory which may be perpendicular to your own.
I think it's only healthy when you realize you work is accessible to a large but finite audience to accept that you don't speak to or on behalf of everyone.
Appreciating the work of someone else with a large audience that largely does not overlap with your own is just respecting that divide all the more. Maybe you're both wrong and there's some third writer who everyone loves.
But you know, being a writer with 'only' and audience numbered in the tens or hundreds of millions is a lot better than I'll ever manage. The projects I number as successes have had less than half as many users as that, and that's still an accomplishment most of us never achieve. I haven't done the things I hoped when I was 25 but I have done enough.
I would encourage you to give Ulysses another go. I think there are a few chapters that are hard going at the start that put people off, but after about the third or fourth chapter it is a bit more digestible. Especially the one where he's getting the carriage to the graveyard. Another thing I found helpful was to read an edition with lots of footnotes explaining various obscure passages. You can even look up bits you find confusing online. It's more work than reading your average novel I'll grant you, but after finishing it every other novel I've read really made me appreciate the richness of the language in Ulysses.
>Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo
Ulysses is a hard slog. That should be expected from someone who wrote one page per day. IIRC correctly Ulysses took 7 years, so Joyce apparently wasn't even writing every day. I read Sometimes a Great Notion soon after, and enjoyed Kesey's 3 months of effort more.
I adored Ulysses, it was Wake that drove me crazy. In the end I was forced to just speed read it and gather up whatever gems were offered on the surface (there were not many).
Isn't this just shine theory, albeit without the intent to support a minority? I don't think it is so hard for a human to recognize alternative forms of greatness.
I would never ever read finnegan's wake. Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would except perhaps literary scientists. But to put finnegan's wake on the stereo or headphones while working out or doing a fanstatic hike or sailing or whatever is an incredible experience that I have always been grateful for. I encourage everyone to do it. HG wells, however, on the other hand is something you'd want to sit down and read because he kills his darlings with the idea that his readers will sit down and read it. Not just let it waft over them and permeate their subconscious. Finnegan's wake is wonderful mental music.
BTW, Joyce wrote portrait of an artist as a young man, which is a really great read and a must for anyone with a literary / artistic bent.
Listening to FW is a superb idea, especially because the text takes onomatopoeia to its limits and contains a plethora of multilingual puns. It's meant to be read aloud. I'm guessing that the stream-of-consciousness style lends itself especially well to audio that you can lose yourself in, which is great for running etc.
When I saw this question, I went to find a link so that I could recommend Patrick Healy's reading. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it now available for free on the internet.
It's quite rushed and somewhat flat at parts. Some of the abridged recordings I've listened to do more justice to the excerpts they've chosen. But it's a heroic effort none the less. For me, it made the full Wake accessible and alive in a way that made me really enjoy spending time with it.
Second that. "Portrait" was a bit of a chore for me the first time around, but a real joy on second reading. I also really liked Dubliners, for the most part. Never had the motivation (or time now) to try Ulysses or Finnegans Wake.
I've always liked Wells, and this letter is really something.
> Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few thousand I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?
This is a perfect phrasing of my feelings about all postmodern literature. I tried so hard to get into Pynchon but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was the butt of an elaborate practical joke.
As long as we're all engaging in some iconoclasm today, I'll quote a book review by John Dolan[1]:
"I side with PKD over Pynchon. In fact, I consider Dick to be the one genius, the one absolute genius in US literature since 1945. I find Pynchon to be kind of an Uncle Tom, as a representative of science fiction, making pointless and protracted Faulknerian noises in his prose to suck up to a New-Yorker-sensibility."
I find Pynchon much more entertaining to read than Joyce. If he's telling a joke, the reader is certainly in on it; it's pretty clear he takes himself only as seriously as he should.
Huh? The only Pynchon I read was "The Crying of Lot 49", but this was easy to read, hilarious, and extremely topical for anybody working tech in California.
Try reading "Inherent Vice." It barely reads like Pynchon. Or rather it's Pynchon writing the Big Lebowski like Raymond Chandler would, if Raymond Chandler were a hippie.
You might enjoy On Moral Fiction by John Gardner, who argues that good literature is about the characters, especially their decisions and transformations, rather than cleverness in language and plot. His model is Anna Karenina, and I think it's people like Pynchon he has in mind for his critique. And he was not just a stodgy critic, but a flowering author himself. His book Grendel is short and fun---the story of Beowulf from the monster's perspective. Sadly he died young in a motorcycle accident, so we didn't get many examples of his approach. Another modern writer that I think he would have approved of is Wallace Stegner. Crossing to Safety and Angle of Repose are both wonderful.
That feeling may come from looking for meaning or trying to make sense of it. That's the conclusion I reached, anyway, after reading V and Gravity's Rainbow, anyway. And one other -- Vineland, that was it.
I love Dubliners by Joyce, but the later stuff? I'd sooner read The Sound and the Fury again, but only if published with the different color inks Faulkner wanted.
I have to assume this means that Joyce is somehow worse than sticking forks covered in bees into your eyes. The Sound and the Fury is on the shortlist for the worst book I ever heard was a great piece of literature, and soldiered through despite its awfulness.
Great post. In fact, this is the perfect article to counter the fist-shaking cries of "Why is this article posted on Hacker News?"
The take-aways from this article are so broad that they are applicable to many disciplines, especially coding, technology, and entrepreneurship. Here we have two writers with very different ends. Joyce, the great poker of form, who must have mildly infuriated the utilitarian and reductive sensibilities of Wells.
The letter makes me reflect on the tensions of my own life between engaging in more experimental flights of fancy (where I'm making something I really love) and, conversely, asking myself if other people may actually find value in what I'm doing. Either way, I find articles like this much more insightful than another Iphone headphone jack op-ed or whispers from the Elon Musk rumour mill.
> who must have mildly infuriated the utilitarian and reductive sensibilities of Wells.
I get the feeling you came away siding with Joyce. I came away with hugely increased respect for Wells (who I didn't know a huge amount about going into this). Maybe I'm reading too much into your comment but 'utilitarian and reductive' seemed faintly damning whereas I was surprised how deeply he was considering the role of his work in relation to society and how nuanced his challenge to Joyce was. Especially for a 'mere' science fiction writer...
I can only speak for myself, but I had to the same positive pro-Wells feeling from the letter. I've read Joyce, but I've barely read Wells. This letter makes me want to.
I read the letter as an honest but negative reaction to the Wake, while genuinely praising the prodigious talent of the writer. I don't know their relative ages[1], but I read it in the tone of a businessman father astonished by the virtuosity of his musician son --- astonished that the son followed through on his dreams, but still wondering why someone would dedicate their life to making pretty sounds.
I think Well's both captures what Joyce is up to, and clearly expresses why it's not for him. I feel much the same toward Joyce. I've fought my way through the most of the Wake, and feel happy knowing that it exists without having much desire to read much more. Joyce's talent for language is obvious; his choice of where to dedicate that talent is not. In retrospect, it was probably a good choice, although one wonders how much impact a different path might have had too.
[1] Looked it up: Wells was born in 1866, thus was just over 60 at the time of the letter. Joyce was born in 1882, thus was about 45. I was picturing Joyce as being a little younger from the tone of the letter, but the difference is about right.
i am unsure exactly what wells means by any of his words, but he's dead so i am unable to ask him
if i were to follow well's example laid out in the letter i could just assert my own assumptions as fact and criticise those, but instead i will just try to explain how his words affect me
also, it is important to note that it is difficult to truly know anything about this letter because we are unaware of any prior or subsequent correspondence
> The outcome is that I don’t think I can do anything for the propaganda of your work.
did wells mean for the word propaganda to be a subtle dig? does he mean 'promotion'?
'i don't think i can do anything for'.. who asked him to? did joyce? is wells just asserting that his approval should be important to joyce?
if this letter was unsolicited i'd argue it's more about wells than joyce, and as it stands alone i find it abhorrent
> Your training has been Catholic, Irish, insurrectionary; mine, such as it was, was scientific, constructive and, I suppose, English.
on first glance this sentence had me suddenly wanting to read wells, until i read it again and realised he's 'just making pretty sounds' without any evidence or explicit reasoning which i would think any scientific and constructive mind would consider wholly necessary
this hearkens back to my first notion about a correspondence but why does wells tell joyce what joyce's 'training' is? and then set his own assumed 'training' up as a counterpoint.. and a very appealing one at that
wells continues on in this effort to assign opinion and motivation to joyce and then set himself as the better
> And while you were brought up under the delusion of political suppression I was brought up under the delusion of political responsibility. It seems a fine thing for you to defy and break up. To me not in the least.
this is another confusing message for me
for me 'delusion of political suppression' is a horrible thing to accuse someone of and self assessing a 'delusion of political responsibility' is something endeared to me
but it would seem to me someone who calls their own education one of a 'delusion of political responsibility' then i would assume that person thinks political responsibility is unnecessary but then he goes on to say that to 'defy and break up' is not for him..
so does he adhere to political responsibility even though he recognises it as a delusion? if so it would also seem rather unscientific
and of the notion of being 'constructive' it seems you in your comment also have some loose verbage in the same vein:
> although one wonders how much impact a different path might have had too.
impact? how do you measure that? i mean look at your first sentence wherein you say you've read joyce and hardly wells..
so prior to this letter who has impacted you more? you could argue, 'sure, i've read joyce but it went through me' but you still read joyce those words and ideas have a direct influence on you whether you agree or disagree with their content or construction where as an ignorance of wells means his work only indirectly impacts you
i think it is a silly effort to try to measure impact but since you deride joyce's assumed impact i will defend it
joyce was a major influence on the beat generation who were a group of poets in san francisco in the 1950s whose work went on to shape contemporary civilisation by altering legal definitions of words which catalysed a number of the social movements that followed in the coming years
this criticism and response of one of the beat poet's work plays perfectly with this letter:
> His central criticism is that the Beat embrace of spontaneity is bound up in an anti-intellectual worship of the "primitive" that can easily turn toward mindlessness and violence. Podhoretz asserted that there was a link between the Beats and criminal delinquents.
Ginsberg responded in a 1958 interview .. "The bit about anti-intellectualism is a piece of vanity, we had the same education, went to the same school, you know there are 'Intellectuals' and there are intellectuals. Podhoretz is just out of touch with twentieth-century literature, he's writing for the eighteenth-century mind. We have a personal literature now—Proust, Wolfe, Faulkner, Joyce." (o)
is wells 'out of touch'? who cares? but speaking negatively about someone else's work to prop up your own, for me, makes me question the quality of your work more than the one you are deriding
> although one wonders how much impact a different path might have had too.
impact? how do you measure that?
I ask the question in the sense of wondering what impact Brian May might have had as a scientist rather than as a musician (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#Astrophysics), or vice versa, whether Richard Feynman would have had greater impact as a drummer than a physicist (http://io9.gizmodo.com/5909408/and-now-richard-feynman-playi...). Wondering counterfactually what other work Joyce might have created had he dedicated himself to it does not take away from the work that he actually chose to create.
since you deride joyce's assumed impact i will defend it
I think you are misreading Wells. I'm sure you are misreading me. Personally, I am very far from deriding Joyce's impact. Joyce has had great impact on me. I originally learned Perl and CGI to do a hypertext Ulysses. I don't normally celebrate Bloomsday, but I'm usually aware of it. I've even attended Joyce conferences. While it may be my fault for not writing clearly, if you read me as deriding Joyce, it should give you pause to consider that you might be misreading Wells too.
i'm sorry, but it seems clear to me that wells is ridiculing joyce's 'last two works'
> Now with regard to this literary experiment of yours.. I don’t think it gets anywhere.
> .. Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read.
even ignoring how joyce suffered while writing these works, i can say anecdotally that wells is so completely wrong in this assertion because i found reading these works to be both extremely amusing and exciting to read
> .. Do I get much pleasure from this work? No.
> .. Do I feel I am getting something new and illuminating ..? No.
that is some clearly contemptuous ire.. and you said you agreed:
> I think Well's both captures what Joyce is up to, and clearly expresses why it's not for him. I feel much the same toward Joyce.
so i apologise for reading your post as agreeing with wells' contempt but it seemed to me a pretty sure reading that that was your intent
that said, now that you have described what you meant by 'wondering about ones impact' it seems like an innocuous game and i suppose my reaction to it was more about its proximity to wells' opinions that i still read as clearly saying joyce's choices were simply wrong
asking 'what would have been if he wrote in esperanto instead?' takes on different connotation when presented as nonsequitor, but when paired with 'he wasted his potential. what would have been if he wrote in esperanto instead?' it just reads rude
i am also confused why my opinion that wells is belligerently overreaching is controversial when the paris review even notes it in their lede describing the letter as "reacting, irascibly if not uncharitably"
i like wake and ulysses
> I've fought my way through the most of the Wake
this assumes a prerequisite that books, or novels, should be read cover to cover.. personally i am without this prerequisite i can pick up wake and read a single sentence and put it down and be wholly satiated
> Joyce's talent for language is obvious; his choice of where to dedicate that talent is not.
i love to have my expectations subverted, i find the obvious can often turn droll and disappointing
this is clear from the fact that dubliners bores me but i think wake is the only true novel, ulysses is the first iteration of that endeavour and is much more approachable but i think he achieved the closest thing to the platonic ideal of what i, for myself, consider a novel: a true account of affects and effects; with finnegan's wake
i think of wake as a literary fractal
what is often accused of being crowded, elabourate, riddled digressions i see as the truest account possible
like you said of me misreading you, i believe it, because regardless of the amount of words you use there will always be more that was left out that could have further elucidated those ideas
joyce seems to follow a single strand to a point of abstraction that the reader feels unable to comprehend the moment and in so doing achieves the truest expression of that moment
any finite description is incomplete
and someone could respond, 'but joyce's abstractions are well documented and you can read the text annotated to understand every foible' but that only defends that position that the work is incredibly calculated and anything but gibberish
to truly define stephen dedalus and his mind joyce would have to write within abstractions that joyce would be unable to have because joyce is wholly disparate from stephen
to attempt any such an effort would be indistinguishable from gibberish even for the author because in its essence the author would have to be unaware of what he is writing and why
so, as i see it, his only possible choice is to take it to the point that he is aware of what is being said but the reader is just too far from familiar
from this letter wells seems to revel in telling some other person why he does what he does, which from my reading is hillariously the exact opposite of what joyce wanted his readers to get from his work: life is enigmatic to life
i could be wrong about joyce, but that is why i love it
Your post is almost as unreadable as Joyce's prose (to be fair, HN's layout and scant formatting options don't help), but one note:
>> The outcome is that I don’t think I can do anything for the propaganda of your work.
> did wells mean for the word propaganda to be a subtle dig? does he mean 'promotion'?
In 1928 "propaganda" was still a fairly neutral term, literally "something that is to be propagated". It only acquired the current negative connotations during and after the World War II due to prominent use by several fascist governments, most notably Goebbels's Propagandaministerium [1].
"And while you were brought up under the delusion of political suppression I was brought up under the delusion of political responsibility. It seems a fine thing for you to defy and break up. To me not in the least."
Joyce was Irish, and while I am not sure of his political affiliations, I am fairly confident that he was never a supporter of the English rule of Ireland, particularly after the 1916 uprising. (This letter was written in 1928, seven years after the end of the Irish revolution and 5 after the end of the ensuing civil war.) To say that he was raised with "political suppression" is a reference to the frequently very heavy handed treatment of the Irish by the English. On the other hand, as far as I can tell he was never politically active, and may never have returned to Ireland after the revolution or even the 1916 uprising.
Wells was a socialist, a pacifist, politically active, and a firm believer in the perfectibility of humanity, though peaceful and scientific means. A reference to "political responsibility" by him likely indicates his preference for things like voting and writing (A cute Chesterton quote: "Mr Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message") over things like shooting.
I'd say the use of "delusion" in both cases is a bit of ironic self-derision. He appears to be ascribing to Joyce the belief that the existing structure (of novels, in this case) must be torn down and thrown away for progress to be made, while his own belief is that everything can be improved incrementally, even novels. But, by using "delusion" he implies that both are probably incorrect.
To my mind, Wells is describing in detail why he does not care for Finnegans Wake or Ulysses, which is perfectly fine as it's his opinion and all that. He's also offering a fair and reasonably valid criticism of Finnegans Wake and Ulysses:
"Now with regard to this literary experiment of yours. It’s a considerable thing because you are a very considerable man and you have in your crowded composition a mighty genius for expression which has escaped discipline. But I don’t think it gets anywhere. You have turned your back on common men—on their elementary needs and their restricted time and intelligence, and you have elaborated. What is the result? Vast riddles. Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read. Take me as a typical common reader. Do I get much pleasure from this work? No. Do I feel I am getting something new and illuminating as I do when I read Anrep’s dreadful translation of Pavlov’s badly written book on Conditioned Reflexes? No. So I ask: Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few thousand I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?"
i felt the response was succinct and well rounded so i left off the second paragraph, but since you quoted it in full here i'll share my thoughts on that as well
i hate this notion of 'the common man', it is self indulgent condescending jargon and it reeks of the 'what about the children' argument
if i could get wells to define this vague label more clearly, then follow his criteria to find a group of people, give those people a copy of ulyses or wake, and if even only one gains some value from it.. what then? does the definition of 'common man' for wells herein actually only imply 'someone who hates this book as much as i do'
honestly this paragraph is so filled with logical fallacies and lazy criticisms i'll just paste it here again in full with a few edits:
"Now with regard to this [thought] experiment of yours. It’s a considerable thing because you are a very considerable man and you have in your crowded composition a mighty genius for expression [and calculation] which has escaped discipline. But I don’t think it gets anywhere. You have turned your back on common men—on their elementary needs and their restricted time and intelligence, and you have elaborated. What is the result? Vast riddles. Your last two works[the special and general theories of relativity] have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read. Take me as a typical common reader. Do I get much pleasure from this work? No. Do I feel I am getting something new and illuminating as I do when I read Anrep’s dreadful translation of Pavlov’s badly written book on Conditioned Reflexes? No. So I ask: Who the hell is this [einstein] who demands so many waking hours of the few thousand I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?"
you're right, best to just ignore it.. o and you better write him a letter telling him you intend to do so
exactly. It also reminded me of Thomas Kuhn's idea of paradigm shifts - if nothing else, Joyce definitely represented a new paradigm, so representatives of the old would have scorned/ not understood him. Does not make his work better or worse, but explains why radically new approaches often meet with scepticism.
I agree with a lot of what he's saying, but at the same time, why does it matter? Does every book need to be easily enjoyable as light reading by anyone who is literate? Joyce was highly educated and exceedingly well-read, and he wrote (in his later works especially) for an audience similar to himself on those points. The only downside is it limits his potential audience, similar to how a writer of obscure fanfiction or someone who blogs about niche subjects limits their own potential audience. His particular niche was writing for literature nerds.
But Finnegans Wake isnt difficult like Pynchon or Gaddis, who have tons of characters and complex plot devices and rich narrative. It is syntactically erratic and full of "puns" and "wordplay" whose existence the reader is forever aware of but cannot understand without countless hours more poured into the supporting literature. It is not an awful experience but you do not get out what you put in, unlike other difficult authors.
A great example of the complaint writing process of beginning and ending with a compliment and sandwiching the criticism in the middle. Allowing him to get away with
"Your mental existence is obsessed by a monstrous system of contradictions."
Just to be clear, it seems from context that Wells is referring to the sections of Finnegan's Wake that had published, rather than to Portrait and Ulysses.
There have been times where I try to get into a book, and if I even get the hint the writer is filling up pages with overly complex flowery prose; I immediately put the book down.
I always assumed it was just because I wasen't a natural reader. I've actually stayed away from a lot of classical literature, because I just couldn't get into the books.
I have been completely wrong though. I remember reading Nabrakov's Lolita years after I suffered through those English/Lit. courses. I do wish my instructors felt it was safe reading back then, or they weren't afraid of getting fired for assigning this book.
That book really changed my view on lituraure. I remember reading the book, and every sentance, paragraph just flowed.
I remember being shocked at the subject matter, and wondering if that was clouding my judgement, and honestly I'm still not sure.
After that book, I bought all his books, and haven't completely finished one.
I think it's more due to my unnatural reading ability though.
I college, I saved up most of my required English/lit. classes for my last semester year in college--out of fear. I do know I felt traumatized by my English 101 instructor. He would rip apart my writing with that red pen. He would have me read my horrid papers in front of the class, and public speaking was my worst fear. He once, in a round about way, accused me of plagiarism--because he had to ask his wife what an amygdala was, and "How did You come up with that idea for a paper?" In the end, he did give me a B, but I was really affected by that class. I used to enjoy writing before his class. It's funny how one teacher can stifle a young student's enthusiasm.
I had a girlfriend in a different English class, directly across from my classroom, at the same time of day. The doors were always open. I could hear her instructor because he had a loud voice. I would write down what that teacher had to say--stuff like funneling paragraphs, and not being to wordy, etc. I learned more about writing from her teacher than mine.
And as usual, I rambled on to long, but if you don't quite get what's so great about seemingly dry old books, give Lotita a shot.
Sorry, the title missed the bigger draw for me: This was written by H.G. Wells! The title should make that clear. This was not just anyone asking "Who the hell is this Joyce...?"
HN tries to de-emphasize authors in titles. The year should be in there, though, to cue the reader that it's probably a historically interesting author. We'll add that.
I really wish you wouldn't, though I can see some of the merits of this. Fact is, reputation does matter.
I disagree strongly with publications that do this, most especially for current works. The Economist doesn't have bylines at all (and have an explainer for this, which utterly fails to persuade -- the less charitable explanation is that many of the stories are written by young recent grads with little actual depth and who wouldn't be considered other than the publication's umbrella branding), The Register omits bylines from its overview page, though they're featured on articles themselves. Arguably the justification is the inverse of The Economist's.
That analogy doesn't hold up because HN isn't a publication, it's a list of links.
It's nearly always trivial to figure out who the author of a post is. The question is whether that should be emphasized in the title, and HN's traditional default is no. Focusing on content rather than personalities seems to produce better discussion.
As I said, I understand your reasoning (your description is as I'd thought it would be). I disagree with it.
Arguing over whether or not HN is a publication is awfully semantic. At the very least, it's a publication of links and the commentary of them. So we disagree there as well, though that's not particularly material.
There's a deeper issue of reputation, credibility, consequences, and more, that matter. This ties strongly into my "Big Questions" re-asking (submitted an hour or so back), and a suggestion from Ted Lemon in 2015: that a very large part of the addressible problem we're facing is the noosphere -- a superset of media, all of human thought. There's something very broken (and some terrifying consequences) to how ideas are created, propagated, (or propagandised), distorted, mistated, etc.
I'm not sure how to fix this. I'm not sure that it's fixable.
When I first started studying science -- in primary school -- I found the mentions of scientists names and such to be distractions. Shouldn't the ideas matter more than the person who had them? I've completely reversed my thinking, because it seems to me impossible to consider an idea without understanding the context within it, and context matters. The person themselves matters.
I've been thinking a lot about reputation, identity, and community, particularly regards my recent experiences with Imzy, and constrasting that to other spaces. In particular, identity IS reputation in a whole lot of ways -- starting with the etymologies of "fame", "reputation", "fame", "honor". Fully anonymity is also full impunity, and at least my experiences elsewhere suggest that works poorly. I've contrasted that strongly to HN's practices and results. Even where I don't always agree, or find elements frustrating, one thing HN does is, generally, allow tensions to dissipate fairly quickly, through UI/UX (including some of the annoying or missing elements of it), moderation, examples set, and more.
I realise that offering authors names risks a cult of personality. At the same time, some good (and bad) reputations are well deserved. Electronic communications generally strip away many of the normal social queues. Stripping away the few that are left, most especially authorship, strikes me as heading the wrong way. I'm a fan of Jakob Nielsen's microcontent guidance.
I'm also increasingly convinced that not offering users tools to quantify and qualify the content they access online is a tremendous failing of present tools. I've a limited capacity to really process information and messages, various sources (Stephen Wolfram, Walt Mossberg, NY Times moderation desk) suggest ~150 - 300 emails, ~800 comment moderations, are about the upper limit of what someone can sustainably absorb or process per day, over the long term. And that is if this is their full-time job. If you're looking at assimilating quality and complex information, the count's likely far lower.
As such: cues to quality, including reputation and identity, matter.
Beautiful response. I was going to take a different direction, but yours makes better reading.
Dan writes: HN tries to de-emphasize authors in titles.
But HN should also remember that the goal is to improve the discussion, not to just to follow the preexisting rules. In this particular case, I think adding "H.G. Wells" would have helped rather than hurt the discussion. If you think the same, you probably should have added it. If you think the final discussion is better without (perhaps you are right, the quality was good, and had the name been added maybe this would be the first in an onslaught of rerepublished letters by science fiction authors who've been dead for 100 years) then you should keep it off. But as the one making the rules, it's kind of cheating for you to point at them as explanation for your actions.
I am extremely socially oriented. I think there is way the hell too much cult of personality on HN as is. I thought the addition of the date was an elegant response and I was impressed that my comment was quickly responded to by Dan Gackle, the lead moderator, because I was in no way critising titling practices on HN when I made the observation. I was critising The Paris Review.
Any Joyce or Wells lovers here may like Jupiter, an app my team built. We are clearly biased, but we think that Jupiter is the best way to read the classics.
It allows you to highlight your favorite parts, and share magic links like this one to a great line from Dubliners:
https://jupiter.ai/books/Q9bx/?hl=Oze
As expected, the reading experience is great in the iPhone app and necessarily not great in the browser.
It's revealing that Wells made this letter to Joyce and not the other way around. To the artist, the audience only becomes important when they're either a patron or a subject. And, even then, they often don't matter much. But, to Wells, the audience is the purpose - and his work, a product.
To consume art is to allow oneself to momentarily seep into the mind of another. And, if done with 'soul' unshielded and open, it's one of the most intimate actions possible for a sentient being like a Human who is eternally imprisoned within a vessel of imperfect sensors.
Joyce is an artist. And, to read him - well, the experience may not be enjoyable - it may actually be uncomfortable, painful or even bizarre or alien. But, it's what he is.
What makes this so great is that it's private correspondence, unburdened by any audience except the recipient. It's hard to imagine such frankness in a contemporary NY Times column, with the usual liberal/progressive/SJW sycophancy at work. You wouldn't get lines like
You began Catholic, that is to say you began with a system of values in stark opposition to reality.
The font in this article is nigh-on unreadable on Firefox on Windows. It renders perfectly legibly in Chrome and IE11, but on Firefox it is so faint and the forms so small that they get lost in the anti-aliasing. The kerning seems quite bad too.
Those two screenshots are actually using different fonts (you can tell by the shape of the bottom part of the 'g', for example: in one screenshot it's the same width as the top part, but in the other it's wider).
Chances are, this is a difference in what the different browsers do with the "garamond-premier-pro" font family name and which font they actually end up using when that's specified. Any chance you could confirm that?
An admirable sentiment. I don't think the human mind (including mine) is capable of following it 100%, but I wish more people at least aspired to it, and fewer people saw it as a sign of weakness (which it is not, quite the opposite).