Hacker News with Generative AI: Literature

When Jorge Luis Borges met one of the founders of AI (resobscura.substack.com)
One reason I became a historian is the joy of encountering moments in the past that are foreign, yet also oddly familiar. These moments seem to ripple outward, lapping up against the present in unexpected ways.
Artificial Intelligence, History, Literature
96 points by benbreen 8 hours ago | 28 comments
The Colors of Her Coat (astralcodexten.com)
Fiction, Literature, Personal Essays
48 points by feross 2 days ago | 46 comments
In the Matter of the Commas (theamericanscholar.org)
For the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision, logic, individuality, and music
Grammar, Punctuation, Writing, Style, Literature
7 points by apollinaire 2 days ago | 0 comments
The Prevention of Literature (1947) (theatlantic.com)
To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.
Literature, Politics, Censorship, Writing
9 points by petethomas 2 days ago | 2 comments
Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology (maksimizmaylov.com)
Umberto Eco, the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum (my personal favorite), wasn’t just a brilliant scholar—he was also a bit of a geek. He once wrote an essay comparing Macs to Catholicism and PCs to Protestantism. He thought about technology a lot.
Technology, Essays, Umberto Eco, Literature
59 points by Kvakes 3 days ago | 57 comments
China Miéville says we shouldn't blame science fiction for its bad readers (techcrunch.com)
It’s been 25 years since China Miéville stepped into the literary spotlight with his novel “Perdido Street Station.”
Science Fiction, Books, Literature, Authors
16 points by pseudolus 3 days ago | 2 comments
The Child and the Shadow (1975) [pdf] (johnirons.com)
Psychology, Literature, Books
78 points by lolinder 3 days ago | 20 comments
Jack London, Jack Johnson, and the Fight of the Century (publicdomainreview.org)
History, Literature, Boxing
9 points by samclemens 4 days ago | 1 comments
Lost manuscript of Merlin and King Arthur hidden inside another book (bbc.com)
An intriguing sequel to the tale of Merlin has sat unseen within the bindings of an Elizabethan deeds register for nearly 400 years. Researchers have finally been able to reveal it with cutting-edge techniques.
History, Literature, Archaeology, Manuscripts
11 points by rolph 8 days ago | 0 comments
Borne Back Ceaselessly into the Past: Fitzgerald, Gatsby and WWI (theworldwar.org)
“The Great Gatsby,” written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925, offers a vivid portrayal of post-World War I America.
Literature, History
46 points by gmays 8 days ago | 16 comments
Ungovernable, Capricious Life (nybooks.com)
The sense of vulnerability is crushing, but it is also one of the characteristics Kureishi reveals about himself that makes him so likable here, and the writing so intimate.
Vulnerability, Writing, Biography, Literature, Personal Essays
6 points by mitchbob 9 days ago | 7 comments
The Quantum Chaos of Literature (nybooks.com)
The Faustian bargain is a spiritual form of a conservation law: nothing good happens without something bad happening too. In the modern version, as depicted in books and movies, the message is that geniuses see far beyond their contemporaries, but often at the expense of lasting relationships and happy families. In our preoccupation with the image of the mad scientist, one can’t help but sense a bit of anti-intellectual schadenfreude lurking in the background—solace for all of us “normals.”
Literature, Science, Philosophy, Psychology
5 points by mitchbob 9 days ago | 1 comments
We're Still Not Done with Jesus (newyorker.com)
Scholars debate whether the Gospel stories preserve ancient memories or are just Greek literature in disguise. But there’s a reason they won’t stay dead and buried.
Religion, History, Literature, Christianity
64 points by diodorus 9 days ago | 162 comments
The Vanishing Male Writer (marginalrevolution.com)
It’s easy enough to trace the decline of young white men in American letters—just browse The New York Times’s “Notable Fiction” list.
Literature, Gender, Social Issues, Publishing, Demographics
7 points by delichon 10 days ago | 0 comments
Rest Easy (commentary.org)
The Russian novelist Ivan Goncharov once said of writers, “And to write and write, like a wheel or a machine, tomorrow, the day after, on holidays; summer will come—and he must still be writing. When is he to stop and rest? Unfortunate man?”
Writing, Literature, Russia
51 points by lermontov 11 days ago | 21 comments
The Vanishing White Male Writer (compactmag.com)
It’s easy enough to trace the decline of young white men in American letters—just browse The New York Times’s “Notable Fiction” list. In 2012 the Times included seven white American men under the age of 43 (the cut-off for a millennial today); in 2013 there were six, in 2014 there were six.
Literature, Demographics, Culture, Publishing
13 points by mudil 12 days ago | 5 comments
A Tiny Press Took a Big Risk on Experimental Books. It Paid Off (nytimes.com)
The British publisher Tilted Axis specialized in innovative translated literature. It won them major awards. Now they’re coming to the U.S.
Publishing, Literature, Translation, Business
13 points by rguiscard 15 days ago | 2 comments
Researcher uses AI to make texts that are thousands of years old readable (2023) (phys.org)
How should we live when we know we must die? This question is posed by the first work of world literature, the Gilgamesh epic.
Artificial Intelligence, History, Literature, Ancient Texts
40 points by mooreds 15 days ago | 9 comments
'We remember as true things that never even happened': Julian Barnes (theguardian.com)
The Booker-prize winning novelist reflects on the times in his life when recollection and imagination have intertwined, and wonders whether we can ever rely on our brains to provide us with the truth
Memory, Literature, Imagination, Truth
6 points by bookofjoe 17 days ago | 0 comments
Narcissus and Goldmund (wikipedia.org)
Narcissus and Goldmund (German: Narziß und Goldmund, pronounced [naʁˈtsɪs ʔʊnt ˈɡɔltmʊnt]), also published in English as Death and the Lover, is a novel written by the German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse which was first published in 1930.
Novels, Literature, German Literature, Hermann Hesse
7 points by simonebrunozzi 18 days ago | 1 comments
Dark Books (2016) (aeon.co)
Reading novels is good for you. This is the current wisdom, at least. A 2013 study by the New School for Social Research in New York City attempted to prove that reading passages by Don DeLillo and Lydia Davis had an immediate impact on participants’ ability to identify the emotions of others. Another, at Emory University in Georgia, found that reading novels had the potential to cause heightened ‘connectivity’ in the brain.
Literature, Neuroscience, Research
3 points by diodorus 19 days ago | 0 comments
Ogres Are Cool (lrb.co.uk)
The hyper-courtly​ Sir Thomas Wyatt wrote a verse satire in the mid-1530s that begins: ‘My mother’s maids, when they did sew and spin,/They sang sometime a song of the field mouse.’
Poetry, Literature, Satire
94 points by Vigier 19 days ago | 37 comments
Gödel, Escher, Bach, and AI (2023) (theatlantic.com)
A dazzlingly fast chatbot cannot replace the authentic and reflective voice of a thinking, living human being.
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, Literature, Human Consciousness
35 points by pcfwik 19 days ago | 10 comments
Somnium Scipionis (wikipedia.org)
The Dream of Scipio (Latin: Somnium Scipionis), written by Cicero, is the sixth book of De re publica, and describes a (postulated fictional or real) dream vision of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, set two years before he oversaw the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC.
History, Ancient Rome, Literature, Philosophy
4 points by benbreen 21 days ago | 0 comments
Toni Morrison's Lost Play (vulture.com)
The soirée was at the Steuben Club in Albany, a half-hour before the premiere. The gray-haired star of the evening had not been expected to make an appearance. The journalists, politicos, benefactors, and academics in attendance believed that the playwright (who did not consider herself a playwright) would forgo the festivities on account of presumed opening-night jitters. But there she was, wearing a bow-tie scarf and spiked heels, accompanied by her two sons.
Literature, Playwriting, Toni Morrison
20 points by lermontov 21 days ago | 1 comments
Dante's Divine Autofiction (newstatesman.com)
How the Italian poet’s search for self-knowledge changed the course of literature.
Literature, Poetry, Biography, Italy, Self-Knowledge
10 points by samclemens 21 days ago | 1 comments
The 75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time (esquire.com)
Since time immemorial, mankind has been looking up at the stars and dreaming, but it was only centuries ago that we started turning those dreams into fiction.
Science Fiction, Books, Literature, Lists, Culture
10 points by dhosek 21 days ago | 3 comments
Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Baritsu (historytoday.com)
Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth was an excellent amateur singlestick player, swordsman and boxer. However, his special skill was in the Japanese system of wrestling called ‘baritsu’, which he used to hurl his arch-enemy, Professor Moriarty, down into the swirling waters of the Reichenbach Falls. But what is this baritsu to which Conan Doyle refers?
Sherlock Holmes, Literature, History, Martial Arts
3 points by samclemens 22 days ago | 0 comments
Short Conversations with Poets: Dong Li (mcsweeneys.net)
There is so much beyond words. There are actually no adequate words for the full complexity of human feeling, for the arcane details of a distant memory, or the colors of the sky. Blue doesn’t really cut it, but most often it’s the best we have. Poems, then, are the last stop before silence. After that, the train goes beyond words, and often beyond any form of representation.
Poetry, Literature, Writing, Interviews
43 points by mooreds 22 days ago | 4 comments
Sigint in Fiction (blogspot.com)
I had an articled published last month in the John Buchan Journal (unsurprisingly, the journal of the John Buchan Society). It is about the way that John Buchan drew on his First World War experience as a customer of Sigint to use cryptanalysis in one of his books and in a short story to advance the narrative, and to develop characters.
Fiction, Literature, Cryptography, History
51 points by _tk_ 25 days ago | 22 comments