Hacker News with Generative AI: Literature

Slime (2021) (granta.com)
On a clear spring day, I make my way to the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. It’s located in a part of the university campus which has a whiff of Hogwarts about it, with a maze of courtyards, the entrance hiding somewhere within.
Art, Literature, Museums
15 points by Tomte 3 hours ago | 0 comments
Amdash – Human only punctuation mark (theamdash.com)
For generations before generative text, writers have used the em dash to hop between thoughts, emotions, and ideas. Dickens shaped his morality tales with it, Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness flowed through it, Kerouac let it drive his jazz-like prose. Today, Sally Rooney threads it through her quiet truths of the heart.
Writing, Literature, Punctuation, Language
36 points by wymerica 5 hours ago | 32 comments
Marked decline in semicolons in English books (theguardian.com)
A study suggests UK authors are taking Vonnegut’s advice to heart; the semicolon seems to be in terminal decline, with its usage in English books plummeting by almost half in two decades – from one appearing in every 205 words in 2000 to one use in every 390 words today.
Language, Linguistics, Literature, Writing, Trends
5 points by jnord 11 hours ago | 1 comments
A Major Newspaper Publishes a Summer Reading List–But the Books Don't Exist (honest-broker.com)
Critics aren’t perfect.
Literature, Media, Criticism
7 points by Khaine 1 day ago | 2 comments
Robert Musil Forgotten Plays Inspired His Greatest Work of Fiction (lithub.com)
The years 1921 to 1924 constituted the height of Robert Musil’s participation in the world of theater as both critic and dramatist.
Literature, Theater, Robert Musil
16 points by DyslexicAtheist 1 day ago | 6 comments
The Machine Stops (1909) (standardebooks.org)
Science Fiction, Short Stories, Literature
131 points by xeonmc 2 days ago | 34 comments
Marked decline in semicolons in English books, study suggests (theguardian.com)
Usage of punctuation down almost half in two decades as further research finds 67% of British students rarely use it
Language, Linguistics, Literature, Punctuation, Research
8 points by gnabgib 2 days ago | 0 comments
Goethe's Faustian Life (commonwealmagazine.org)
In the English-speaking world today, Goethe is still, in A. N. Wilson’s pithy phrase, “the Great Unread.”
Literature, Biography, History
38 points by lermontov 3 days ago | 29 comments
The Last Letter (aeon.co)
On a wintry day in Bordeaux, France, I took refuge from the rain inside a cosy bookshop stacked to the ceiling with books.
Literature, France, Books
84 points by HR01 3 days ago | 33 comments
The Connoisseur of Desire (nybooks.com)
Literature, Art, Culture
34 points by samclemens 7 days ago | 1 comments
The Awful German Language (1880) (faculty.georgetown.edu)
A little learning makes the whole world kin. --Proverbs xxxii, 7.
Language, History, Literature, Education
197 points by nalinidash 8 days ago | 473 comments
Charles Butler's the Feminine Monarchie, or the History of Bees (1634 Edition) (publicdomainreview.org)
Since at least the time of Ancient Greece and Rome, beehives have served as foils for the polis — as their workers, drones, and queens can seem to reflect classical ideals of governance, such as Plato’s tripartite division of city-states into the worker, soldier, and guardian class.
History, Literature, Beekeeping, Sociology
8 points by diodorus 8 days ago | 0 comments
Gateway Books: The lessons of a defunct canon (thepointmag.com)
It has to start somewhere, this business of being an intellectual. Chances are, it doesn’t start well. Your early efforts are bound be misdirected, a source of subsequent embarrassment.
Literature, Education, Culture
25 points by samclemens 8 days ago | 19 comments
How “The Great Gatsby” took over high school (newyorker.com)
In the spring of 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald was worried about “The Great Gatsby.” It had been fifteen years since the novel was published, and the author had little to show for it. “My God I am a forgotten man,” Fitzgerald wrote to his wife, Zelda.
Literature, Culture, High School, 1940s
78 points by pseudolus 10 days ago | 184 comments
One hundred and one rules of effective living (mitchhorowitz.substack.com)
In more than thirty years as a writer, editor, and publisher, I have, to my best reckoning, introduced, abridged, issued or reissued, and read nearly every major work of inspirational literature produced or translated into English.
Writing, Self-Improvement, Literature, Philosophy
120 points by mathgenius 10 days ago | 109 comments
When the Ground Thaws (2018) [pdf] (squarespace.com)
Art, Literature, PDF, 2018
10 points by NaOH 11 days ago | 4 comments
How to practice 'deep reading' (2024) (npr.org)
When was the last time you got lost in a book? These days, the act of 'deep reading,' or reading with intention, can be difficult to practice.
Reading, Literature, Cognitive Skills, Learning
6 points by Tomte 11 days ago | 0 comments
If Everyone Has Trauma, Everyone Has Trauma (freddiedeboer.substack.com)
This weekend I read Jamie Hood’s new book Trauma Plot: A Life. The book combines memoir and literary criticism, using real horrific experiences to examine how we should think about the deployment of such experiences in our narrative art and criticism.
Trauma, Literature, Memoir, Criticism
16 points by paulpauper 11 days ago | 2 comments
Henry James's family tried to keep him in the closet (2016) (theguardian.com)
After Henry James’s death 100 years ago, his relatives were at pains to remove any hints of his sexuality from his letters and biography
LGBTQ+, Literature, Biography, History, Family
16 points by benbreen 13 days ago | 24 comments
Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and the Computer (2009) (realitystudio.org)
On Christmas Day, 1990, Charles Bukowski received a Macintosh IIsi computer and a laser printer from his wife, Linda.
Literature, Authors, Technology, History
91 points by zdw 14 days ago | 22 comments
Ergodic Literature (wikipedia.org)
Ergodic literature is a term coined by Espen J. Aarseth in his 1997 book Cybertext—Perspectives on Ergodic Literature to describe literature in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text.
Literature, Interactive Media, Literary Theory
5 points by amarcheschi 14 days ago | 1 comments
The Ecstatic Swoon (aeon.co)
On 22 January 1817, Henri Beyle’s heart was beating fast. Not because he had braved the robber-infested road from Bologna, but because he was now approaching the city of Florence.
History, Literature, Travel
8 points by prismatic 14 days ago | 2 comments
No! Repent! From! Harlan! (1998) (harlanellison.com)
A fair review of Harlan Ellison's credentials would take more wordage than allowed for this entire interview.
Science Fiction, Authors, Literature
26 points by Michelangelo11 18 days ago | 6 comments
Great Books of the Western World (archive.org)
Volumes 1-54 of Encyclopaedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World
Literature, History, Classics
4 points by rnjailamba 18 days ago | 0 comments
V.S. Naipaul: The Grief and the Glory (granta.com)
‘I’ll read it with great interest,’ V.S. Naipaul said, as he took the bound proof of my first novel in his hands and peered up at me with a mixture of alarm and fatigue.
Literature, Biography, Grief
66 points by paulpauper 19 days ago | 10 comments
A memory of the nineteen nineties (1997) (archive.org)
ONE FORTY-NINE P.M. The gilded clock that looks down on the Round Reading Room at the British Museum has no second hand. But I am watching very closely. I can actually see the minute hand creeping toward the Roman numeral X.
History, Literature, Time
50 points by fanf2 20 days ago | 8 comments
The Once and Future Genius (literaryreview.co.uk)
It’s not often that a biography really gets going after the author has reached the subject’s death. Gertrude Stein herself predicted that she would only be understood in the future: ‘For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.’ She wasn’t entirely right, but Francesca Wade’s new ‘afterlife’ of Stein takes the sentiment seriously.
Biography, Literature, History, Gertrude Stein
9 points by benbreen 21 days ago | 0 comments
The Impossible Contradictions of Mark Twain (newyorker.com)
Populist and patrician, hustler and moralist, salesman and satirist, he embodied the tensions within his America, and ours.
Literature, History, America, Culture, Satire
51 points by mitchbob 21 days ago | 26 comments
Ghosts and Dolls (thelampmagazine.com)
Sometimes, for some people, a piece of writing’s attribution alone suffices to taint or burnish it.
Literature, Art, Writing, Attribution
15 points by lermontov 22 days ago | 7 comments
Chariot and Saucer (jewishreviewofbooks.com)
Sometime in the early Babylonian exile, a priest named Ezekiel had a vision on the banks of the Chebar Canal. Four winged creatures, each with four faces, emerged, borne on a fiery wind, drawing a bejeweled chariot (merkavah). In the air above them, God sat on a sapphire throne and said, “O Mortal, stand up on your feet that I may speak to you” (Ezek. 2:1).
Religion, History, Bible, Judaism, Literature
9 points by samclemens 23 days ago | 4 comments