I just let him have his beer

The idea that a female character with negative traits is evidence of misogyny is silly. Stoner isn't misogynistic and this isn't an appropriate way to read novels.

The writer argues that Stoner's attitude towards Walker, a student, is bullying when, in the novel, that student is presented as lazy and nihilistic. By invoking misogyny, the Post article is doing the same thing as Walker: offering up a facile objection instead of engaging. If literature is worth studying at all then it can't be dismissed by invoking "misogyny" or "questioning the usefulness of grammar".

I'm not sure how this would work in practice. Many sites allow infrequent visitors to view content free of registration and charge; or have specific articles which do not require registration. Sites which require registration might work in reader mode, or with javascript disabled, or with some components not loaded. For these reasons and more a submitter may not know whether registration is required.

In this particular instance, without your post I never would have known registration is required. Because, by whatever mechanism, I can read the entire article.

LRB is relatively benign, you get several free articles per month. And there aren't many LRB submissions to HN.

That's not the rule here. In fact the rule is that you should not complain about pay walls.

Is it really that difficult to hit the back button?

I wish we could get some domains to be flagged with a possible paywall and put an emoji like these beside the domain name 🧱