Hacker News Reader

Comment by bjt2n3904 | Hacker News Reader

> "Take her out back, we boys figured, then hand on the titties, put it in her cornbox, put it in her cornhole, grab a hold of that braid, rub that calico"

Ah yes, the pinnacle of English Literature. Very suitable for an eleven year old to be reading.

View on HN

This was the author's response to that.

"She had strung together phrases from all over a chapter, but I still recognized the passage immediately. Creating it was painful, one of many times in writing fiction that I’ve had to depict harm that I wish did not exist in the world. Told from the perspective of the senior class at an all-white high school, the section of the novel that Bell pulled from captures the crude fantasies and dehumanizing attitudes that swirl around my main character, the only Mexican American in her school in 1930s New London, Texas. I represent these views in the book so that I can reveal their toxic effect; I don’t endorse them."

"There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled."

- The Bible (Ezekiel 23:20)

Ah yes, the pinnacle of literature...

That absolutely is the pinnacle of literature and it's part of life so it is important to talk about. And it's a very relevant passage these days, as men are culturally expected to actually have "genitals like those of donkeys" to be attractive.

So then this book is also a Pinnacle Of Literature, right?

If we are being fair, I think it is quite clear (as far as humanities go) that overall the Bible's literary value is much higher than the book in question. If we do a PageRank-like ordering of all books based on quotes and cross-references, quite likely the Bible will come on top.

Only thing that's missing would be any kind of proof that all the quoting and cross-referencing had anything to do with literary value, per se.

Personally, I suspect other reasons far outweigh that.

That's a fair point. I guess you could try to correct for that by giving more weight to references by non-Christian authors.

However, I believe with almost any reasonable measure you choose, the KJV Bible has a very high literary value. Even Richard Dawkins would acknowledge that. [1] And for what it's worth, I am not a Christian, so I don't think I am biased by religious zeal or something.

[1]: https://archive.fo/DckMc#selection-2193.0-2201.435

> However, I believe with almost any reasonable measure you choose, the KJV Bible has a very high literary value.

I suspect people think so mainly because besides Shakespeare, that's the only thing most people know of that's written in this "cool" archaic language. Like Shakespeare, it's just on the limit of still being understandable, but full of thees and thous, which, the more people don't understand it, they love it all the more (as witnessed by the usage errors they commit when trying to use it, which judging from what I see online are more freqent than the cases of correct usage).

But when this particular edition was written it was in pretty much ordinary everyday language. And the stories themselves are the same old "vengeful old arsehole on a cloud smites sometimes his beloved semi-barbaric nomadic bronze-age shepherd people, sometimes their enemies" as in all other editions, so "great" as literature? Naah, I still just can't see it.

What "reasonable measure", exactly, makes it so?

> And for what it's worth, I am not a Christian

I am -- in name only (that's the first C in my username). I still believe in nominal determinalism in some cases, though certainly not in my own.

> so I don't think I am biased by religious zeal or something.

I am, all too often. Of the anti- kind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com