Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football | Hacker News Reader

Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

residentcontrarian.com

167 pointshn-0001131 comments

When I read the title of this post, Jon Bois was the first thing that came to mind. 17776 is one of my all time favorite websites, and my goto example of amazing hypertext fiction.

https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football

17776 was also my first thought once the author revealed he was talking about Bois. 17776 is incredible... and also about football of course (I mean, sort of)

Ahh! I thought the idea of 'to street' sounded familiar. 17776 is excellent.

17776 was something that I heard recommended by a bunch of game developers before anybody else. It's one of the most inventive pieces of science fiction I've ever read (watched? experienced?)

It's super cool -- so far, I'm not quite through it yet. It does have some similarity w/the story from "ST:TMP" though.

One of my best friends sent it to me and asked if I had read it. "No", "Do it, it's right up your alley", "What is it about?", "I'm not going to tell you, and don't google anything about it. Just dive in." It is soooo good.

This is incredible. I almost closed the tab when the text grew out of control, I thought it was a bug.

Are you sure it's supposed to do that? I remember reading this story there back when it was printed, and I don't remember the text doing that. I went to read it again a year or so ago, but couldn't, because the text started growing out of control and froze Firefox (as it just did for me now).

How do you actually read it?

Edit: hmm, if I very quickly scroll to the bottom of the page, I can click the image to go to the next page before Firefox gets too unhappy.

It's definitely supposed to do that, but only on mobile. Maybe it just hasn't been tested on Firefox (or recent versions of Firefox).

Firefox 99 on Windows slows down but eventually gets to the next page. Except for a quick interstitial image of a current time, the next page is here if you want to pick up the story: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/chapter-1

It actually froze my thinkpad t490 on Firefox / debian. Had to do a button hard reset

the sequel is also excellent

My first thought was that the "novel about footbal" TFA was talking about simply _had_ to be 17776. And that whatever else had no chance of even being close to how mind blowing that story is. And lo, turned out to be a regular novel but by the same author. I'll go ahead and read it now, the man's brilliant.

Thanks for posting, this is amazing!

Fantastic. Thank you.

> I once told a friend that there are a lot of books I enjoyed as one enjoys a piece of candy

After 8 paragraphs of this sort of thing we get to the book

The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles follows the adventures of a fictionalized version of Tim Tebow who, brokenhearted over his inability to make it as an NFL quarterback, arrives in Toronto to join the Argonauts

What school of writing is teaching writers to bury the lede in a page or two of personal anecdotes?

The one that teaches you that your article doesn't get impressions if readers don't scroll through it. That is, you don't get paid for writing well.

Thanks, Capitalism!

Your comment sparked some interesting thoughts and when that happens I often think of the small farm I grew up on with my grandparents, because you learn a lot of life's most basic lessons working on a farm. The rhythms of nature enforce a particular and unforgiving honesty on a young impressionable mind. I learned my first thoughts aren't always correct. Like grandpa used to say "truth is in the rain."

Grandma would cook Apple pies and the scent would reach me in the field when I was hungry from hard work. I'd come running and she would exclaim "I know how much you love my pies by how you come running!" So there's truth in pies as well as rain.

As I thought about my reply to your comment, I thought back to the time someone sold me oregano in college claiming it was marijuana. I was mad, but that person taught me a valuable lesson about honesty and I vowed I would always try to be an honest person.

After much reflection and with a little help from memories of my ex-wife pointing out all they ways I wasn't honest, all minor complaints mind you, I realized that my response to your criticism of capitalism upset me so that I was probably going to make an emotional response.

I learned not to make emotional responses at a retreat in Central America where we took some kind of psychedelic and did cognitive behavioral therapy from a man I'll call Gunter (not his real name) who was an Austrian fellow who came to this country to organize a coup and stayed after it's success as one of the spiritual leaders of the new communist state. After repeated attempts by him to get me in bed with him, I concluded the communism wasn't good for people and had turned this nice man into a hedonist.

So getting back to my comment, capitalism is the least worse system so we'd probably better stick with it and try and curb the worst excesses of narcissism and self-aggrandizement that it engenders with it's stress on the individual self and ego. This author is correct to attempt to make money under a capitalist system, but is using unintelligent means to accomplish it. I understand not everyone is a great writer and has to resort to tricks, but that's why it pays to hire a editor, whose services the capitalist system incentivizes!

Is this a GPT-3 comment?

No but you just gave me an idea. I could hide behind GPT-3 in the future and claim that any of my writing that upsets people was actually my AI and I should probably tweak it some more. No offense was intended.

It's a joke about burying the lede

If that's not clear then I need to work on getting better about making jokes

I thought it was a really amusing parody.

The only way this author gets paid is if you subscribe to his substack. Impressions mean nothing. I think it was very creative and well written.

This type of thing is increasing on YouTube too and rather than fast forward until I get to the meat of the video, I just stop and move on. I get that they're trying to fluff up a small bit of content into something larger for increased revenue but I've gotten to my breaking point in my willingness to tolerate such games. Hopefully others get to that point too and this type of behavior starts having negative returns.

I'll never get used to lectures where first the most minor person says how fantastic people are that follow, then the mid level person adds their two cents about how cool the following people are, followed by the most senior person singing the praises of the lecturer followed by the lecturer who is required to say how he or she doesn't deserve any of that praise but would be happy still if you bought their book.

The longest this took before the lecture started was 29 minutes, although most of the time it's about 5.

You know, Netflix figured out that everyone skips the intros to live comedy shows. People who put on lectures should think about this.

It is part of the ancient tradition of persuasion that the Greeks used and appropriated by many other cultures because it seemed to work well:

Ethos, pathos, logos.

What you were enduring was the ethos part, where other people tout the credentials of the speaker so that you will be more likely to accept the The following propaganda.

That explains my instinct to skip to the speaker so I can listen without prejudice. I only look people up after they say something interesting so I can see what kind of axe they have to grind before fully accepting what they say. Thanks for the explanation.

Hopefully a popular school that turns out lots of writers! I read a lot of book reviews and this was much more enjoyable than 99% of them.

I thought the same thing.

I think it started with the recipe writers and caught on from there.

I've noticed a similar thing with popular reporting of "medical mysteries". Authors tend to wait until the end of the article for the big reveal of the diagnosis. As opposed to the actual medical case reports they're usually basing the story on which will be titled "An unusual case of X syndrome" or something similar. So you know right off the bat if it's even a case you're interested in reading about.

I agree with the headline, but the article does not seem to be describing Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett... :)

I really liked the Pratchett books, but that one was not really his best.

So what's your pick and why is it "Going Postal"?

It's spelled g-u-a-r-d-s g-u-a-r-d-s

I've always felt he was inconsistently great.

E.g. in Reaper Men, I really liked the story of Death & Miss Flitworth. But the fresh starters in the mall were garbage.

Going Postal is surely among his best, but IMHO the small part with the wizards should have been left out.

The fifth elephant was a story that grew on me. I started out finding it Meh, but after a reread I found it rather good.

The witches were also something that got better as it evolved. Equal rites wasn't that good, but Maskerade was a lot better!!!!! I'd say 'The sea and the little fish' would be my prefered witch story, but it isn't even a book.

For the best, I'd go with Night Watch.

"Best Novel of Our Generation"

Best out of how many novels that you've read over what period of time? And based on what criteria?

Isn't the proper headline here something more like, "I enjoyed this book"?

The title may, just may, not be intended to be taken literally.

Right? Not everything is a dry research paper.

I will never understand the penchant for so many HN users to be such incredible, over-the-top pedantic sticks-in-the-mud when it comes to titles.

I took offense to your comment. I found the title a complete clickbait. I couldn’t find any humor in it that would make me think otherwise. The content of the text is completely unrelated to any part of the title. And I don’t think I am pedantic.

Hyperbole begets more hyperbole to combat the earlier hyperbole. Where does it end?

It never ends, which is why the world is filled with hyperbole beyond all possibility of recovering and no one can communicate at all.

How should I take it? I failed to think about any interpretation other than being clickbait (by looking contrarian and exaggerated, withou the text corroborating this take).

What is your interpretation of the title?

When someone tells me I’m the best cook ever, I interpret that as hyperbole for fun.

Similarly with this headline.

Meh

not be intended to be taken literally

In this case, that still makes it indistinguishable from clickbait.

He posted it on his own blog. That it feels like click bait is the responsibility of the person who submitted it to hacker news.

I took the title to be hyperbole, exuberance at finding something the author liked so much, not truly the best novel of our generation.

I have no idea what the hell I'm reading, but it's full of stuff like this:

> And if you want to engage in some open-field swordplay and smack some defenders to the ground, you might just load the whole damn front -- b1 through b11. Catching one of those is like being hit with a big sack of nickels.

Rather, "Nobody Will Admit that A Novel about Football is the Best Novel of Our Generation". This does not appear to be about people denying that the book is about football.

Also, the novel is actually a novella.

Also, it seems not to be a book, but a web page:

https://www.sbnation.com/2014/8/18/5998715/the-tim-tebow-cfl...

[EDIT] Also, from the story:

> Raghib Ismail. Call me Raghib.

sensible-chuckle.gif

[ANOTHER EDIT]

Further into the story now—in case it helps anyone decide whether or not to read it, this isn't slightly-twisted reality or magical realism or light urban fantasy or any of that, really, but full-on dream-logic.

Jon Bois is fantastic. All of his videos are great and he's a great writer. I highly recommend his "Pretty Good" series.

Oh jeeze, all I needed to read was "Jon Bois" and I knew the story would actually be excellent, despite my skepticism.

Actually, I should really have clued in that he was the author much, MUCH sooner. That's on me.

My first encounter with Jon Bois was the final entry of "Breaking Madden" and I have never forgotten it.

https://youtu.be/CeKC7cH1-kI

https://www.sbnation.com/2014/1/30/5351052/breaking-madden-s...

> Rather, "Nobody Will Admit that A Novel about Football is the Best Novel of Our Generation".

It’s interesting to me that I staunchly agree with your correction, and your interpretation of the original title. I unthinkingly parsed the original title to mean exactly this (to mean the corrected version) and didn’t ever consider its “incorrect” literal meaning.

It makes me wonder if the original title uses a widespread sub-dialect of English grammar which I’ve subconsciously picked up.

Or if it’s just always been common to rearrange words inconsistently/arbitrarily and we learn to rearrange them as correctly as we can manage.

Interesting, I interpreted it in the "revised" wording the grandparent used. I didn't think it should be interpreted literally.

It seems absurd that someone would say "this is the best novel of our generation", and then, despite the fact that it is obviously about football, deny that it's about football. So it seemed unlikely that the title should be interpreted literally like that.

Ahhh Rocket Ismail. Another player who was really, really good in college and ended up in the CFL, not really "sticking" in the NFL.

Edit: watching highlight videos from like 25 years ago.. I had forgotten that he also knelt to pray when he scored, similar to Tebow.

The best book about sport is Fever Pitch, not a novel but stories of Nick Hornby's own football fandom as he grew up. I don't even like sport and I loved it. He then peaked when he wrote Hi Fidelity, a fantastic novel about relationships and music.

I skimmed through the article to get an idea about the premise of the book. I don’t see how this book would manage to include large scale space battles. I have therefore concluded that this cannot be the best novel of our generation.

Any recommendations on good books that do include large scale space battles?

Ender's Game.

Paradise Lost?

The Expanse series was a lot of fun to read, and now I'm catching up on the show.

Odyssey One series by Evan Currie (especially the later books).

The ‘Honorverse’ books by David Weber has some good battles as well.

You might enjoy 17776 [0], a mixed media fiction piece by the same author, which does not include large scale space battles but does generally take place in space (and is also discussed elsewhere in this thread). :-)

[0]: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/chapter-1

Interesting book review. Bizarre title choice. Not only clickbaity, but doesn’t capture any point present in any part of the review. It doesn’t go into who don’t admit, or why, why it’s the best novel and according to whom (the author only go as far as saying “very good”), what is the contention point about being about football.

I hate-skimmed the article because I find self-professed heretics so tiresome. This is next-level faux-heresy because there's not even the usual "stuff I disagree with is orthodoxy" nonsense — it just makes an empty assertion of victimhood and doesn't bother to provide even specious reasoning to support it.

Jon Bois is remarkable. I never would have imagined that my wife could watch 20m youtube videos on sports statistics trivia but she would get excited when a new Jon Bois video was uploaded! I never knew he wrote fiction too.

I agree completely. Jon, if you're reading this, thank you.

He, and all of Secret Base, have deepened my love of sports in just strange and amazing ways. I also never thought that I would honestly look forward to hour long episodes of 80's power-point-like graphics with bad jazz on the statistical careers of old ballplayers.

The Monte-Carlo simulations he does are just somehow perfect for me. And I have no idea why.

The episode on Barry Bonds playing his whole career with a holographic bat is a tour-de-force on how to approach statistics and simulations in a way middle-schoolers can get on broad with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwMfT2cZGHg

It's like public access television locked a savant into an library coding camp basement with outdated software and gave him carte blanche to broadcast his cavernous mind to retirement homes at 2pm on a Sunday.

It's so strange, deep, and wonderful.

"Astronauts don't bring their wallets"

I think it's important to point out, and I think Jon would agree, that he isn't trained in stats and he uses it as a tool for entertainment and emphasis, rather than rigorous analysis.

I love everything he has ever done. The Breaking Madden series was genuinely inspiring to me and has caused me to pick up football video games and learn more about the game. I nearly stayed up all night watching all 7 hours of their masterpiece on the Atlanta Falcons

I do find the thesis in the ending quite weak:

> For a longer time before the gritty period, we all dedicated ourselves to the idea that anything we’d acknowledge as very good had to be both serious and artsy. People really liked Good Will Hunting (see: very serious); it was also a good movie, so it won an Oscar. Zillions of people love movies like The Princess Bride and Happy Gilmore; it’s incredibly likely both dwarf Good Will Hunting in terms of total views, but you can’t even imagine a world where either could have possibly won an Oscar.

[...]

> This is a short article by my standards, but it does have me thinking: What kind of world could we actually live in, if we were willing to treat works of art made with the goal of making us happy as if they were important? What if we were willing to make them? We’ve seen what happens in a world where all the Oscars go to movies that make you cry, or that we pretend make us think even though they generally don't

There are plenty of widely acclaimed movies that can not be considered "very serious", picking some recent Oscar winners as examples with categorizations from wikipedia:

* Parasite ("black comedy thriller")

* Green Book ("comedy-drama")

* The Shape of Water ("romantic fantasy")

* Birdman ("black comedy drama")

* CODA ("comedy-drama")

* La La Land ("comedy-drama")

* Life Of Pie ("adventure-drama")

Are all those completely feel-good movies intended to make you happy? Maybe not, but still its not like happy/humorous/feel-good is completely disregarded category even among grumpy art critics.

You're right. There are certainly some "make you think" movies that win for their portentousness and are promptly forgotten ("Crash" and "The English Patient" -- lookin' at you).

I ran the Google Cinema Club for 10 years. In all that time, no one ever asked for those movies, and we never even seriously considered them.

On the other hand, "The Princess Bride" was constantly being requested, as was "Office Space." There was some reason we couldn't show them; can't remember now what it was.

but you can’t even imagine a world where either could have possibly won an Oscar.

Is this some kind of joke or is he a buffoon? Princess Bride was nominated for an Oscar and won two Saturn awards and one Hugo.

I think the problem with his argument is tied up in the word “we”:

> if we were willing to treat works of art

The Oscars aren’t awarded by us, they come from industry people. If HN readers voted on software awards, it’s pretty likely that the winners wouldn’t reflect choices made by the wider world. Emacs beating Tik Tok might be our version of Good Will Hunting beating Happy Gilmore.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is almost certain to at least be nominated, and it's a feel-good sci-fantasy family action-comedy... more or less.

Also, the idea that Good Will Hunting is "very serious" also misses the mark. So much of why that movie worked is because it interleaved humor throughout:

* "How you like them apples."

* Sean talking about his wife farting when she was nervous.

* Will's entire monologue at the NSA interview.

* "My boy is wicked smaht."

If anyone here likes this book I highly recommend his documentary series, Fighting In The Age of Loneliness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK3FHjiwb_8)

The History of the Seattle Mariners and Atlanta Falcons are two fantastic documentaries produced by the author of the discussed novel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIgK56cAjfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_ORMhpmoU&list=PLUXSZMIiUf...

As with most Jon Bois stuff, the titles undersell it. Watch this if you're interested in serendipity, community cultures, long-running folk tales, the implausibility of reality, etc.

Also watch it all with the realization that the only visualization tool Jon uses for making these is Google Earth.

(Maybe my favorite Jon Bois real-life video, and a smaller bite than those big docs while still getting to all of the above, is "Randall Cunningham Seizes the Means of Production": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymSrDfLhW8 )

I really enjoy Jon Bois' work and what his influence on SB Nation/Secret Base turned into. Their content now is really great even if he himself has taken a backseat to the newer creators.

ah, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776 ?

That was my first thought, but it's The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles by the same guy (John Bois).

No but it is another story by the same author (John Bois) in which

> Tim Tebow finds himself able to do the impossible; he gets the ball and runs it to the end zone. It is then that the entire back of the stadium opens up, and it’s revealed that successful Canadian football drives don’t have a defined stopping point. They go “to street”, meaning that the team can move the ball through the city and out to the wilderness. The entire country of Canada is potentially in play, and Tim Tebow is the only person ever born who is able to take advantage of this.

I loved 17776 and never heard of this but I'm keen to check it out

Based on the dates in the URLs and the synopsis, it sounds like it was a direct predecessor to 17776.

mob football on steroids, i love it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_football

Same author (Jon Bois).

I have trouble reading longform web stuff (like Worm or Homestuck). I did get through HPMOR and All Night Laundry though!

Hey, Worm gets pretty good after the first half-million words :P

Came here for this. 17776 (and the sequel) are amazing. For context, I think I'm the kind of person who would have never gotten into football "naturally," but I grew up in and moved back to a big-time college football town, and so I think I get into it by osmosis.

Ah! I also loved 20020, looked forward to 20021, and that article covers how that's indefinitely postponed. Thanks!

As others have noted, the author is no literary authority (even if they were, they'd still encounter criticism, see Harold Bloom). That said, I think these critiques overlook the fact that Jon Bois's work speaks to _the author's_ personal experience. As a result, it's interesting to see how heavily our personal lives influence our interpretations of art. Perhaps this is no surprise? In this regard, I can't help but be reminded of our reverence of religious texts, which seem to very much reflect the a priori views of the interpreter/translator.

The author may enjoy books within the New Sincerity realm [1]. They often have magical realist elements [2]. In particular, _Infinite Jest_ seems like a clear recommendation; or for less surrealism, Franzen's _The Corrections_.

I wholeheartedly agree that art allows us to empathize with the lived experience of those who are ostensibly different.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sincerity

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism

I enjoyed reading this review a lot more than I expected to.

Yeah. This is kinda what really good media reviewing should look like. An earnest, thoughtful explanation of why this book (or movie, or whatever) is important and worth absorbing.

I do enjoy the idea of a novel that grossly exaggerates the US stereotypes of Canada.

Although some Canadian facts are so weird that they are nearly impossible to believe until you research them. Like the extremely well-appointed throne room at the top of the CN Tower that is kept in reserve for the British monarchy in case the UK is occupied during a war, and the royal family needs a secure and luxurious backup.

Ah! No wonder all the elevators are on the outside of the building! The inside is reserved so the Queen can walk up 7000 stairs.

My personal favorite aspect is that the best view from the observation deck is looking straight down through the glass floor, and the look of sheer terror from people afraid to walk on it (while the kids jump up and down on the glass).

A highly recommended book about (real) football that transcends the genre is The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. Ostensibly an 'account by American writer Joe McGinniss of the first season Italian association football club Castel di Sangro Calcio spent in Serie B' it's really about an author's descent into madness through fanatical self-identification with his subject matter.

I was hoping this was about “Friday Night Lights”.

For a real-life story of a heisman trophy quarterback who bombed out of the NFL and became a hall-of-famer in canada, ref. Doug Flutie. His brother was also pretty successful up there. And they have a rock band together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Flutie

I immediately thought of Unseen Academicals.

It can't be coincidence that the author mentions Happy Gilmore, and then goes on to describe the point of the book being finding a world built for you not to fail in, when you thought the other world you did fail in was your destiny, which is basically the whole schtick OF Happy Gilmore, right?

Yes, for those who haven’t seen Happy Gilmore, it’s a story about a guy who failed at ice hockey but accidentally discovered he was really good at golf. It has a lot of parallels to this story and the essence is conceptually the same.

3 chapters in and I would have say that the title is not hyperbolic. This is a really good read so far.

Bois also has a documentary on MMA up on youtube, I went into it knowing nothing about MMA but greatly enjoyed it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DoaUyMGPWI

> Canada is a real country. It’s sort of a mix between San Francisco, North Dakota, and ice.

Hilarious. Probably took the author ages to arrive at this particular formula.

Somehow made me remember the Dave Secretary stories. Unfortunately, I cannot find any link to those stories...they were really funny.

just skimmed through the article, but it somehow reminded me about "Playing for Pizza" by John Grisham[1], but that one is probably a somewhat lighter read ;-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_for_Pizza

I thought it was Infinite Jest.

As someone who loves Infinite Jest and does think it's the best novel of our generation, I was pretty much just as enthralled and entertained by the Tim Tebow Chronicles. Honestly, there are also some similarities in the dreamlike alternate-present worldbuilding (the MIT building in IJ would be right at home in TTC). I'd say it's definitely worth a read–it's also much shorter than IJ!

What does "our generation" mean? 40 something americans?

That was a surprisingly fun read.

"Montreal Argonauts"

religion and football. I'd readily admit it captures the zeitgeist...

Click-bait titles are now an art form in itself. Nothing against the work being discussed.

Whose generation?

strange way to hear that nk jemisin's broken earth is actually about football but ok

When the author starts their post off insulting David French they lose all credibility in my mind as an arbiter of literature. David French has written an enormous number of posts I disagree strongly with, and an equivalent number that I agree strongly with. That's because he thinks and writes about extremely complex matters of morality and does not reduce his views to the "liberal" or "conservative" orthodoxy.

He started out as a darling of the religious right, because he played a major role in causes the religious right considered "theirs." When he began to write with equal clarity about how other aspects of the religious right's focus are at odds with those same deeply held principles that led him to do the work the right loved, they turned on him like this.

Complex moral issues are exactly that, complex. We need more intelligent people thinking hard about them, not more polarization into "you're either with us or against us" mindsets.

I'll be clear here that I'm not interested in judgements on literature provided by someone who frames their worldview as hating one of the few writers willing to address the real complexities of real issues today.

Your reply made me interested in learning more about David French, so I went to his substack and read his post about John Adams Fear, which I enjoyed and thought was pretty balanced. I was wondering, and maybe someone else can chime in, why the author of this article said:

"OK, so, there’s this thing where if you write a bunch you hope you eventually build up some trust with your audience. You try to be generally reliable and trustworthy in hopes that they come to believe you are generally reasonable, that you wouldn’t try to trick them, and that you aren’t David French. If any of these three things aren’t true, they rightfully come to distrust you."

There is some context I'm missing here, why do you think the author felt tricked by David French?

It's a bit of a clumsy joke I think; David French's previous followers turned on him, as explained above.

He maintained his moral and intellectual integrity whereas many of his longtime readers and fans betrayed theirs. So it didn't matter that he had built-up trust. He didn't genuflect to Orange Man and go along sheepishly for the ride the Republican Party has decided to take, so they ditched him.

This is my understanding as well for the criticism of French: He's still very much a conservative, but the definition of "conservatism" has changed to include fealty to an individual instead of (or perhaps in addition to, in some cases) a set of principles. In that context he's maintained his principles and it's led to a lot of criticism from those who have changed theirs in ways they don't seem to be aware of.

The author does answer this question in the comments: https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/nobody-will-admit-the-b...

His take seems to assume that French has changed his positions, but it seems (from my reading anyway) that French is still quite conservative. I think this is more about how the definition of "conservative" has changed over the last 5-7 years or so.

I read the comment as a tongue-in-cheek jab, not an insult. The author made no value judgements about French, and it’s hard to deny that part of French’s audience turned on him.

The reasons for that are not examined, and in the context of the reviewer’s opening, it serves as nothing more than a way to say “usually, trust can be built over time, David French’s situation notwithstanding”.

To conclude that the author hates French is a pretty enormous leap.

It strikes me that this comment is guilty of the same thing it complains about.

For what it's worth, I found in the comments to this article a discussion by the author of why he doesn't like David French: https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/nobody-will-admit-the-b...

So I don't know about "hates", but he really does dislike the man.

Interesting, thanks for sharing that. He does follow this up to clarify:

> Something like that. Mostly I don't hate him, he just bothers me. I really wish he wasn't the banner-carrier for mainstream Christianity/Conservatism, but I don't wish he'd fall off a cliff or whatever.

I'm not sure if the reviewer's issue with French is rooted in French's willingness to explore nuance in a way that makes christians/conservatives uncomfortable, or if it's because French embraces positions that are really not compatible with the 2022 version of conservatism while still aligning himself with that movement.

In either case, it seems like a position that isn't particularly relevant to the primary content of the review. I will say it was probably an unnecessary distraction to mention him at all, but I don't think that distraction warrants ignoring everything else the reviewer writes.

Interesting. That appears to explain why the review has a strong, "quirky, 'hip' campus Christian newsletter" vibe.

I got the sense the author wanted to construct an example that would be so obvious as to be laughable. But I immediately thought of Christina Hoff Sommers' claim that feminism has changed to the point that she believes she now looks like an outsider because of it.

Is it the truth, or PR? I agree it's annoying that this narrative is so common, but if I spent all my time getting angry about that kind of PR I wouldn't have time to do anything else. I think we just have to bear it and trust people to dig to find out the truth.

Alternatively, we can also just not care too deeply about the answer and blithely ask on HN-- can someone in the know tell me if David French complains about a specific denomination of Christians, or Christians as a whole? If it is a specific denomination, where do I go to find out a) what a critical mass of that specific denomination thinks about the world, and b) what a critical mass of that specific denomination does about the members of their church that seem to be trolling the rest of us?

In brief, he mainly complains about Christians blindly following Donald Trump and the current Republican Party.

And has written a lot about cases of sexual abuse by Christian pastors and leaders.

I greatly admire French and agree that his views have stayed consistent, while the beliefs and actions of most of those who shared the label "Conservative Christian" have greatly changed, or at least been exposed.

The author [1] merely stated many people distrust David French, in a highly tongue in cheek manner meant to hook people into reading the rest of the essay. You're the leaping to terms like "hate" and "you're either with us or against us", perhaps reflect on why you've done that?

At the very least, reflect on the immense irony of someone "losing all credibility in your mind" because you perceive them to have a "you're either with us or against us" mentality.

[1] who refers to themselves as "Resident Contrarian", to give you an idea of their intended persona

I appreciate your viewpoint but it seems to be a strong reaction to a throwaway joke which isn’t at all the point of the article.

"When the author starts their post off insulting David French they lose all credibility in my mind as an arbiter of literature." Has got to be the funniest comment I have ever read on HN. Only slightly funnier than: "I'll be clear here that I'm not interested in judgements on literature provided by someone who frames their worldview as hating one of the few writers willing to address the real complexities of real issues today." French stans on HN, I love it! Also, I checked out Bois' youtube and really enjoyed Pretty Good episode 10.

> Nobody Will Admit The Best Novel of Our Generation is About Football

Just stop. We all have different preferences.

Personally I hate American football (it's too much like a stupid video game now), so you'll never even get me to read whatever book this person is talking about.

If you won't even look at the article, why are you here to complain about it?

Nobody Will Admit what the title of the book I'm writing about is...... had to read too much of this drivel without even knowing what they were referring to, ridiculous. Also to slowly realize it wasn't about soccer. Why was this submitted here?

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