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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

Dishonorable Mention (2019):

> As they sprinted together down the echoing, looping ramp of the deserted Guggenheim Museum, closely pursued by three swarthy members of the resolutely vicious Cannelloni gang, square-jawed British Royal Marine art historian/world's deadliest sniper John Savage and his voluptuous young modern art critic/Navajo linguist Samantha Silver cursed architect/interior designer/writer/educator Frank Lloyd Wright for designing such a circuitous route out of the building.

is both horrifying and a thing of wonder .. context is everything.

It wouldn't be out of place in one of my all time favourite books [1].

[1] http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/kleinz.html

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That is a) SUPERB, and b) a perfect example of the Dan Brown Code[1].

[1] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.h...

I hadn't read any Dan Brown, gee that's really bad! So, the sentence maybe should've been rearranged so the book starts with Square-jawed, getting right into the action.

For someone who writes so badly (and he does), I have always found Dan Brown to be compulsively readable. Sometimes we just need trash, I guess.

It's quite fun to read. Maybe trash fiction but fun

For more on Dan Brown, see this hilarious parody:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/dont-make-fun-of-r...

You owe me a new keyboard and a fresh coffee.

Thanks for sharing this link! I read it eagerly on my laptop, with the text of the article presenting itself as a perfect companion to the soothing glow of the screen of my sleek (yet familiar, like an old friend you only just met) portable computing device.

Ah, I'd forgotten that one of the world's best-selling novelists wrote like GPT-3 :D

(Seriously, every time GPT-3 produces prose that passes the skim read test, you need this guy to go through it and point out that this is the third time it's mentioned the protagonists' profession in the paragraph and silhouettes don't stare)

Reminds me of last 30 minutes of the film Cremaster 3, in which a man scales the inside of the Guggenheim, rock-climbing style, stopping on each floor to confront some sort a challenge from a group (line dancers, hardcore punk bands, a famous sculptor) as an abstract retelling of a Masonic origin myth.

I've not read any Hoban, but he sounds hilarious, if a taste acquired. Catch-22 levels of absurdity.

A very broad and versatile writer, Kleinzeit is nth level absurdist, Riddley Walker is a superb post apocalytic novel, The Mouse and His Child is a simple yet deep childrens book about windup toys on the hunt for secret of becoming self winding, and that's just a few off the top of my head.

For more, see:

http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/index.html

http://www.russellhoban.org/

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