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Am I the only one thinks that The New Yorker takes 5 pages to give 1 page of information? Their articles are so frustrating to read!
by WheelsAtLarge 8y ago
Am I the only one thinks that The New Yorker takes 5 pages to give 1 page of information? Their articles are so frustrating to read!
- keiferski 8y agoThe New Yorker is a literary magazine, not an encyclopedia. If you're reading it purely for gathering information, I suggest the Wikipedia article [1] or Luria's book itself instead. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky [2] http://arteflora.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Luria-The-Mind-of-a-Mnemonist.pdf http://arteflora.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Luria-The-Mi...
- nerdponx 8y agoI've always wished "long form" articles would put an abstract at the beginning.
- simonebrunozzi 8y agoMe too. I even tried to see if such a "summary" would be a viable business: https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/Weekly-Summaries/2016-10.md https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/Weekly-Su...
- WheelsAtLarge 8y agoNo, no, no, there's literature and then there's literature that gets paid by the word and has to be written fast. I'm sure they never met an adjective they didn't like. I get it, people need to make a living but it is still frustrating to read. Literature does not have to be fluff. One of the best non-fiction books I've read that's both informative and has beautiful writing is, "On Immunity: An Inoculation " by Eula Biss. It's both informative and a pleasure to read.
- hkmurakami 8y agoAs a friend one remarked, "The New Yorker makes fiction out of nonfiction."
- coleifer 8y agoWhat's your hurry, friend?
- coldtea 8y agoThe inevitable march of death?
- booleandilemma 8y agoUgh don’t remind me.
- tlholaday 8y agoYou're able occasionally to forget? Lucky you!
- waterphone 8y agoAm I the only irritated by these inevitable questions from people with no sense of literary craft any time an article from the New Yorker is posted on HN?
- mikestew 8y agoAm I the only one thinks that The New Yorker takes 5 pages to give 1 page of information I’m pretty sure The New Yorker thinks that. It’s called “literature”, and a lot of it is pretty good. Sounds like you’ll want to stay away from Russian authors, though.
- baddox 8y ago“Literature” is definitely not the opposite of “concise.”
- mikestew 8y agoGood thing, too, because that wasn’t my point. If you want the TL;DR, The New Yorker probably isn’t for you. It is, of course, more nuanced than that and leaving less room for snapping one-liner comebacks, but such is the world of low attention spans that we live in.
- snowwrestler 8y agoTrue but the point of literature is not just to deliver factual information as quickly as possible. By analogy, you can drive to the top of Mt. Washington, but people still hike it. Either way will deliver the view from top, but each will be a distinct experience.
- all2 8y agoI think Michael Crichton is a good example of this. He has (had) an incredibly terse style that still manages to communicate quite a lot of information/imagery.
- WheelsAtLarge 8y agoExactly, literature can be both artful and to the point or at least insightful.
- gnulinux 8y agoI think a lot of Russian authors are pretty to-the-point. Turgenev, Chekhov and Tolstoy come to mind, as opposed to e.g. Gogol who has a more playful style and can write pages about anything and everything.