9 ms·

How Finland rebranded itself as a literary country (2018)

50 points by macbookaries 6y ago

timonoko 6y ago
Pirate Bay is the ultimate literary critic. "Nobody steals bad books", says Palahniuk, the most fleeced author of all times. Finland has only one author at that level: Sofi Oksanen. In comparison, Sweden has Hundreds and Norway has about three. Edward Dutton, an Englishman living in Finland has had some success. But the book was about Islam, and it was leeched like crazy, probably millions. Then the book was banned from Amazon and removed from PP. Baddest of the non-bad books.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dmos62 6y ago
  Sharing frequency (Pirate Bay) is a measure of popularity. If popularity and critical success were the same best seller lists would be topped by literature Noble prize laureates.
  - xyzzy123 6y ago
    It's also popularity... among bittorrent users, which is a fairly particular subset of the population.
  - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
    Why should one care about critical success and Nobel prize?
    - dmos62 6y ago
      I could float some ideas, but it doesn't seem to pertain to the discussion.
      - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
        If you posit a thesis that critical acclaim is a better measure of whether a book is good than popularity, it makes sense to explain why.
        Miraste 6y ago
        I'll back GP's thesis. The global median reader has poor reading comprehension skills and has read few other books. Their main concern is entertainment. Entertaining as many readers as possible in order to be popular requires writing about broad-interest subjects using surface level knowledge. Dedicated literary critics have read many more books than average and are better at extracting meaning from what they read. They're looking for "quality," which is nebulous but distinct from entertainment value, and they're less likely to be put off by abstract concepts or complexity. Specialized critics are better; if you want a sci-fi book you ask a sci-fi reader. As anecdotal evidence I submit the sales figures of Fifty Shades of Gray.
        filoleg 6y ago
        Just like with any other media, popular and good aren't always the same, despite there being a fairly close relationship between the two. The reason for why critical acclaim is a better measure of whether a book is good than popularity is because critical acclaim is explicitly and directly concerned with assessing the quality of the product. As opposed to popularity, which has zero explicit relationship to the quality, it is only concerned with the raw demand numbers. Just because mcdonalds is one of the most popular (if not the most popular) restaurants in the world, it doesn't mean that the quality of food there is better than that at a random much less popular Michelin star restaurant. In the same vein, Transformer movie series is of a pretty terrible quality, but it is insanely more popular than something very critically acclaimed like Parasite. Just looked up numbers, and the first Transformers movie alone (from 2007) had about $700mil in worldwide sales, as opposed to about $250mil for Parasite. And mind you, Parasite wasn't some unknown indie movie that was critically acclaimed. It was one of the most popular critically acclaimed movies out there.
        dmos62 6y ago
        You misread. I didn't say that critical acclaim or popularity are measures for whether a book is good, whatever that means. I said that critical acclaim and popularity are distinct.
    - ordinaryradical 6y ago
      This is actually a fair question. I think both of these things aren't necessarily worth caring about, though they can be indicators of quality. And that's the question--is it critical reception or popularity that proves a book's worth? But here's a deeper question for you: is a book great if it was only popular in its era? Most people seem to agree that the greatest books are the ones that outlive their authors, which means that popularity and even critical reception in the short-term matter very little.
- european321 6y ago
  At a glance "Pirate Bay is the ultimate literary critic." makes sense, but it's not the whole truth. But there are bunch of things that should be also considered such as number of books available on Pirate Bay, type of books available, and then the cross section of Pirate Bay users that are interested in those books.
- moksly 6y ago
  > “Nobody steals bad books” The popularity of something has nothing to do with its quality. More than that, if you’re indeed going by the MC Donalds way of measuring things, you’re bound to be much more interested in: > “Today Finland’s literary exports have tripled in size...” Than how many people steal your books. Popularity that you can not turn into profit is completely useless in any professional sort of way.
  - FredPret 6y ago
    “Quality” in this context simply means popularity - among literary critics. There’s no objective standard of measurement for literature. Popular books aren’t better or worse than “good” books, they’re a different product. Could Michael Crichton have won the Nobel prize? Or could the Nobel prizewinner for literature write - and sell - a massive hit like Jurassic Park?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- nabla9 6y ago
  As the article points out, popularity is requires talent and promotion. Sofi Oksanen is both talented and works so hard in promoting his work. Sweden has so big lead in the tradition and skill in marketing that it's not even funny. There is this romantic idea that if you do good art, it will be recognized organically. But people want to read what others read. Good writer must be popular to sell books.
  - Tuna-Fish 6y ago
    > Sofi Oksanen is both talented and works so hard in promoting his work. Her.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      Context: the Finnish language has no gendered pronouns so confusing he/she in English is a common mistake.
      - nabla9 6y ago
        Yes. I have to make a mental pause before saying or writing he/she in English. It feels weird to have to think about gender so explicitly when talking and writing. I don't see any evidence that you can promote genders equality meaningfully by changing the language, but I believe there is some truth to the weak form of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (the theory that the particular language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality).
        vidarh 6y ago
        They/them works if you don't want to think about it. A very few people take offence because they assume you're taking a political stance; a few more are unaware singular they has a many centuries of history in English and may correct you. It may seem odd to some in English in contexts where the gender is well established and/or obvious, but they'll get over it.
        6y ago
- rat87 6y ago
  > but the book was about Islam Talk about burying the lead Googling him leads to his wiki article > Edward Croft Dutton (born 1980) is an English anthropologist and white supremacist known for authoring controversial racialist articles for fringe far-right journals such as Mankind Quarterly and OpenPsych.[1][2] Dutton is associated with the white nationalist group Patriotic Alternative.
- bobthechef 6y ago
  The NYTimes bestseller list is sort of an indicator what you shouldn't bother reading. Extrapolate as appropriate.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  Could you try to explain Palahniuk to me? I was a young kid in the 80s in Italy and somehow someone mentioned Palahniuk to me. I kept hearing this name for the next several years. However, I never really understood what's so special about him (not to say that there isn't anything, just admitting ignorance), but also failed to find a news piece or a blog post that would clearly explain it.
  - timonoko 6y ago
    Palahniuk got his fame almost solely by pirated copies of the "Fight Club". I remember first stealing it from a Russian FTP-site "Deep Repository" in 1996. Pirate Bay came years later. Literary critics did not get the modern references like "I have constructed my life from Ikea-catalog". And they truly hated misogynist Jordan Peterson - style analysis of man's life "men are all brought up by women" and "everyman lives his days in quiet desperation".
    - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
      Thanks!
williesleg 6y ago
Hacker news!
SiempreViernes 6y ago
Wow, didn't know you could get advertising copy published in as an article in the Paris review, guess you find advertorials everywhere. Because this article certainly gave up any pretence of being a neutral account about halfway trough.
- wrinkl3 6y ago
  I enjoyed the piece because I love these types of feel good national narratives, but yeah the hypemanship here is hard.
- abrowne 6y ago
  It's an essay published in the "Arts & Culture" section of a literary review. It's not "hard news". It's not supposed to be neutral.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    I think what the OP takes issue with is not the opinionated nature of the article, it is the fact that the Paris Review (long famed for its rigorous editorial policy) gave space to blatant advertising.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't post shallow dismissals. If you don't like an article, there are many others to look at. Posting just to complain like this lowers the quality of the threads, especially because indignation attracts upvotes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
qwerty456127 6y ago
> In Finland, we’ve been known only for Nokia phones. What about Linux?
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Wasn't Torvalds already working abroad by the time Linux became a major phenomenon (as opposed to a hacker's curiosity)?
  - jseutter 6y ago
    It depends where you want to set the goalposts for a major phenomenon. Linus moved to the US in 1997 to work for Transmeta, while Linux hit 1.0 in 1994, and Red Hat got its start in 1993. The dot com boom was in full swing in 1999 when Red Hat went public. The rise of Linux really does parallel the rise of the public internet, which first became public in 1994.
- wassenaar10 6y ago
  Linus is an ethnic Swede, can't have that
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    Linus perfectly embodies the Finnish spirit. http://staefcraeft.blogspot.com/2013/07/linus-torvalds-there-arent-enough-swear.html http://staefcraeft.blogspot.com/2013/07/linus-torvalds-there...
  - hunter-gatherer 6y ago
    Finnish sauna is better than Swedish sauna.
  - usr1106 6y ago
    His mother tongue is Swedish, but he is (or at least was) a Finn. Finland is a bilingual country. Well, if you don't count the Sami. If you do, you get more languages.

50 points by macbookaries 6y ago

Pirate Bay is the ultimate literary critic. "Nobody steals bad books", says Palahniuk, the most fleeced author of all times. Finland has only one author at that level: Sofi Oksanen. In comparison, Sweden has Hundreds and Norway has about three. Edward Dutton, an Englishman living in Finland has had some success. But the book was about Islam, and it was leeched like crazy, probably millions. Then the book was banned from Amazon and removed from PP. Baddest of the non-bad books.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dmos62 6y ago
Sharing frequency (Pirate Bay) is a measure of popularity. If popularity and critical success were the same best seller lists would be topped by literature Noble prize laureates.
- xyzzy123 6y ago
  It's also popularity... among bittorrent users, which is a fairly particular subset of the population.
- LudwigNagasena 6y ago
  Why should one care about critical success and Nobel prize?
  - dmos62 6y ago
    I could float some ideas, but it doesn't seem to pertain to the discussion.
    - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
      If you posit a thesis that critical acclaim is a better measure of whether a book is good than popularity, it makes sense to explain why.
      - Miraste 6y ago
        I'll back GP's thesis. The global median reader has poor reading comprehension skills and has read few other books. Their main concern is entertainment. Entertaining as many readers as possible in order to be popular requires writing about broad-interest subjects using surface level knowledge. Dedicated literary critics have read many more books than average and are better at extracting meaning from what they read. They're looking for "quality," which is nebulous but distinct from entertainment value, and they're less likely to be put off by abstract concepts or complexity. Specialized critics are better; if you want a sci-fi book you ask a sci-fi reader. As anecdotal evidence I submit the sales figures of Fifty Shades of Gray.
      - filoleg 6y ago
        Just like with any other media, popular and good aren't always the same, despite there being a fairly close relationship between the two. The reason for why critical acclaim is a better measure of whether a book is good than popularity is because critical acclaim is explicitly and directly concerned with assessing the quality of the product. As opposed to popularity, which has zero explicit relationship to the quality, it is only concerned with the raw demand numbers. Just because mcdonalds is one of the most popular (if not the most popular) restaurants in the world, it doesn't mean that the quality of food there is better than that at a random much less popular Michelin star restaurant. In the same vein, Transformer movie series is of a pretty terrible quality, but it is insanely more popular than something very critically acclaimed like Parasite. Just looked up numbers, and the first Transformers movie alone (from 2007) had about $700mil in worldwide sales, as opposed to about $250mil for Parasite. And mind you, Parasite wasn't some unknown indie movie that was critically acclaimed. It was one of the most popular critically acclaimed movies out there.
      - dmos62 6y ago
        You misread. I didn't say that critical acclaim or popularity are measures for whether a book is good, whatever that means. I said that critical acclaim and popularity are distinct.
  - ordinaryradical 6y ago
    This is actually a fair question. I think both of these things aren't necessarily worth caring about, though they can be indicators of quality. And that's the question--is it critical reception or popularity that proves a book's worth? But here's a deeper question for you: is a book great if it was only popular in its era? Most people seem to agree that the greatest books are the ones that outlive their authors, which means that popularity and even critical reception in the short-term matter very little.
european321 6y ago
At a glance "Pirate Bay is the ultimate literary critic." makes sense, but it's not the whole truth. But there are bunch of things that should be also considered such as number of books available on Pirate Bay, type of books available, and then the cross section of Pirate Bay users that are interested in those books.
moksly 6y ago
> “Nobody steals bad books” The popularity of something has nothing to do with its quality. More than that, if you’re indeed going by the MC Donalds way of measuring things, you’re bound to be much more interested in: > “Today Finland’s literary exports have tripled in size...” Than how many people steal your books. Popularity that you can not turn into profit is completely useless in any professional sort of way.
- FredPret 6y ago
  “Quality” in this context simply means popularity - among literary critics. There’s no objective standard of measurement for literature. Popular books aren’t better or worse than “good” books, they’re a different product. Could Michael Crichton have won the Nobel prize? Or could the Nobel prizewinner for literature write - and sell - a massive hit like Jurassic Park?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
nabla9 6y ago
As the article points out, popularity is requires talent and promotion. Sofi Oksanen is both talented and works so hard in promoting his work. Sweden has so big lead in the tradition and skill in marketing that it's not even funny. There is this romantic idea that if you do good art, it will be recognized organically. But people want to read what others read. Good writer must be popular to sell books.
- Tuna-Fish 6y ago
  > Sofi Oksanen is both talented and works so hard in promoting his work. Her.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    Context: the Finnish language has no gendered pronouns so confusing he/she in English is a common mistake.
    - nabla9 6y ago
      Yes. I have to make a mental pause before saying or writing he/she in English. It feels weird to have to think about gender so explicitly when talking and writing. I don't see any evidence that you can promote genders equality meaningfully by changing the language, but I believe there is some truth to the weak form of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (the theory that the particular language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality).
      - vidarh 6y ago
        They/them works if you don't want to think about it. A very few people take offence because they assume you're taking a political stance; a few more are unaware singular they has a many centuries of history in English and may correct you. It may seem odd to some in English in contexts where the gender is well established and/or obvious, but they'll get over it.
        6y ago
rat87 6y ago
> but the book was about Islam Talk about burying the lead Googling him leads to his wiki article > Edward Croft Dutton (born 1980) is an English anthropologist and white supremacist known for authoring controversial racialist articles for fringe far-right journals such as Mankind Quarterly and OpenPsych.[1][2] Dutton is associated with the white nationalist group Patriotic Alternative.
bobthechef 6y ago
The NYTimes bestseller list is sort of an indicator what you shouldn't bother reading. Extrapolate as appropriate.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Could you try to explain Palahniuk to me? I was a young kid in the 80s in Italy and somehow someone mentioned Palahniuk to me. I kept hearing this name for the next several years. However, I never really understood what's so special about him (not to say that there isn't anything, just admitting ignorance), but also failed to find a news piece or a blog post that would clearly explain it.
- timonoko 6y ago
  Palahniuk got his fame almost solely by pirated copies of the "Fight Club". I remember first stealing it from a Russian FTP-site "Deep Repository" in 1996. Pirate Bay came years later. Literary critics did not get the modern references like "I have constructed my life from Ikea-catalog". And they truly hated misogynist Jordan Peterson - style analysis of man's life "men are all brought up by women" and "everyman lives his days in quiet desperation".
  - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    Thanks!

williesleg 6y ago

Hacker news!

SiempreViernes 6y ago

Wow, didn't know you could get advertising copy published in as an article in the Paris review, guess you find advertorials everywhere. Because this article certainly gave up any pretence of being a neutral account about halfway trough.

wrinkl3 6y ago
I enjoyed the piece because I love these types of feel good national narratives, but yeah the hypemanship here is hard.
abrowne 6y ago
It's an essay published in the "Arts & Culture" section of a literary review. It's not "hard news". It's not supposed to be neutral.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  I think what the OP takes issue with is not the opinionated nature of the article, it is the fact that the Paris Review (long famed for its rigorous editorial policy) gave space to blatant advertising.
dang 6y ago
Please don't post shallow dismissals. If you don't like an article, there are many others to look at. Posting just to complain like this lowers the quality of the threads, especially because indignation attracts upvotes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

qwerty456127 6y ago

> In Finland, we’ve been known only for Nokia phones. What about Linux?

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Wasn't Torvalds already working abroad by the time Linux became a major phenomenon (as opposed to a hacker's curiosity)?
- jseutter 6y ago
  It depends where you want to set the goalposts for a major phenomenon. Linus moved to the US in 1997 to work for Transmeta, while Linux hit 1.0 in 1994, and Red Hat got its start in 1993. The dot com boom was in full swing in 1999 when Red Hat went public. The rise of Linux really does parallel the rise of the public internet, which first became public in 1994.
wassenaar10 6y ago
Linus is an ethnic Swede, can't have that
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Linus perfectly embodies the Finnish spirit. http://staefcraeft.blogspot.com/2013/07/linus-torvalds-there-arent-enough-swear.html http://staefcraeft.blogspot.com/2013/07/linus-torvalds-there...
- hunter-gatherer 6y ago
  Finnish sauna is better than Swedish sauna.
- usr1106 6y ago
  His mother tongue is Swedish, but he is (or at least was) a Finn. Finland is a bilingual country. Well, if you don't count the Sami. If you do, you get more languages.