22 ms·

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

167 points by hn-0001 4y ago

rambojohnson 4y ago
religion and football. I'd readily admit it captures the zeitgeist...
jacobjr23 4y ago
"Montreal Argonauts"
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
3 chapters in and I would have say that the title is not hyperbolic. This is a really good read so far.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hprotagonist 4y ago
ah, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776 ?
- AdamH12113 4y ago
  That was my first thought, but it's The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles by the same guy (John Bois).
- sharkjacobs 4y ago
  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
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    Based on the dates in the URLs and the synopsis, it sounds like it was a direct predecessor to 17776.
  - hprotagonist 4y ago
    mob football on steroids, i love it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_football https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_football
- mherdeg 4y ago
  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!
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Hey, Worm gets pretty good after the first half-million words :P
- jrm4 4y ago
  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.
- pronoiac 4y ago
  Ah! I also loved 20020, looked forward to 20021, and that article covers how that's indefinitely postponed. Thanks!
brimble 4y ago
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-chronicles 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.
- moolcool 4y ago
  Jon Bois is fantastic. All of his videos are great and he's a great writer. I highly recommend his "Pretty Good" series.
  - DanHulton 4y ago
    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.
  - dharmab 4y ago
    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://youtu.be/CeKC7cH1-kI https://www.sbnation.com/2014/1/30/5351052/breaking-madden-super-bowl-broncos-seahawks https://www.sbnation.com/2014/1/30/5351052/breaking-madden-s...
- runnerup 4y ago
  > 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.
neil_b 4y ago
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=TIgK56cAjfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_ORMhpmoU&list=PLUXSZMIiUfFSzzgEL4N9aYBXPmGVen3zW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_ORMhpmoU&list=PLUXSZMIiUf...
- trynewideas 4y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymSrDfLhW8 )
brightball 4y ago
I enjoyed reading this review a lot more than I expected to.
- ketzo 4y ago
  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.
scyclow 4y ago
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 https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
- spelunker 4y ago
  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)
- camtarn 4y ago
  Ahh! I thought the idea of 'to street' sounded familiar. 17776 is excellent.
- Kapura 4y ago
  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?)
  - wyldfire 4y ago
    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.
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    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.
- wyldfire 4y ago
  This is incredible. I almost closed the tab when the text grew out of control, I thought it was a bug.
dfxm12 4y ago
I agree with the headline, but the article does not seem to be describing Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett... :)
- hyperman1 4y ago
  I really liked the Pratchett books, but that one was not really his best.
  - number6 4y ago
    So what's your pick and why is it "Going Postal"?
    - sollewitt 4y ago
      It's spelled g-u-a-r-d-s g-u-a-r-d-s
    - hyperman1 4y ago
      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.
yodon 4y ago
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.
- Herodotus38 4y ago
  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?
  - ss108 4y ago
    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.
kwhitefoot 4y ago
I immediately thought of Unseen Academicals.
soneca 4y ago
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.
- rectang 4y ago
  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.
wldcordeiro 4y ago
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.
digb 4y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK3FHjiwb_8)
w0mbat 4y ago
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.
f154hfds 4y ago
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.
- Balgair 4y ago
  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 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"
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    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
ughitsaaron 4y ago
I was hoping this was about “Friday Night Lights”.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
huhtenberg 4y ago
> 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.
zokier 4y ago
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.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  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.
- causi 4y ago
  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.
- 4y ago
DantesKite 4y ago
That was a surprisingly fun read.
ChrisArchitect 4y ago
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?
lkxijlewlf 4y ago
> 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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  If you won't even look at the article, why are you here to complain about it?
thazework 4y ago
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.
labrador 4y ago
> 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?
- arbitrage 4y ago
  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!
  - labrador 4y ago
    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!
seshagiric 4y ago
Somehow made me remember the Dave Secretary stories. Unfortunately, I cannot find any link to those stories...they were really funny.
universa1 4y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_for_Pizza
auto 4y ago
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?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  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.
perardi 4y ago
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.
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  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).
haunter 4y ago
What does "our generation" mean? 40 something americans?
Dotnaught 4y ago
"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"?
- compiler-guy 4y ago
  The title may, just may, not be intended to be taken literally.
  - fknorangesite 4y ago
    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.
    - soneca 4y ago
      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.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - mcphage 4y ago
    - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
      Hyperbole begets more hyperbole to combat the earlier hyperbole. Where does it end?
      - compiler-guy 4y ago
clevergadget 4y ago
strange way to hear that nk jemisin's broken earth is actually about football but ok
agentdrtran 4y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DoaUyMGPWI
platz 4y ago
I thought it was Infinite Jest.
- npilk 4y ago
  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!
udev 4y ago
Click-bait titles are now an art form in itself. Nothing against the work being discussed.
Aaargh20318 4y ago
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.
- dinkleberg 4y ago
  Any recommendations on good books that do include large scale space battles?
  - balls187 4y ago
    Ender's Game.
  - btmills 4y ago
    The Expanse series was a lot of fun to read, and now I'm catching up on the show.
  - bencollier49 4y ago
    Paradise Lost?
  - Aaargh20318 4y ago
    Odyssey One series by Evan Currie (especially the later books). The ‘Honorverse’ books by David Weber has some good battles as well.
- npilk 4y ago
  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 https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/chapter-1
kvathupo 4y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sincerity [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism
kerblang 4y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Flutie
balls187 4y ago
Whose generation?

167 points by hn-0001 4y ago

rambojohnson 4y ago

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

jacobjr23 4y ago

"Montreal Argonauts"

sudden_dystopia 4y ago

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

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hprotagonist 4y ago

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

AdamH12113 4y ago
That was my first thought, but it's The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles by the same guy (John Bois).
sharkjacobs 4y ago
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
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  Based on the dates in the URLs and the synopsis, it sounds like it was a direct predecessor to 17776.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  mob football on steroids, i love it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_football https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_football
mherdeg 4y ago
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!
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Hey, Worm gets pretty good after the first half-million words :P
jrm4 4y ago
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.
pronoiac 4y ago
Ah! I also loved 20020, looked forward to 20021, and that article covers how that's indefinitely postponed. Thanks!

brimble 4y ago

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-chronicles 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.

moolcool 4y ago
Jon Bois is fantastic. All of his videos are great and he's a great writer. I highly recommend his "Pretty Good" series.
- DanHulton 4y ago
  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.
- dharmab 4y ago
  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://youtu.be/CeKC7cH1-kI https://www.sbnation.com/2014/1/30/5351052/breaking-madden-super-bowl-broncos-seahawks https://www.sbnation.com/2014/1/30/5351052/breaking-madden-s...
runnerup 4y ago
> 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.

neil_b 4y ago

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=TIgK56cAjfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_ORMhpmoU&list=PLUXSZMIiUfFSzzgEL4N9aYBXPmGVen3zW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_ORMhpmoU&list=PLUXSZMIiUf...

trynewideas 4y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymSrDfLhW8 )

brightball 4y ago

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

ketzo 4y ago
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.

scyclow 4y ago

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

spelunker 4y ago
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)
camtarn 4y ago
Ahh! I thought the idea of 'to street' sounded familiar. 17776 is excellent.
Kapura 4y ago
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?)
- wyldfire 4y ago
  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.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  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.
wyldfire 4y ago
This is incredible. I almost closed the tab when the text grew out of control, I thought it was a bug.

dfxm12 4y ago

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

hyperman1 4y ago
I really liked the Pratchett books, but that one was not really his best.
- number6 4y ago
  So what's your pick and why is it "Going Postal"?
  - sollewitt 4y ago
    It's spelled g-u-a-r-d-s g-u-a-r-d-s
  - hyperman1 4y ago
    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.

yodon 4y ago

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.

Herodotus38 4y ago
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?
- ss108 4y ago
  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.

kwhitefoot 4y ago

I immediately thought of Unseen Academicals.

soneca 4y ago

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.

rectang 4y ago
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.

wldcordeiro 4y ago

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.

digb 4y ago

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK3FHjiwb_8)

w0mbat 4y ago

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.

f154hfds 4y ago

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.

Balgair 4y ago
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 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"
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  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

ughitsaaron 4y ago

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

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huhtenberg 4y ago

> 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.

zokier 4y ago

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.

AlbertCory 4y ago
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.
causi 4y ago
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.
4y ago

DantesKite 4y ago

That was a surprisingly fun read.

ChrisArchitect 4y ago

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?

lkxijlewlf 4y ago

> 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.

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Dylan16807 4y ago
If you won't even look at the article, why are you here to complain about it?

thazework 4y ago

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.

labrador 4y ago

> 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?

arbitrage 4y ago
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!
- labrador 4y ago
  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!

seshagiric 4y ago

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

universa1 4y ago

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

auto 4y ago

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?

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
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.

perardi 4y ago

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.

Kon-Peki 4y ago
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).

haunter 4y ago

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

Dotnaught 4y ago

"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"?

compiler-guy 4y ago
The title may, just may, not be intended to be taken literally.
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  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.
  - soneca 4y ago
    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.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - mcphage 4y ago
  - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    Hyperbole begets more hyperbole to combat the earlier hyperbole. Where does it end?
    - compiler-guy 4y ago

clevergadget 4y ago

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

agentdrtran 4y ago

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DoaUyMGPWI

platz 4y ago

I thought it was Infinite Jest.

npilk 4y ago
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!

udev 4y ago

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

Aaargh20318 4y ago

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.

dinkleberg 4y ago
Any recommendations on good books that do include large scale space battles?
- balls187 4y ago
  Ender's Game.
- btmills 4y ago
  The Expanse series was a lot of fun to read, and now I'm catching up on the show.
- bencollier49 4y ago
  Paradise Lost?
- Aaargh20318 4y ago
  Odyssey One series by Evan Currie (especially the later books). The ‘Honorverse’ books by David Weber has some good battles as well.
npilk 4y ago
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 https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/chapter-1

kvathupo 4y ago

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

kerblang 4y ago

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

balls187 4y ago

Whose generation?