42 ms·

I'm trying to understand why this is on the front page, and what it means.

wpietri 14y ago
Hugh Laurie and P.G. Wodehouse are both nerd favorites. And it's a slow Saturday night.
pclark 14y ago
I find literary discussion interesting, and I like to see articles like this occasionally appear on Hacker News. see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4652309 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4652309 & http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5049352 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5049352 Also, reading Wodehouse will improve your life. Or make you smile. He's just so brilliant. I'll happily be flamed for submitting articles about such matters.
- gnufied 14y ago
  It is odd you call it "literary". Throughout his life I think Wodehouse was acutely aware that - his work will not be nearly as respectable as say Dostoevsky. Having read almost everything Wodehouse ever wrote (and foreword, preface whatever) - My assumption is Wodehouse will be probably amused to be considered in same league as Dostoevsky or Jane Austin. I find it sad that, comedy is not considered nearly as respectable. Jeeves would certainly do his typical cough - if an Author of comedy is considered for Nobel prize in literature.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Why is comedy unworthy?
    - gruseom 14y ago
      It's not, but it was traditionally regarded as a lower form than tragedy. For example, that's why Dante called his poem the "Comedy of Dante Alighieri" – he was doing something radical by taking the highest subject matter and putting it into the lowest form, vernacular comedy. (It didn't get called the "Divine" comedy until after he died.)
  - gruseom 14y ago
    Dostoevsky wasn't particularly respectable when he got started, and Shakespeare was regarded as pop culture until the 19th century. These standards change over time. In fact, great art as often as not starts out as low and only gets deemed high culture once the prejudices of its time have worn off.
    - gnufied 14y ago
      Interesting. But have times changed though? You will have to pardon my ignorance little bit because I am a non-native speaker of English (and hence uneducated in history of English literature), but even today you rarely see a comedy getting the Pulitzer. Of course, these awards don't mean much at the end of day but I get distinct feeling that even today - Comedy is considered low brow stuff even behind Fantasy. (Both are my favourite genres btw).
    - pclark 14y ago
      Moby Dick was utterly ignored for many decades. heart breaking.
- gruseom 14y ago
  Hear, hear!
djt 14y ago
Your comment makes me feel old Most older nerds grew up around comedy like monty python, stephen fry plus books, D&D, Warhammer etc etc. Even if you didn't watch much of them you at least knew of them and had heard the catch phrases etc. We used BBS's for communicating but i was really expensive as it was a phone call, often interstate. There was no such thing as reddit or the internet, the memes were catch phrases from these collective activities and back then it wasn't cool to be a nerd. No such thing as BroGrammers back then. Hugh Laurie was a major influence for a older generation of nerds, which is why it is front page.
- hnriot 14y ago
  I'm from that generation. You forgot The Well, by the way. But Hugh Laurie wasn't an influence for me, not in the same way say, Douglas Adams was.
  - rat87 14y ago
    Douglas Adams on Wodehouse """ Who are your favorite authors? Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Kurt Vonnegut, P. G. Wodehouse, Ruth Rendell. ... Master? Great genius? Oh yes. One of the most blissful joys of the English language is the fact that one of its greatest practitioners ever, one of the guys on the very top table of all, was a jokesmith. Though maybe it shouldn’t be that big a surprise. Who else would be up there? Austen, of course, Dickens and Chaucer. The only one who couldn’t make a joke to save his life would be Shakespeare. ... We Wodehouse fans are very fond of phoning each other up with new discoveries. But we may do the great man a disservice when we pull out our favourite quotes in public, like “Ice formed on the butler’s upper slopes,” or “. . . like so many substantial Americans, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag” or (here I go again) my current favourite, “He spun round with a sort of guilty bound, like an adagio dancer surprised while watering the cat’s milk” because, irreducibly wonderful though they are, by themselves they are a little like stuffed fish on a mantelpiece. You need to see them in action to get the full effect. There is not much in Freddie Threepwood’s isolated line “I have here in this sack a few simple rats” to tell you that when you read it in context you are at the pinnacle of one of the most sublime moments in all English literature. Shakespeare? Milton? Keats? How can I possibly mention the author of Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin and Pigs Have Wings in the same breath as these men? He’s just not serious! He doesn’t need to be serious. He’s better than that. He’s up in the stratosphere of what the human mind can do, above tragedy and strenuous thought, where you will find Bach, Mozart, Einstein, Feynman, and Louis Armstrong, in the realms of pure, creative playfulness. From the Introduction to Sunset at Blandings (Penguin Books) """
primitur 14y ago
Sir, is it not the case that such an establishment as ours, indeed, does provide an endless source of discourse with regards ones inspirations? Were it not for P.G. Wodehouse, what good would one such as Steve Jobs, or any other manner of autocrat, be? As the case shall be discovered, much in our circle is derived from sources beyond our own immediate horizons. P.G. Wodehouse, though not new, nor hackerly, certainly demonstrates a prowess with language most indoubtedly motivated by an inner force, a muse as you wish, which allows its effect upon the minds of many. In short, if one cannot see P.G. Wodehouse in hackerdom, then it may well be simply because one has not read a single of his words. I encourage such circumstances to be resolved, post-haste, lest ye miss the beat of certain drums whose temper has wrought much upon our field ..
- biggfoot 14y ago
  ... and there is certainly no shortage in the supply of autocrats, I mean what?

Hugh Laurie and P.G. Wodehouse are both nerd favorites. And it's a slow Saturday night.

I find literary discussion interesting, and I like to see articles like this occasionally appear on Hacker News. see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4652309 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4652309 & http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5049352 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5049352 Also, reading Wodehouse will improve your life. Or make you smile. He's just so brilliant. I'll happily be flamed for submitting articles about such matters.

gnufied 14y ago
It is odd you call it "literary". Throughout his life I think Wodehouse was acutely aware that - his work will not be nearly as respectable as say Dostoevsky. Having read almost everything Wodehouse ever wrote (and foreword, preface whatever) - My assumption is Wodehouse will be probably amused to be considered in same league as Dostoevsky or Jane Austin. I find it sad that, comedy is not considered nearly as respectable. Jeeves would certainly do his typical cough - if an Author of comedy is considered for Nobel prize in literature.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Why is comedy unworthy?
  - gruseom 14y ago
    It's not, but it was traditionally regarded as a lower form than tragedy. For example, that's why Dante called his poem the "Comedy of Dante Alighieri" – he was doing something radical by taking the highest subject matter and putting it into the lowest form, vernacular comedy. (It didn't get called the "Divine" comedy until after he died.)
- gruseom 14y ago
  Dostoevsky wasn't particularly respectable when he got started, and Shakespeare was regarded as pop culture until the 19th century. These standards change over time. In fact, great art as often as not starts out as low and only gets deemed high culture once the prejudices of its time have worn off.
  - gnufied 14y ago
    Interesting. But have times changed though? You will have to pardon my ignorance little bit because I am a non-native speaker of English (and hence uneducated in history of English literature), but even today you rarely see a comedy getting the Pulitzer. Of course, these awards don't mean much at the end of day but I get distinct feeling that even today - Comedy is considered low brow stuff even behind Fantasy. (Both are my favourite genres btw).
  - pclark 14y ago
    Moby Dick was utterly ignored for many decades. heart breaking.
gruseom 14y ago
Hear, hear!

djt 14y ago

Your comment makes me feel old Most older nerds grew up around comedy like monty python, stephen fry plus books, D&D, Warhammer etc etc. Even if you didn't watch much of them you at least knew of them and had heard the catch phrases etc. We used BBS's for communicating but i was really expensive as it was a phone call, often interstate. There was no such thing as reddit or the internet, the memes were catch phrases from these collective activities and back then it wasn't cool to be a nerd. No such thing as BroGrammers back then. Hugh Laurie was a major influence for a older generation of nerds, which is why it is front page.

hnriot 14y ago
I'm from that generation. You forgot The Well, by the way. But Hugh Laurie wasn't an influence for me, not in the same way say, Douglas Adams was.
- rat87 14y ago
  Douglas Adams on Wodehouse """ Who are your favorite authors? Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Kurt Vonnegut, P. G. Wodehouse, Ruth Rendell. ... Master? Great genius? Oh yes. One of the most blissful joys of the English language is the fact that one of its greatest practitioners ever, one of the guys on the very top table of all, was a jokesmith. Though maybe it shouldn’t be that big a surprise. Who else would be up there? Austen, of course, Dickens and Chaucer. The only one who couldn’t make a joke to save his life would be Shakespeare. ... We Wodehouse fans are very fond of phoning each other up with new discoveries. But we may do the great man a disservice when we pull out our favourite quotes in public, like “Ice formed on the butler’s upper slopes,” or “. . . like so many substantial Americans, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag” or (here I go again) my current favourite, “He spun round with a sort of guilty bound, like an adagio dancer surprised while watering the cat’s milk” because, irreducibly wonderful though they are, by themselves they are a little like stuffed fish on a mantelpiece. You need to see them in action to get the full effect. There is not much in Freddie Threepwood’s isolated line “I have here in this sack a few simple rats” to tell you that when you read it in context you are at the pinnacle of one of the most sublime moments in all English literature. Shakespeare? Milton? Keats? How can I possibly mention the author of Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin and Pigs Have Wings in the same breath as these men? He’s just not serious! He doesn’t need to be serious. He’s better than that. He’s up in the stratosphere of what the human mind can do, above tragedy and strenuous thought, where you will find Bach, Mozart, Einstein, Feynman, and Louis Armstrong, in the realms of pure, creative playfulness. From the Introduction to Sunset at Blandings (Penguin Books) """

primitur 14y ago

Sir, is it not the case that such an establishment as ours, indeed, does provide an endless source of discourse with regards ones inspirations? Were it not for P.G. Wodehouse, what good would one such as Steve Jobs, or any other manner of autocrat, be? As the case shall be discovered, much in our circle is derived from sources beyond our own immediate horizons. P.G. Wodehouse, though not new, nor hackerly, certainly demonstrates a prowess with language most indoubtedly motivated by an inner force, a muse as you wish, which allows its effect upon the minds of many. In short, if one cannot see P.G. Wodehouse in hackerdom, then it may well be simply because one has not read a single of his words. I encourage such circumstances to be resolved, post-haste, lest ye miss the beat of certain drums whose temper has wrought much upon our field ..

biggfoot 14y ago
... and there is certainly no shortage in the supply of autocrats, I mean what?