7 ms·

So the title starts "The books ...", and reading the article shows that by books they mean just fictional novels. but, the books we talk about on HN have includ

by graycat 12y ago

So the title starts "The books ...", and reading the article shows that by books they mean just fictional novels. but, the books we talk about on HN have included: Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming. Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein, Introduction to Algorithms. Jeffrey D. Ullman, Principles of Database Systems. Jacques Neveu, Mathematical Foundations of the Calculus of Probability. David G. Luenberger, Optimization by Vector Space Methods. Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie, The C Programming Language. Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne, Algorithms. Sorry, NYR, my house, nearly every room, is awash in books in mathematics, science, engineering, music, none of which would be of interest to the NYR, and a few others but likely less than 2% are fictional novels. So, the claim of the title "the books we talk about" appears not to apply very well to HN and the same or much less so to me. That is, the title is presumptive. Why do I say this? Maybe not everyone at HN will agree with me, but in grades 1-12 and the first two years of college, I felt force fed like a Strasbourg goose with books that were fiction. It wasn't until the last two years of college that I got to concentrate on what I really cared about, non-fiction, that is, science, mathematics, engineering, etc. So I remain torqued: For years and years I was force fed with I didn't want and largely blocked from what I did want. And, now that I have more understanding of fiction, I have to conclude, with this force feeding and blocking, some of my best years for learning were seriously wasted. Thus, I'm torqued. I have to be reminded of C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and find, (with irony) with that favorite word of the literary set, irony, a post in the culture of engineering, math, and science by the culture of fictional novels, belle lettre, literary art, etc.

modfodder 12y ago
Seems like your best years of learning were seriously wasted at least partially because you either refused or seemed incapable of learning from the books you were forced to read. Its great that you have a love of learning from nonfiction, I wish more people had the desire you do, but there is a lot to learn from fiction if you are open to it.
- graycat 12y ago
  The books they forced me to read, just what the heck were the intended lessons? Tough to say. Since then I saw that I should have just gotten the CliffsNotes; they make it clear and explicit just what the heck the really big lessons are supposed to be. The books and teachers didn't. > but there is a lot to learn from fiction if you are open to it. Being "open to it" is not nearly enough. Knowing about people is important, darned important, and I knew that in quite clear terms in the fifth grade and since. A big problem is, the works of fictional literature just do not make clear just what their points are or give solid support for their points. Instead, it's all just a definite maybe. For any intended lessons, the works of fictional literature just are not solid enough to take seriously, and there are now much better sources, ones that make clear just what they are claiming and provide relatively solid support for their claims.
  - Ollinson 12y ago
    It's a shame that you have such disdain toward capital L literature because some of the best writing on fiction is done by people who share your criticisms. I fail to see the difference between your dismissal of fiction and a mathephobe's statement "when will we ever use this stuff in the real world." I don't know how an intelligent person can argue in good faith that fiction is not only meritless but basically useless. It takes very little effort to look around and see how untrue that statement is.
    - cbd1984 12y ago
      > "when will we ever use this stuff in the real world." No. The complaint is more "why are we studying this instead of something else", and the various values of 'something else' have made a better case than Literature has. Not just practical utility, but mind-expansion (pure math), understanding the world (history, especially recent history), and understanding fellow human beings (sociology and psychology).
      - lotsofcows 12y ago
        "understanding fellow human beings (sociology and psychology)" You just defined fiction.
Jtsummers 12y ago
I had one course each year in 1-12 that had me reading fiction, that was English/Language Arts. My math, science, history and other courses focused almost exclusively on non-fiction. Where did you go to school that they only provided fictional science and math texts?
- graycat 12y ago
  I will try to be still more clear: For 14 years, that is, grades 1-12 and the first two years of college, English, nearly all just fictional literature, was required, and math and science got nowhere near as much time and mostly were just optional. I took all the math and science that was available, but that was just six years of math, two of chemistry, and two of physics. Moreover, the math and science were too simple. You mentioned history: There I saw too little in detail and attention to causality to take the content seriously. Also the history courses spent far too much time on the really old stuff, including 2000+ years ago, and not nearly enough time after 1800. And for the old stuff, they neglected the roles of domestic animals, masonry, military technology, metals, open ocean sailing and trade, the longitude problem, coal, steel, and steam. For after 1900, eventually I learned that from TV, e.g., the series Victory at Sea. So, I was effectively blocked from anything significant in non-fiction until math and physics in my last two years of college; there I was a double major in math and physics but at the last moment dropped physics as a major and was only a math major. From grade 5 on, I very much wanted the math and science. Being force fed fictional literature for 14 years was a really big bummer -- I was torqued and still am. During those bad 14 years, at one point I did push ahead: My last three years in college were in a relatively good school with, actually, a quite good math department. But, to save money, my freshman year in college was in a state school I could walk to. There they wouldn't let me take calculus but forced me to take a math course beneath what I'd already covered in high school. So, I got a respected calculus book, dug in, and learned freshman calculus on my own. Then, in my sophomore year in the better college, I started with their sophomore calculus, using the same text as Harvard, and did well. So, I taught myself freshman calculus and, actually, never took it or got course credit for it. Bad high school? Not comparatively: It was by a wide margin the best public high school in the city and, really, better than the few, small private schools. MIT came recruiting, and the year before me three guys went to Princeton and ran against each other for President of the Freshman Class. I see a problem: English, as essentially just fictional literature, was required and got pushed hard for 14 years with nothing else even comparable. I was and remain torqued. Now, here on HN, fictional literature is very much not the source of "the books we talk about". Good.
skybrian 12y ago
The original article was about books people discuss with friends in real life, not online. How many of these books do you actually talk about? Although it's commonly recommended, I can't remember ever actually talking with someone else who's also read *The C Programming Language" about the contents of that book, though if they're a programmer we might discuss something about C if it comes up.
- graycat 12y ago
  By talking about, I was including on HN, and all of those books so qualify. For K&R, sure, I've talked about it, yes, orally. E.g., for that book, what's with the idiosyncratic syntax? And why the case of x+++++y? And some cases of declare statements can be real puzzles that can need talking about -- there is even a sparse, too sparse, discussion in the book. And to talk, should mention why the language was designed to run in about 8 K bytes on a DEC machine (helps explain y =+ x). And, in one discussion, I got led to where in K&R actually can find the actual memory allocation technique used by MALLOC and FREE. We should talk about what we are paying now, when we use C (or really C++ which was originally just a preprocessor to C), due to the original 8 KB constraint when now main memory goes for about $10/GB and motherboards commonly support 32 GB of ECC main memory. So, yes, we do still talk about C and K&R. C stands to be around for a long time, and I'm sure that students new to programming will do a lot of talking about K&R. While in college, they may do the talking in person at some social gatherings.
- tokenrove 12y ago
  I've talked about, in person, the contents of K&R with people who were learning C; why did they choose to present things in that order? What kinds of practical aspects of the language are omitted? et cetera. I guess it depends on your friends, but I'll support the parent's case of some of those being great in-person discussion books, especially Knuth. And lots of great math books. Knuth's little "romance novel", Surreal Numbers, is a great example of a highly discussable math book.
andreasvc 12y ago
The meaning of a word is determined by its context, so it's not particularly significant or objectionable that "books" is used to mean fiction here. I think you're being a bit dramatic with regards to having to read fiction in school. Society has decided that reading fiction is part of a well-rounded education. The same objections you make could be made about having to learn algebra; most people can object that they will never directly use it in later life and that they could have spend the time learning other things. In both cases an argument for teaching it is that it exercises the mind, developing a sense of abstraction in the case of algebra, and imagination and empathy in the case of literature, I would argue. It is not useful to compare the value of fiction versus non-fiction, they have completely different functions, and there's no reason for it to be a case of either/or.
- graycat 12y ago
  > The meaning of a word is determined by its context, so it's not particularly significant or objectionable that "books" is used to mean fiction here. While I believe that books should mean, say, what is sold on Amazon or what is in a large public or academic library, for "context," here on HN books are more like the ones I listed, e.g., Knuth, and not what is emphasized in NYR. Gee, is there some irony here? > I think you're being a bit dramatic with regards to having to read fiction in school. But being "dramatic" is heavily what fictional literature is about, right? More irony here? > Society has decided that reading fiction is part of a well-rounded education. Well, if not "society" then a lot of people in K-12 education, people, who, a guess, were English majors in college. There's some social-academic field self-perpetuation here, maybe? > The same objections you make could be made about having to learn algebra; most people can object that they will never directly use it in later life and that they could have spend the time learning other things. I explain more in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8410549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8410549 in this tread. There I mention that in the grade 1-12 school I went to, algebra was optional. I took it, sure, along with all the math that was offered. In that post, I also explained that much of my objection to fictional literature was the amount of it required with significant math and science having many fewer years and all those optional. So, in grades 1-12 I want to, and as I explain at a comparatively good school, the dichotomy is not just fictional literature versus algebra but 12 years of such literature, required, versus just four years of math (beyond trivial arithmetic), one year of chemistry, and one year of physics, all optional and none very advanced. Bummer. > It is not useful to compare the value of fiction versus non-fiction, they have completely different functions, and there's no reason for it to be a case of either/or. Well, we can compare years required, and this long after the Age of Reason and the rise of the STEM fields, the 12 years of English as essentially just fictional literature, with, say, just one year of physics, is way, way too much. We should be in line for some disruption. At the very least the 12 years should teach a lot of writing, no, not creative writing or how to write fictional literature but writing for business, law, medicine, politics, and the STEM fields. Maybe eventually such writing lessons could actually leak over into journalism? > In both cases an argument for teaching it is that it exercises the mind, developing a sense of abstraction in the case of algebra, and imagination and empathy in the case of literature, I would argue. I can have some agreement with such an argument, but there is much more to consider. And, as simple as your argument is, it was never clear in the 14 years of English I was force fed. In fact, no reasonable purpose was made clear. Yes, it was suggested that some of fictional literature could teach about people. Hmm .... Eventually I did learn some about people, via experience and some well respected materials out of, say, the clinical psychology field, especially E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, i.e., love and emotions, psychology, and religion. Now that I have learned, I can return to some of fictional literature and see that, yes, some lessons were there as examples of, say, candidate human behavior. E.g., can watch the movie In Harm's Way where there are four women: One is really a total slut; she is married but, still, when her husband is not around, likes to go to a party, get drunk, pick a man, go to a beach, go skinny dipping, and spend the night. Another woman wants to be a slut but hides it even from herself, E.g., she is engaged and there behaving with high propriety but, when her fiance is not around, goes to a party, undresses to her undies, and tempts her escort, whom she suspected needed no tempting, to rape her. The third is an excellent version of a wonderful, perceptive, supportive, devoted, loving wife and mother to be. And the fourth is an excellent example of a woman for a man past being a father again. So, Otto Preminger gave a nice range of possibilities. But, unless walk into the movie already knowing these lessons, possibilities, fairly well, will likely miss the significance. Thus, the movie is more entertainment, say, to reinforce what the audience already knows, instead of a way to learn more. Really, mostly, over the years, I've had to conclude that fictional literature is a poor way to learn much of anything significant about people; I will grant that there are a lot of examples that might provide more on your "empathy"; even here, if that is one of the intended lessons, then it is taught indirectly and ineffectively. Background 1 -- Seriousness: When I read some fiction and take it seriously, I want clear presentations of the points being made and good evidence for the reality, correctness, and practical relevance of the points. Background 2 -- Art: Or, I can like some of art, and one definition is the communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion. Conclusion: Instead of such seriousness or even such art, I finally concluded that the content of nearly all of fictional literature is just presenting to the reader vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment. Teaching good, solid lessons about people? Not very much. So, here we have a case of literary criticism of literary criticism. Net, for the teaching of English, I suggest: (1) Cut way back the required time spent on fictional literature. (2) For the fictional literature taught, be much more clear on just what the content is supposed to mean and why we should take it seriously. (3) Do much more in teaching writing other than creative writing.
walterbell 12y ago
How would you classify historical fiction?
- graycat 12y ago
  Mostly as not true! Recently I watched via YouTube all of Winds of War, right "historical fiction". I wanted to learn more about WWII. Well, the lessons about what really happened in WWII, except for the holocaust, were a bit low on solid credibility, e.g., the meeting with Mussolini.
mturmon 12y ago
Easily half of the NYRB writings are about non-fiction, FYI. Above, you have confined yourself to technical non-fiction, and a narrow range of technical non-fiction at that (math and computer science). So the same observation you make about Parks (unconsciously assuming "books" equals fiction) could be made about you. And in fact, the NYRB has had a series of articles by Stephen Weinberg (http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/steven-weinberg-2/ http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/steven-weinberg-2/) and by Freeman Dyson (http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/freeman-dyson/ http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/freeman-dyson/) providing a broad, humanist perspective on technical subject areas and their history. One of my favorite of their non-fiction writers is Mary Beard (http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/beard-mary/ http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/beard-mary/) who has an amazing command of Greek and Roman history, and can integrate multiple perspectives to put you back at that far-off time (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/cleopatra-myth/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/cleopat...).
- graycat 12y ago
  > Easily half of the NYRB writings are about non-fiction, FYI. So, it's non-fiction mostly because it is reviews? But nearly all the reviews are about fictional literature, right? Before I posted, to learn more about the NYR I went to their Web site and to their page "About the Review" at http://www.nybooks.com/about/ http://www.nybooks.com/about/ and read. There, yes, I saw "Freeman Dyson described the scientist as rebel" but that's not Dyson's science, e.g., what he did to clean up Feynman's math, what he did in operations research in WWII, etc. I also saw that they describe themselves as "a literary and critical journal". So, it's about fictional literature. > Above, you have confined yourself to technical non-fiction Really, I just gave some examples, but from long reading of HN I do have to conclude that my computer science examples are really typical of some of the best of what is of interest here at HN. So, the "books" of the NYR are not much like the books of HN. > So the same observation you make about Parks (unconsciously assuming "books" equals fiction) could be made about you. Not about me but maybe about HN. I didn't see mention of the Weinberg articles. Really, the several categories of books, fiction, non-fiction, humanism, literature, etc. aside, the more clear dichotomy is C. P. Snow's Two Cultures -- just two. There HN is firmly in one of these two and the NYR, the other.

by graycat 12y ago

modfodder 12y ago

Seems like your best years of learning were seriously wasted at least partially because you either refused or seemed incapable of learning from the books you were forced to read. Its great that you have a love of learning from nonfiction, I wish more people had the desire you do, but there is a lot to learn from fiction if you are open to it.

graycat 12y ago
The books they forced me to read, just what the heck were the intended lessons? Tough to say. Since then I saw that I should have just gotten the CliffsNotes; they make it clear and explicit just what the heck the really big lessons are supposed to be. The books and teachers didn't. > but there is a lot to learn from fiction if you are open to it. Being "open to it" is not nearly enough. Knowing about people is important, darned important, and I knew that in quite clear terms in the fifth grade and since. A big problem is, the works of fictional literature just do not make clear just what their points are or give solid support for their points. Instead, it's all just a definite maybe. For any intended lessons, the works of fictional literature just are not solid enough to take seriously, and there are now much better sources, ones that make clear just what they are claiming and provide relatively solid support for their claims.
- Ollinson 12y ago
  It's a shame that you have such disdain toward capital L literature because some of the best writing on fiction is done by people who share your criticisms. I fail to see the difference between your dismissal of fiction and a mathephobe's statement "when will we ever use this stuff in the real world." I don't know how an intelligent person can argue in good faith that fiction is not only meritless but basically useless. It takes very little effort to look around and see how untrue that statement is.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    > "when will we ever use this stuff in the real world." No. The complaint is more "why are we studying this instead of something else", and the various values of 'something else' have made a better case than Literature has. Not just practical utility, but mind-expansion (pure math), understanding the world (history, especially recent history), and understanding fellow human beings (sociology and psychology).
    - lotsofcows 12y ago
      "understanding fellow human beings (sociology and psychology)" You just defined fiction.

Jtsummers 12y ago

I had one course each year in 1-12 that had me reading fiction, that was English/Language Arts. My math, science, history and other courses focused almost exclusively on non-fiction. Where did you go to school that they only provided fictional science and math texts?

graycat 12y ago
I will try to be still more clear: For 14 years, that is, grades 1-12 and the first two years of college, English, nearly all just fictional literature, was required, and math and science got nowhere near as much time and mostly were just optional. I took all the math and science that was available, but that was just six years of math, two of chemistry, and two of physics. Moreover, the math and science were too simple. You mentioned history: There I saw too little in detail and attention to causality to take the content seriously. Also the history courses spent far too much time on the really old stuff, including 2000+ years ago, and not nearly enough time after 1800. And for the old stuff, they neglected the roles of domestic animals, masonry, military technology, metals, open ocean sailing and trade, the longitude problem, coal, steel, and steam. For after 1900, eventually I learned that from TV, e.g., the series Victory at Sea. So, I was effectively blocked from anything significant in non-fiction until math and physics in my last two years of college; there I was a double major in math and physics but at the last moment dropped physics as a major and was only a math major. From grade 5 on, I very much wanted the math and science. Being force fed fictional literature for 14 years was a really big bummer -- I was torqued and still am. During those bad 14 years, at one point I did push ahead: My last three years in college were in a relatively good school with, actually, a quite good math department. But, to save money, my freshman year in college was in a state school I could walk to. There they wouldn't let me take calculus but forced me to take a math course beneath what I'd already covered in high school. So, I got a respected calculus book, dug in, and learned freshman calculus on my own. Then, in my sophomore year in the better college, I started with their sophomore calculus, using the same text as Harvard, and did well. So, I taught myself freshman calculus and, actually, never took it or got course credit for it. Bad high school? Not comparatively: It was by a wide margin the best public high school in the city and, really, better than the few, small private schools. MIT came recruiting, and the year before me three guys went to Princeton and ran against each other for President of the Freshman Class. I see a problem: English, as essentially just fictional literature, was required and got pushed hard for 14 years with nothing else even comparable. I was and remain torqued. Now, here on HN, fictional literature is very much not the source of "the books we talk about". Good.

skybrian 12y ago

The original article was about books people discuss with friends in real life, not online. How many of these books do you actually talk about? Although it's commonly recommended, I can't remember ever actually talking with someone else who's also read *The C Programming Language" about the contents of that book, though if they're a programmer we might discuss something about C if it comes up.

graycat 12y ago
By talking about, I was including on HN, and all of those books so qualify. For K&R, sure, I've talked about it, yes, orally. E.g., for that book, what's with the idiosyncratic syntax? And why the case of x+++++y? And some cases of declare statements can be real puzzles that can need talking about -- there is even a sparse, too sparse, discussion in the book. And to talk, should mention why the language was designed to run in about 8 K bytes on a DEC machine (helps explain y =+ x). And, in one discussion, I got led to where in K&R actually can find the actual memory allocation technique used by MALLOC and FREE. We should talk about what we are paying now, when we use C (or really C++ which was originally just a preprocessor to C), due to the original 8 KB constraint when now main memory goes for about $10/GB and motherboards commonly support 32 GB of ECC main memory. So, yes, we do still talk about C and K&R. C stands to be around for a long time, and I'm sure that students new to programming will do a lot of talking about K&R. While in college, they may do the talking in person at some social gatherings.
tokenrove 12y ago
I've talked about, in person, the contents of K&R with people who were learning C; why did they choose to present things in that order? What kinds of practical aspects of the language are omitted? et cetera. I guess it depends on your friends, but I'll support the parent's case of some of those being great in-person discussion books, especially Knuth. And lots of great math books. Knuth's little "romance novel", Surreal Numbers, is a great example of a highly discussable math book.

andreasvc 12y ago

The meaning of a word is determined by its context, so it's not particularly significant or objectionable that "books" is used to mean fiction here. I think you're being a bit dramatic with regards to having to read fiction in school. Society has decided that reading fiction is part of a well-rounded education. The same objections you make could be made about having to learn algebra; most people can object that they will never directly use it in later life and that they could have spend the time learning other things. In both cases an argument for teaching it is that it exercises the mind, developing a sense of abstraction in the case of algebra, and imagination and empathy in the case of literature, I would argue. It is not useful to compare the value of fiction versus non-fiction, they have completely different functions, and there's no reason for it to be a case of either/or.

graycat 12y ago
> The meaning of a word is determined by its context, so it's not particularly significant or objectionable that "books" is used to mean fiction here. While I believe that books should mean, say, what is sold on Amazon or what is in a large public or academic library, for "context," here on HN books are more like the ones I listed, e.g., Knuth, and not what is emphasized in NYR. Gee, is there some irony here? > I think you're being a bit dramatic with regards to having to read fiction in school. But being "dramatic" is heavily what fictional literature is about, right? More irony here? > Society has decided that reading fiction is part of a well-rounded education. Well, if not "society" then a lot of people in K-12 education, people, who, a guess, were English majors in college. There's some social-academic field self-perpetuation here, maybe? > The same objections you make could be made about having to learn algebra; most people can object that they will never directly use it in later life and that they could have spend the time learning other things. I explain more in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8410549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8410549 in this tread. There I mention that in the grade 1-12 school I went to, algebra was optional. I took it, sure, along with all the math that was offered. In that post, I also explained that much of my objection to fictional literature was the amount of it required with significant math and science having many fewer years and all those optional. So, in grades 1-12 I want to, and as I explain at a comparatively good school, the dichotomy is not just fictional literature versus algebra but 12 years of such literature, required, versus just four years of math (beyond trivial arithmetic), one year of chemistry, and one year of physics, all optional and none very advanced. Bummer. > It is not useful to compare the value of fiction versus non-fiction, they have completely different functions, and there's no reason for it to be a case of either/or. Well, we can compare years required, and this long after the Age of Reason and the rise of the STEM fields, the 12 years of English as essentially just fictional literature, with, say, just one year of physics, is way, way too much. We should be in line for some disruption. At the very least the 12 years should teach a lot of writing, no, not creative writing or how to write fictional literature but writing for business, law, medicine, politics, and the STEM fields. Maybe eventually such writing lessons could actually leak over into journalism? > In both cases an argument for teaching it is that it exercises the mind, developing a sense of abstraction in the case of algebra, and imagination and empathy in the case of literature, I would argue. I can have some agreement with such an argument, but there is much more to consider. And, as simple as your argument is, it was never clear in the 14 years of English I was force fed. In fact, no reasonable purpose was made clear. Yes, it was suggested that some of fictional literature could teach about people. Hmm .... Eventually I did learn some about people, via experience and some well respected materials out of, say, the clinical psychology field, especially E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, i.e., love and emotions, psychology, and religion. Now that I have learned, I can return to some of fictional literature and see that, yes, some lessons were there as examples of, say, candidate human behavior. E.g., can watch the movie In Harm's Way where there are four women: One is really a total slut; she is married but, still, when her husband is not around, likes to go to a party, get drunk, pick a man, go to a beach, go skinny dipping, and spend the night. Another woman wants to be a slut but hides it even from herself, E.g., she is engaged and there behaving with high propriety but, when her fiance is not around, goes to a party, undresses to her undies, and tempts her escort, whom she suspected needed no tempting, to rape her. The third is an excellent version of a wonderful, perceptive, supportive, devoted, loving wife and mother to be. And the fourth is an excellent example of a woman for a man past being a father again. So, Otto Preminger gave a nice range of possibilities. But, unless walk into the movie already knowing these lessons, possibilities, fairly well, will likely miss the significance. Thus, the movie is more entertainment, say, to reinforce what the audience already knows, instead of a way to learn more. Really, mostly, over the years, I've had to conclude that fictional literature is a poor way to learn much of anything significant about people; I will grant that there are a lot of examples that might provide more on your "empathy"; even here, if that is one of the intended lessons, then it is taught indirectly and ineffectively. Background 1 -- Seriousness: When I read some fiction and take it seriously, I want clear presentations of the points being made and good evidence for the reality, correctness, and practical relevance of the points. Background 2 -- Art: Or, I can like some of art, and one definition is the communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion. Conclusion: Instead of such seriousness or even such art, I finally concluded that the content of nearly all of fictional literature is just presenting to the reader vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment. Teaching good, solid lessons about people? Not very much. So, here we have a case of literary criticism of literary criticism. Net, for the teaching of English, I suggest: (1) Cut way back the required time spent on fictional literature. (2) For the fictional literature taught, be much more clear on just what the content is supposed to mean and why we should take it seriously. (3) Do much more in teaching writing other than creative writing.

walterbell 12y ago

How would you classify historical fiction?

graycat 12y ago
Mostly as not true! Recently I watched via YouTube all of Winds of War, right "historical fiction". I wanted to learn more about WWII. Well, the lessons about what really happened in WWII, except for the holocaust, were a bit low on solid credibility, e.g., the meeting with Mussolini.

mturmon 12y ago

Easily half of the NYRB writings are about non-fiction, FYI. Above, you have confined yourself to technical non-fiction, and a narrow range of technical non-fiction at that (math and computer science). So the same observation you make about Parks (unconsciously assuming "books" equals fiction) could be made about you. And in fact, the NYRB has had a series of articles by Stephen Weinberg (http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/steven-weinberg-2/ http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/steven-weinberg-2/) and by Freeman Dyson (http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/freeman-dyson/ http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/freeman-dyson/) providing a broad, humanist perspective on technical subject areas and their history. One of my favorite of their non-fiction writers is Mary Beard (http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/beard-mary/ http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/beard-mary/) who has an amazing command of Greek and Roman history, and can integrate multiple perspectives to put you back at that far-off time (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/cleopatra-myth/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/cleopat...).

graycat 12y ago
> Easily half of the NYRB writings are about non-fiction, FYI. So, it's non-fiction mostly because it is reviews? But nearly all the reviews are about fictional literature, right? Before I posted, to learn more about the NYR I went to their Web site and to their page "About the Review" at http://www.nybooks.com/about/ http://www.nybooks.com/about/ and read. There, yes, I saw "Freeman Dyson described the scientist as rebel" but that's not Dyson's science, e.g., what he did to clean up Feynman's math, what he did in operations research in WWII, etc. I also saw that they describe themselves as "a literary and critical journal". So, it's about fictional literature. > Above, you have confined yourself to technical non-fiction Really, I just gave some examples, but from long reading of HN I do have to conclude that my computer science examples are really typical of some of the best of what is of interest here at HN. So, the "books" of the NYR are not much like the books of HN. > So the same observation you make about Parks (unconsciously assuming "books" equals fiction) could be made about you. Not about me but maybe about HN. I didn't see mention of the Weinberg articles. Really, the several categories of books, fiction, non-fiction, humanism, literature, etc. aside, the more clear dichotomy is C. P. Snow's Two Cultures -- just two. There HN is firmly in one of these two and the NYR, the other.