10 ms·

Ask HN: How do you consume Hacker News?

62 points by volare 17y ago

Although I enjoy reading hacker news, I haven't found a satisfying interface for doing so. I have major gripes with both the website interface and the RSS feed. Why I dislike the website interface: --Front page stories are not in chronological order (I can't keep track of which stories I've already read) --Stories are limited to the latest 210 (if I don't visit frequently, I can't see which stories I've missed) --Links to comments are too small and not not in a consistent location horizontally (I almost always want to read the discussion before I click through to the external site) --I would also like to be able to filter stores that are below a certain points threshold. Why I dislike using the RSS feed: --Does not show the number of points or the number of comments (crucial for selecting what to read) I'm not just trying to be a hater; I think these things significantly harm my experience here. So, am I just ignorant of better ways to consume HN? Do these things not annoy you too?

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
ptn 17y ago
--Front page stories are not in chronological order (I can't keep track of which stories I've already read) That's kind of the point. Instead of seeing a bunch of stories, you see them ordered by the opinion of users. Visited links are painted in a different color, use that to keep track.
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  Unless you automatically clear your history, as I do, when your browser closes.
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    Your browser history is one of the best tools you have for making your web experience better, not just here, but on every site. It's hard for me to imagine any otherwise-tolerable situation in which I'd want to cut off my browser history every time I pause for a bit.
    - lunchbox 17y ago
      Here's one problem with browser history: http://startpanic.com/ http://startpanic.com/
      - randallsquared 17y ago
        I don't view that as a problem -- at least, as a problem that can be solved more than very temporarily. We used to have (at least) three domains: public, private, and secret. The private domain was clearly under attack by networks and data processing decades ago, but it was thought that laws and care could combat it successfully. Around the early to middle 1990s, it became clear that this wasn't working, and that ordinary progress was going to push private things into the public sphere. Some people (the cypherpunks) thought that the way to resolve this was to move private things into the secret sphere, via public key crypto. That could have worked for a while, but it eventually would have failed in the same way that laws and "just be careful" were already failing, and it didn't matter, in any case, since the vast majority of people never bought into the need. Today, I believe that it's clear that virtually everything now in the private domain will soon become public, and that there's not really anything that can be done about it. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the problems associated with losing privacy to the public are less severe than the problems of losing what should be public to the secret, insofar as it's possible. So, basically, clearing your browser history is like plugging a hole in a sieve: the only way to actually stop the leakage is to wall yourself off from the world, a cure worse than the disease. Instead, I think we should focus on keeping secret things that need to be secret, and abandon the merely private to the public sphere. With the increasing proliferation of wireless cameras and microphones, and software that the vast majority of users do not understand, privacy is a lost cause. Begin acting now as though everything you do is public -- it's the only safe thing to do.
      - riffer 17y ago
        That's only a problem here b/c in the past it has been used more for mischief than for good. There are a ton of good applications for using a browser history to enhance the user experience. As we see more of these in the future, attitudes will change.
  - algorias 17y ago
    Browser history also fails when you use more than 1 machine on a regular basis.
- volare 17y ago
  I understand that the front page is showing popular stories, but I would much rather have them be chronological also (a la Digg). The problems with just using the link color to keep track are that it's very inefficient (instead of scanning a solid block of new stories I have to pick them out across multiple pages) and that I clear my browser history frequently.
  - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
    There is a strict chronological version: http://news.ycombinator.com/newest http://news.ycombinator.com/newest
- albertsun 17y ago
  I wish I could sync my visited links between my laptop and my mobile to make this easier.
  - runinit 17y ago
    I believe you can do that with Firefox and the Weave extension.
jwallz 17y ago
Google Reader
- volare 17y ago
  The problem is I usual select what to read by the number of points and/or comments. I don't want to click through every item to see those things.
benwr 17y ago
I use Google Reader, but you're right. There isn't enough information in the RSS feed to make it really enjoyable to use. You have to judge what you want to read based solely on the title. One thing that helps, for firefox users at least, is the "Better GReader" extension. It lets you open the link in the article header in an iframe, instead of a new window/tab. This makes perusal of the actual article much faster. One other useful feature for the RSS feed (beyond the current rank) might be the top comments on an article, instead of just a link to the comments page.
- tptacek 17y ago
  I really wish the RSS entries had score and number of comments in it, along with the domain from the story.
- tinio 17y ago
  I've been using an RSS feed I created for a while now which also "tries" to include a summary of the article. feed://ynewsrss.appspot.com/ It's not perfect, but it helps out quite a bit in getting a little bit more context before deciding to click through a link.
nfnaaron 17y ago
I could be wrong, but I also could be pretty close to right. I think the RSS feed tracks http://news.ycombinator.com/newest http://news.ycombinator.com/newest , the new link in the top menu bar. The feed and new link appear to me to be in reverse chron order. If you don't visit often, your rss reader should keep track of everything until you check in; without the points/comments, as you point out. If you check in often enough, following the new page should be the best of both worlds: chron, and points/comments. In answer to your title question, I: - click on interesting stuff in my rss reader - then look through the first couple of pages of the front page to see what's gathering comments that I'm interested in - then, if I still haven't found enough to keep me from working, I look at the new page to see if there's anything I haven't seen yet.
- tptacek 17y ago
  Unless I use a different RSS feed from you, I'm pretty sure it doesn't track "New"; things usually need a few upvotes until they hit the feed.
  - nfnaaron 17y ago
    Ah, looks like you're right. "New with points."
ddemchuk 17y ago
excessively
riklomas 17y ago
I made a Twitter-bot a while ago for HN, I find it useful and there's over 7000 people following it now. It's only new stories in the top 5 though, mainly to stop information overload. http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/ http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/
- jonathandeamer 17y ago
  I'm a big fan of this, mainly because of the top 5 filter, but also because I tend to use Twitter as a centralised hub for much of my media consumption, rather than visiting different websites, so it suits this use. I have a "reading material" Twitter list set up, including @newsycombinator, and I regularly scan this for this to add to Instapaper, which I then generally read when travelling. Admittedly, the problem with this is that it means I'm a less active participant in the community here than I'd like to be.
- wallflower 17y ago
  Impressive. Your little robot is on 388 lists. Note: CNNBrk has 18k listings. http://listorious.com/top/listed http://listorious.com/top/listed http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/lists/memberships http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/lists/memberships http://followcost.com/newsycombinator http://followcost.com/newsycombinator
- bootload 17y ago
  "... I made a Twitter-bot a while ago for HN ..." Thanks for making this Rik. I use this as my primary feed. Works well.
anatoly 17y ago
I don't consume HN at all. I read HN through the website. The things you mention are a little annoying, but not something that worries me a lot.
timf 17y ago
I would like to respond by saying "instead of griping, show us your counter idea as a demo" but that currently seems like a steep hill to climb. I have been curious for some time when/if a read-only API (with access to all information past/present) might be introduced to let people easily create alternate 'views.' Everyone seems to start with building their own screenscraper + polling infrastructure (see two cool sites, for example, http://hntrends.com http://hntrends.com and http://searchyc.com/ http://searchyc.com/ ) which seems like a demotivating and fragile obstacle in the way of getting at the problem space where people actually want to experiment. The SearchYC site (which is great don't get me wrong) has a JSON interface but only for search queries, not the more comprehensive and notification-based system that a definitive API could be. My comment that there is no API could also be seen as a "gripe" I guess, but I am not really complaining about anything. I love HN and will continue to excessively visit the current website as-is. I also don't even know how PG feels about the issue (i.e., is it "will never happen" or "no time"?).
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
  Why doesn't someone build the site-scraper, and provide an API to its results?
  - timf 17y ago
    I assumed it would be worse technically. Perhaps if it was OK to relentlessly poll, it could be a good service. Things like votes and comment edits would be hard to capture quickly unless every single item was relentlessly polled. On the other hand I am not trying to rule out viable alternatives by suggesting it comes straight from HN, I even considered making what you are saying at one time. I just don't think it would be as good as an HN one.
  - tdupree 17y ago
    I was thinking the same thing a while back. An API for HN would be awesome. A problem with that though is that it is really only a one way street and only allows for passive consumption rather than easily interacting. While a site-scraper API implementation would be handy, I think people would lose out on the functionality and community interactions that can only really be had at news.ycombinator.com. Still though, I suppose some sort of site-scraped data (perhaps hosted on google apps for everyone to use) could be used in tandem with a greasemonkey script to further enhance the site without taking away the interactivity, that could be interesting...
anigbrowl 17y ago
Website. Yeah, it's imperfect but I've gotten used to it. Your life won't suffer that much if you miss stuff, anything sufficiently significant will get reposted somewhere else.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
Shameless plug time: I've got a temp site up that pulls current articles from all the major tech sites and gives you 1) more stories, 2) movement in comment count, votes, and rankings across each site, and 3) emphasis on fast-moving stories at the top. http://project-management-methodologies.net http://project-management-methodologies.net I could add sorting, but it's only a lark right now. (I set it up to gather test data for another app I'm writing.) But if anybody wants sorting by time, let me know. That's currently the way I consume HN. I still visit the comments feed and branch off from there occasionally, but not as often as I used to. I find it more interesting to watch relative movement of stories (sinking or rising?) and movement of stories across the major boards.
vaksel 17y ago
1. Visit site 2. Hit Threads 3. See if my words of wisdom got voted up(heheh) and if they need a response 4. Scan the front page for Ask/Tell HN type questions. 5. Scan the page for posts with a lot of comments and see if the topic is interesting enough to check out. I usually just check once an hour or, and it takes like ~10 minutes.
gills 17y ago
I just use the web interface. Skim the front page first, then the new page. I check out articles with a high comments/points ratio first (or only) because the discussion of the intelligent folks here is what I value.
RevRal 17y ago
No matter what, you'll always miss good stuff. For example, most of HN missed the great article by unalone: http://journal.rinich.com/post/249408496/god http://journal.rinich.com/post/249408496/god . Both of the submissions on the article were flagged, killed. I've been reading here for a very long time, but only recently signed up. I've always tried to ignore the amount of points a submission has. Instead: 1. Get to know the websites that consistently have good articles. 2. Find the users who submit good stuff. Click on people's profiles, and look at their karma. 3. Learn to recognize link bait. A lot of users try to use titles that aren't link bait. 4. When a submission looks questionable, click the user profile and see if they have good cred. Look at how long they've been a user and if they have good karma. If the user seems to have good cred, then bite the bullet and check out their submission as it is probably worthwhile. 5. Start up-voting submissions that you like. Get yourself involved. You'll get better at scanning through the submissions and getting to the good stuff quickly.
- araneae 17y ago
  I can see why it was killed. What a load of drivel... I mean, seriously, who ends a blog post with "[w]e’re in this together"?
  - RevRal 17y ago
    Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned what I thought of the article, instead just said that it didn't deserve to get killed. I am a very discerning reader and the article resonated well with me. I'm glad I read it and I'm sure there are more people who would have enjoyed it. That's why I brought it up. It was killed before more people could have read it. The only reason I found my way to the article was because I'm also discerning on HN, using the five "tips" I outlined more than the points on submissions.
  - unalone 17y ago
    I do. Since that post went up, I've received quite a few emails from people thanking me for that drivel, too. So I guess it's not drivel after all? If my goal was to write simplistic, overemoting drivel, I'd have namedropped Bukowski instead of Joyce.
scythe 17y ago
>(I can't keep track of which stories I've already read) Most browsers will color a link you've clicked on differently. I know I've read a story because its link is gray. Of course, if I didn't remember them most of the time, I'd wonder if I wasn't wasting time in a more heinous way that I'd originally imagined.
petercooper 17y ago
I visit the site every day or so, scan the front page for interesting things, then read those. I definitely don't care for seeing every single article. It's a river, I take a dip. I don't care about "missing" anything because new stuff is always coming along. The "missing" attitude leads to information overload. E-mail's the only thing I don't want to miss, not inane news on the net.
- volare 17y ago
  I don't want to read every article either. But if there was a story last week that got 300+ points and is no longer on the website, I want to be able to find it.
  - s-phi-nl 17y ago
    You can do that using the best list at http://news.ycombinator.com/best http://news.ycombinator.com/best. This is the best recent stories, for some value of recent (I believe 10 days).
simonista 17y ago
Two things that help to see what you've missed in the past several days are http://news.ycombinator.com/lists http://news.ycombinator.com/lists (specifically best and bestcomments, although all are useful), and http://ask.searchyc.com/ http://ask.searchyc.com/ which unfortunately is only for Ask NH posts, but is chronological with points and comments.
- simonista 17y ago
  Another thing which I don't personally do, but which might be helpful is to come up with a list of HN regulars who often comment on stories you enjoy, and then check out their comment history (eg for pg: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg)
- jonny_noog 17y ago
  I've often wondered why http://news.ycombinator.com/classic http://news.ycombinator.com/classic is not on that lists page... Are there any others missing that people know of?
reidab 17y ago
I use Nirmal Patel's neat republishing of the RSS feed that uses Readability to extract content from target links. http://www.nirmalpatel.com/hacks/hnrss.html http://www.nirmalpatel.com/hacks/hnrss.html
- skorgu 17y ago
  Wow, this is exactly what I never thought to wish for.
  - cschep 17y ago
    everything you never you always wanted.
- protez 17y ago
  Thank u so much! It's a real gem!
caf 17y ago
I just use the RSS feed and pick the stories based on the title. Seems to work OK.
- robotron 17y ago
  Yep. It would be nice if the body of the story was included also since they're usually fairly short.
jlees 17y ago
With reluctance, of late. I tend to click through to showcased items via the twitter @newsycombinator feed or on IRC. Other than that, the website, but I don't visit as much as I used to. I just find less of interest lately.
tptacek 17y ago
Via SearchYC RSS subscription to patio11's comments.
k0n2ad 17y ago
With smoked Gouda and a side of caviar.
josephkern 17y ago
Twitter.
Xichekolas 17y ago
Like this: http://andrewfarmer.name/screenshot.png http://andrewfarmer.name/screenshot.png Using this: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039 Not sure it really addresses any of your issues though. Just know that it wouldn't be hard to implement some of your ideas with a GM script.
- diN0bot 17y ago
  i like your script. Ask HN are the best part of HN.
jarsj 17y ago
I would rather love to see it go more complicated and geeky. Hackers would figure it out and non-hackers would get filtered away.
- unalone 17y ago
  Being a hacker doesn't mean embracing unnecessary clutter. In fact, many people would argue it's the opposite. I don't do complicated and geeky. I'm smart enough to figure it out, but I have better things to do than subscribe to an asshole designer's ego trip. I stick around on Hacker News in part because its design respects me.
  - jarsj 17y ago
    I do not embrace that too. I have spent a good deal of my last 3 years out of college learning usability and can not agree more on what you said. However, I do believe if hacker news was more obvious and followed all those principles, it would attract - Hey, we got a job for you. - How do you read the contents of the file in a string in Java ? and other such things.
    - unalone 17y ago
      Fair enough. Though recent alternatives to Hacker News have lessened a lot of those posts, and I'm glad. Stack Overflow in particular has drawn away a lot of newbie questions (including many of my own that I'd have probably asked here). Now we just need an HN job board: Those are the posts I see increasingly more of.
thaumaturgy 17y ago
I consume HN as a light snack between projects throughout the day. I'm not too bothered by it if I miss something.
- Concours 17y ago
  that's almost how I also do it, but reading the question above, I've tried to work out a solution and set a Hacker news subcategory here: http://bit.ly/4WxNeI http://bit.ly/4WxNeI on mcsquare.me (category: Technology, subcategory: Hackers), you can not just check hacker news titles, but also Paul Graham's blog and the Y combinator posterous Blog, and track back old stories very fast. The bad part of this is just that, external links won't bring you to hacker news, but the original post, for Ask HN, it works very well, I've tried to figure out how to find the rss-link for new items and for the discussion tread (or comment), couldn't figure it out, I suspect there's no such a thing (Admin ?), so if one of you find out how to get it, thanks for sharing, or the admin may try to put those datas on a feed. Hope this can help some folk here, and if they are additional Y combinator feed I'm missing and you may want to see there, let me know.
edw519 17y ago
Hey volare, I can see how it can easily happen, but please don't let any of these things confuse you: - the links to current hacker related content - a fairly sophisiticated way to present those links in an "optimal" manner - discussion like you'll find nowhere else - content from which to learn better hacking - content from which to learn better business skills - friendships & business contacts tough to make other places - people who put in a lot of TLC to maintain all of the above Hacker News is not a destination. It is an excellent resource to augment the main thing that you should be doing. Make no mistake about it, this is supposed to be a community of doers, not lookers. You have made some astute observations and provided interesting feedback, but I'm concerned that you're missing the point... If you notice so much about Hacker News that needs refining, then you're probably paying too much attention. Come here for your break then leave and put that energy of yours where it belongs, on your own project. This site, although not ideal, is pretty good. Let's all stop worrying about what we might be missing here and focus on what we are missing with our own sites.
- volare 17y ago
  Hacker News is not a destination. It is an excellent resource ... Sure, but I want a better resource. I'm not looking to spend more time here. I'm looking to see all of the good content while spending less time here.
bayareaguy 17y ago
I often read HN when I happen to be at an impasse away from my laptop or desktop. I'd like to HN's interface offer better support for mobile browsers. For example, http://m.ycombinator.com http://m.ycombinator.com could be a version of news.ycombinator.com with margins, indentation and other settings appropriate for a Blackberry or iPhone. Also I don't know what's up with Viigo, but it doesn't seem to work with HN's RSS url. Anyone else have that problem?
- andyking 17y ago
  The simplicity of this site makes it far more conducive to mobile browsing than, say, BBC News or the NYT. Some of the indentation on comments can be a bit of a pain, but it's perfectly workable on the Opera Mini browser I use.
- r11t 17y ago
  If you need a mobile version of HN which displays nicely on the iPhone : http://www.icombinator.net http://www.icombinator.net
kijun 17y ago
Try using hn-filter, a feed that I made last week. For example, http://hn-filter.heroku.com/rss?cmt_gte=2&point_gte=5&limit=10 http://hn-filter.heroku.com/rss?cmt_gte=2&point_gte=5&#3... gives you 10 HN articles with more than 1 comment and 4 points in RSS format. It also gives you the number of comments and points. The source is at http://github.com/kijun/hn-filter http://github.com/kijun/hn-filter Hope it helps.
tdupree 17y ago
I always thought a HN API would be awesome, would give us a lot more freedom to mold HN into different interfaces. I have toyed with the idea of a scraper but I think that ends up being a bit of a broken solution. I wrote a greasemonkey script for HN a while back that I can't live without now. There are actually a couple great HN greasemonkey scripts out there. You could always try making a mashup of those that have your favorite elements. You may end up making something that a lot of people find useful. If you like, give Hacker News OnePage a whirl: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30512 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30512
IgorPartola 17y ago
I mainly use the RSS feed from NetVibes. I wish clicking on the link there took me to HN, instead of to the source article. Sometimes I am more interested in comments to a feature than the actual feature (the title might say it all, but the reaction is what's interesting). I am to the point where I might create my own wrapper around HN's RSS feed.
windock 17y ago
I use http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/ http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/ That's just a nice newspaper-like layout.
mhartl 17y ago
I recommend "hnweekly: this week's top stories from Hacker News" at http://hnweekly.chibidesign.com/ http://hnweekly.chibidesign.com/ to find good stories you might have missed.
rosshill 17y ago
I consume HN through a feedmyinbox.com subscription, that takes the most popular articles of the day and emails them to me at 3pm each day. I then click the interesting ones into new tabs and go through them.
prakash 17y ago
Here are some links that might be useful: - http://hackerhackernews.com/ http://hackerhackernews.com/ - http://news.ycombinator.com/lists http://news.ycombinator.com/lists - http://hnsort.com/ http://hnsort.com/
adrianwaj 17y ago
I consume on Twitter via hackerlinks: http://twitter.com/hackerlinks http://twitter.com/hackerlinks - (personally over Twitya http://twitya.com/#hackerlinks http://twitya.com/#hackerlinks) ..parses the new comments for links and posts up the result - check it out, over 500 followers and stabilizing -- it is a bit of a hosepipe so open wide
jgamman 17y ago
left to right, top to bottom. other standards exist in the world but YMMV
chengas123 17y ago
I'll tell you how I don't - via Chrome. The site looks awful in it. I have to switch to FireFox.
- selven 17y ago
  What's so bad about the site in Chrome? I'm looking at the site in (Linux) Chrome and Firefox side by side and, aside from the extra 4 lines of vertical screen space that Chrome gives you, they look exactly the same.
sabon 17y ago
If you want to come rarely but don't want to miss the most important stuff, this should help: http://news.ycombinator.com/best http://news.ycombinator.com/best
Pistos2 17y ago
I used to use http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/ http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/ but then became dissatisfied with its choice of links, so I made my own: http://hn.purepistos.net/ http://hn.purepistos.net/ which takes http://news.ycombinator.com/active http://news.ycombinator.com/active and filters for a minimum vote count (currently 40). I provide the title, the link, and a link to the HN thread. Consumable via FriendFeed, Twitter, RSS and Atom.

araneae 17y ago

No, your goal was to sound smart. It's cliche... just like saying "we're all in this together." I'll break your essay down for you. A) A section in which you say you hate small talk. You use this fact to claim that you are deep, because small talk is shallow. B) A section in which you talk about your love of James Joyce, an author that pretty much no one can read, in order to sound smart. C) A section in which you talk about how lonely you are, because you're emo. You are very sad and lonely because the girls you date like different music than you. D) The conclusion, in which you try but fail to connect the fact that you are a) deep, b) smart, and c) lonely, by saying that we're all in this together. wipes away a tear If this sounds harsh, I've spent all day grading essays, so I'm out of tolerance for bullshit.

RevRal 17y ago
This is the sort of comment I would have liked to have seen in the submission about the article. Unfortunately, those submissions are dead. The recent article on Ribbon Farm might explain unalone's character: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/21/morality-compassion-and-the-sociopath/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/21/morality-compassion-and... . Maybe that's assuming too much.... I don't normally say things like this, but your analysis is wrong. I'm 22 years old, and I still haven't figured out how to respond to things like this. Your thought process is simply... wrong. It'd be like trying to explain something fundamental and simple. Something that people should just "get," and I'm just baffled when they don't. When they respond like this and completely miss out on something good. There's a certain dignity and standard that people like us hold ourselves to, and we resent those who don't. That's the point of "we're all in this together." We don't often meet people like us. And when we do... I don't know how to explain it. It's just great. Though he could have maybe picked better words... he didn't. It still communicates what he was trying to say. You have to look at things like this through a certain lens. It isn't published work. If he wanted to, he could edit it all day. It is on his personal website so he shouldn't have to. When I said I'm a discerning reader, and am discerning on HN... well, I'm discerning with everything. And it literally breaks my heart that almost everyone I meet is not like this. ---- Addendum: So unalone, what did you think of Circulatory System?
- unalone 17y ago
  Oh! I didn't realize it was you. :-) I'll be the first to accuse me of a certain sloppiness. I usually try to write as quickly as possible and I don't look back over what I write before I publish. For pieces I want to submit places I do a much more thorough job — I'm writing one piece specifically for Hacker News that's like that right now, and I'm taking however many weeks it takes to make sure it gleams. re:Circulatory System — I'm not totally sure. It didn't hook me instantly like some of the other Elephant Six bands have, but the harmonies were pretty impressive. I'm going to give it another listen a few days from now; I feel like it's something I ought to take some time and let seep in.
unalone 17y ago
You don't sound harsh. You sound like any other punkass with a short patience. Take five seconds and look at anything else I've done. It's not like I'm coming out of nowhere and saying these things. I'm the Hacker News presence that writes essay responses to everything. It's not that I dislike people who small talk, it's that — honestly — when I talk these minute little essays shoot out. The people I hang out with tend to be people who talk about things comprehensively. It's not particularly deep. If anything, it's an inherently nerdy trait. But it's who I am. My love for Joyce is similarly something that I talk about a lot. He was the first major artist I fell in love with. Beckett was probably the second. Understand that I came across Joyce and Beckett before I developed a diverse taste in movies/music/art, and so they stick out in my mind in a way other things don't. But Joyce is utterly readable, if you know how to read him. I read Ulysses to thirteen-year-olds. They were stitching up. People that call Joyce unreadable are people who never learned to hear an author's voice in their head. Anybody with half an ear for tone can translate him into the hilarious Irish comic that he is. I mean, his hero masturbates and fantasizes about sex! It's a Seth Rogen comedy in the making. I thought that I clarified the whole "lonely existence" thing in my writing. In fact, I'm sure I did, because you're the first person to complain about that. The issue's not that I'm lonely, because I'm not lonely. The issue's that there's an inherent disconnect between the secular God I worship and the various things other people worship. My idea of a good time is different from a lot of other people's. I don't need to brag about the girls I date. The fact that I write about girls is because that happens to be a part of my life, as much as Joyce is. So I'm not allowed to write about smart people things or social people things? What am I allowed to write about? Lisp? I wrote what I did for other people, not for me. Last year I was in a shitty place; this year I'm in an awesome place and life is great. It's just that I happen to have an audience of hundreds of people, and I do my best to follow them when I have free time, and a good part of my audience is alienated/isolated/heartbroken/generally human, and I thought I had some ideas that might help them. I wrote that article, a lot of people loved it, and when it got posted to Hacker News it got a more fiercely emotional response than anything else I've posted here. I didn't post it, and I wasn't expecting HN of all places to react the way they did. It was not an article I wrote for Hacker News. But I'm glad that people found it and got some sort of strength out of it. If this sounds harsh, it's because you remind me of certain former professors of mine who were vain assholes and who killed my former ambition to become a teacher. Let's not mince words: I pity your students students if you're always such a nagging fucker.
gcv 17y ago
James Joyce, an author that pretty much no one can read Nonsense. I read Ulysses cover to cover. I happily admit that I needed help to do it and understand what I was reading: I listened to the Ulysses series of lectures from The Teaching Company, and read the chapters as the professor covered them. You know what? It's a pretty damned good book. So let me amend your statement. James Joyce is an author few people can read without some help from someone who already understands the work. With a handful of small guideposts, Ulysses is completely readable.
- araneae 17y ago
  "Pretty much no one" != "no one" It's very nice that you enjoyed Ulysses. I did not enjoy it for 100 pages. Reading it is pretty much only useful for bragging, which I see is alive and well.
  - unalone 17y ago
    Funny. I don't read to brag. Not because reading Ulysses wasn't an important part of my life — it was. But when I brag, I brag about things I've made, not other people's things I've consumed. Fortunately for both of us, I can confirm that my life's rich and full enough for me to brag about things without resorting to modernist literature.
noonespecial 17y ago
Something seems misplaced about this reply. We call bullshit on each other a lot on HN, but usually when we criticize, we do it constructively. This seems like plain old criticism. Its interesting that you mention grading essays because I distinctly remember highschool essays (one in particular) that I got back with D's on them red-scrawled with "Disappointing" without further elaboration. A,B,C,D, how could someone who actually is deep, smart and lonely write an acceptable essay on being such? (Because you'll find a disproportionate number of just such individuals here on HN, because here, "we're all in it together".) I should note that I'm the last person who could actually judge the merits of the essay, (although I enjoyed reading it). Joyce bemuses me particularly. I've gathered through observation that he's either the pseudo-intellectual rambler that all others defer to, or a literary genius beyond the ken of mortal man, but am humbled by the knowledge that I lack the instrumentation to make that distinction.
- araneae 17y ago
  You're right; it wasn't really constructive, because I was criticizing the content. A post bragging about how deep and smart you are and complaining that you're lonely belongs on LJ, not HN. And since posts on HN are selected, generally, on content, I figured it's a valid criticism. If you want constructive criticism, I could go after style. There was very little organization; this made it very difficult for a reader to tell where the author was going with the post. From the first few paragraphs, it does look like the author is going to talk about gods, and that's probably why it got flagged so quickly. If the purpose of the essay had been clear from the beginning (it's called an "introduction") then it may have not have been flagged. And re: your D in high school, I can tell you why there was no more elaboration. Grading bad essays makes you want to shoot yourself and/or the writer in the face. And if an essay is as bad as a D, there are so many comments that you want to make that it's impossible to do so without spending several hours writing it up. At 60 students (the number I have this semester), that's an immense amount of time writing something that the vast majority of students won't read anyway. If they really care, they'll come talk to you about the essay. By then you'll hopefully be calm enough to prevent yourself from calling them morons. It's much, much safer to write "disappointing."
  - 17y ago
zackattack 17y ago
[redacted]
- unalone 17y ago
  Seriously? Hacker News has degenerated to outright flaming?
  - zackattack 17y ago
    (I couldn't help myself. You made things even more difficult by setting up the "flamer" joke.) But since I seriously do not understand your points, I submit the following questions: 1. What's your problem with Lil Wayne? 2. Why do you deliberately alienate yourself from someone based on their musical taste? 3. If we're in all of this together, then don't you understand that her preferences are just the result of her experiences? 4. Why do you cling to some sort of predefined me-ness?
    - unalone 17y ago
      Fair enough. I don't have a problem with Lil Wayne. I don't think he's particularly distinguished as a musician, though. He doesn't do anything that's really pushing at boundaries, and so when I go looking for music he kind of slips away. The moment I was trying to illustrate wasn't one where I hated somebody for liking Lil Wayne. Earlier in the evening I'd been belting out Katy Perry with some people, and Katy Perry's far "worse" than LW is. The alienation, though that's too strong a word for what it was — this is a friend we're talking about — was more that some people were sitting around in the mood to talk about music, and she picked Lil Wayne. That's background dancing music, not sit-down music. So it wasn't like a sudden hostility based on Lil Wayne. It was just a disquieting moment that I thought would illustrate what I was writing about well. It's not about some predefined special quality. I'm the biggest narcissist you'll ever meet, but that's because I love me, not because I love something in particular about me. But it is a trait that you find in some people and not in others, and I'd never seen an article written specifically about it so I figured I'd write one. In the article I defined it as worshipping human creation. More specifically: It's an attitude some people have towards what they consume in which they try first to understand the goals of the producer, then appreciate that for what it is. So, some people approach music looking for hooks and that's it. Classicists will look for certain traits in music — melody, harmony, counterpoint, chord progression — and disregard every other musical element. My approach towards music is what you'd call deconstructed: First I try to figure out what the music is trying to do, then I appreciate it on those merits. So I don't look for melody in a minimalist composition, I ignore lyrics and focus on production if I'm listening to pop, and within those constraints I decide what I like and don't like. So I prefer Lady Gaga to Britney Spears, and I understand that neither of them is comparable to Mozart and that you couldn't compare Mozart to them, either. The stuff that I love is the stuff that meets its ambitions on a spectacular level; stuff without ambition is what fails to grasp me. The reason that's important is that it's a very open, embracing, and somewhat odd way to approach art, but the people who approach it tend also to have other traits in common, which I also tried to define. The Joyce instance is one of them. Writers who like Joyce over Hemingway are also invariably writers with a more open stance on writing, and focus more on the craft than about the story. It's not like I get in a tiff when people say they like Hemingway more. It's that Hemingway developed one limited style and used that to tell the stories he cared about, whereas Joyce's style was constantly expanding. This happens in every field of creation you can name. So the loneliness and alienation doesn't come from people having opinions. There are people with such narrow worldviews, but I'm not one of them. I like almost everybody I meet to some degree. But there aren't many people who understand that distinction between the Joyce types of artists and the Hemingways, and when your personal outlook on life is so reliant on the difference between them, it means you can't really talk about what you're thinking on a deep level. That's occasionally frustrating. Does that clarify somewhat? Or am I still babbling?

randallsquared 17y ago
People that call Joyce unreadable are people who never learned to hear an author's voice in their head. I believe it's generally thought that people learn to read at first by sounding out the author's words in their head, and as they become more proficient at reading, learn not to do that.
- unalone 17y ago
  That's subvocalization. But you can read without subvocalizing and still figure out tone as you read. The problem I had reading Ulysses when I tried at fifteen was the opposite. I was so bent on reading Ulysses as Serious Great Literature that I couldn't read it as something amusing. So I got to the weirder parts of the book and concluded, as a lot of people unfortunately do, that it was pretentious crap. It's funny how pretentious masturbation sounds in a book when you don't let yourself think it's funny. There's another passage in particular that has the same effect on people. Leopold Bloom looks at the sky and calls it "the grey sunken cunt of the world". A lot of people jump on that passage and accuse Joyce of gratuitous swearing for shock value and assume he's being a bitter, wordy arse; once you convince yourself to read the passage as being thought by a cranky Irishman, it suddenly becomes hilarious.
  - araneae 17y ago
    So you're saying... The set of all people that think Joyce is pretentious is the same as the set of all people that can't imagine the author speak in an Irish accent. elaborated to emphasize absurdity
    - unalone 17y ago
      No. I'm saying there are two ways to call the sky a sunken grey cunt. The first is to strive earnestly to describe the sky in just the right way to define the sky. When you decide the proper thing to call the sky is a cunt, then you might be accused of a bit of pretension, and bad taste. The second way to call the sky a cunt is to be a grumpy Irishman in the morning who calls the sky a cunt whimsically, if annoyed. It's the difference between the clean-shaven trendy beret-wearing guy who pronounces "cunt" with much deliberation, and the long-nosed family man who says cunt like a curse. They're both saying the same words, but the one guy's being an ass, and the second guy is hilarious. I'm saying that the people that think Joyce is pretentious are the people who haven't figured out he's hilarious. You can do the same to any comedian, incidentally. Take George Carlin's rant on reducing the ten commandments to two, remove his inflection, focus on the words, and that could easily be some dick's attempting a hoity-toity statement about religion with no humor whatsoever. Steven Wright talking about the museum that has all the heads and arms from all the other statues can be less of a joke and more of a self-involved critique on the nature of art and decay. But it's not, because it's Steven Wright telling a joke, and in his case we know to laugh. I am saying that I find it irritating when people take rational statements and attempt to make them absurd.
anatoly 17y ago
Interesting. You're overshooting your target a bit when you rant about Joyce being utterly readable. He is and he isn't. There're passages in Ulysses that will make thirteen-year-olds stitch up, but it's a very rare thirteen-year-old who will endure the whole thing. I'm reading Ulysses right now (a third attempt, and will finish it this time around, soon; I was too impatient before) and it's both utter delight _and_ there are dozens of pages difficult to get through, when you insist on closely reading the text. Those dozens of pages aren't boring, they're mostly terrific, but the density can be overwhelming. I think you know this and you talk about this a bit in your post, but in this comment you kinda gloss over this and overshoot your target. Insisting that Ulysses can be read as a stand-up delivery of a hilarious Irish comic is misleading. It isn't just shits and giggles; it's shits and giggles _and_ hard work (and much besides). The rest of this comment is my opinion about your long post; it's about things I disliked in it, which isn't to say I disliked all of it - I agree with most of the rest, and think it's well-written. Take it for what it is; and if the tone seems too didactic, ignore the tone, I couldn't afford the time to fine-tune it. Generally, I think you're not trying hard enough; to put it coarsely, _you're not highbrow enough_. You've put Joyce on the pedestal of the impossibly perfect and feel content with throwing the rest of literature to its feet. That is a terrible trap to fall into; it can rob you of appreciating brilliant things in other writers that you won't find in Joyce. It slowly saps you of the ability to understand and connect to true genius elsewhere. Most Joyceans in the academia, for example, are in this position, and their work is usually no good as the result. They start out with exactly the kind of all-encompassing rush of delight and certainty that _nothing can compare to this_ that you're feeling, and slowly work themselves into little more than extreme fanboyism, clad in respectable academic jargon. Your comparisons are evidence of this shortcoming. You mention, when speaking of contemporaries, Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. What about Kafka, Proust or Platonov? There is in Proust the frightening (because it's so effective) clarity of description, the ability to pinpoint an echo within yourself that you've never heard clearly until now and magnify it for you hundredfold, that is unmatched by anything in Joyce. There is in Kafka the ability to give voice to despair and desire that is unmatched by anything in Joyce. And yes, Joyce can also do what they can't, and you speak eloquently of that. But reading these writers properly (and others) may give you the same feelings of almost transcendent wonder and all-encompassing joy that reading Joyce gives you and me. I just don't think it's likely to happen in the frame of mind that throws Joyce up there into the clouds, to oversee the rest of the humanity. There isn't anything wrong by itself with subjectively feeling that Joyce is the greatest writer who's ever lived; it simply turns out to be pragmatically a bad idea to make this one of the pillars of one's approach to literature or art. It causes one's vision to slowly tunnelize. And there are signs in your post of that happening. Talking of "a higher level" is a giveaway; when people start explaining things in terms of higher and lower levels, it almost always means they don't _really_ understand their preferences well enough and can't _really_ justify them to themselves. "Levels" are weaselly words; I've caught myself abusing them many times, and now try to actively force myself to avoid them. And talking about "any other before or after" is just unjustifiable hubris. It's so easy to fall into this hubris with Joyce precisely because he's so great; but it's a trap nevertheless. The best thing to do to a work of genius that seems to overflow you, sustain you, and define a large part of you from now on is to absorb it, cherish it, delight in it, learn from it, and overcome it. To overcome it doesn't mean to stop loving it, or even to treat it "objectively" whatever that means; it means to let it flow in yourself rather than overflow yourself; to balance it in your understanding and appreciation with other wonderful things foreign to it and even alien to it; and to see flaws where there're flaws (yet not exaggerate them) - and nothing is completely flawless. You're not highbrow enough because you've set up a pedestal with Joyce on it (and Beckett as an understudy) and this state of affairs is too complacent. You should be hard at work on overcoming your inner Joyce. P.S. If you haven't, you ought to pick up and read Helen DeWitt's _The Last Samurai_, as soon as possible.

Funny that you ignore the response I made arguing that "deep smart lonely" claim to parrot it yet again. I like how in this thread, you ignore all my posts where I'm directly responding to your accusations and focus only on the ones where I discuss with other people, and then you only nitpick. Look: You're a teacher! Your goal is to save the people who are so shitty that they don't know what they're doing wrong. What you're doing is condemning them to further ignorance. If you can't stand that it'll take hours and hours to make a student learn something, stop teaching. There certainly are eager people waiting to take your place. But no, instead you criticize the writing of somebody online like an arse, then you defend yourself with a series of vague accusations. No organization? It's broken up clearly into four parts, each led by a quote that illustrates the content of the section. The first quote discusses the nature of worship, preceding my discussing what it means to worship. I quote Joyce's excellent statement about what he requires of his readers to talk about what kind of demand I want art to place on me. I end that section with "These were my altars", then transition to a second Joyce quote to discuss what kinds of strain such an intended worship places on a person. Finally I end with the Mangum quote, which summarizes my concept of God as elaborated throughout the essay, and I conclude by writing about what the things I write about matter to me and, potentially, to other people. You want an opening statement? First fucking paragraph. "I don’t treat the question as a polite necessity. When I ask it what I’m trying to get at is: Why are you alive? What’s your reason?" That's the central core of the essay, as stated in the opening. Hell, you can use the opening sentences of the opening quote — "Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship" — and use that equally well, because it works. I know it works, because I deliberately chose the quote to frame my piece, because I've spent a very fucking long time learning how to write, and the majority of the people who read the piece rather than skimmed it seemed to get it without complaint. I mean, I guess here's the part where I'm supposed to get down and get you off because you're a professional grader-of-papers and your word goes without mandate, but regarding my writing you are wrong. Either you skimmed it and misinterpreted it or you were in a bitchy mood and decided to troll, but you're saying things about my writing that simply do not hold up. I'm not particularly surprised considering your stated attitude towards your students. I've had fuckface professors before, professors who were so certain of their intelligence that they'd gloss over students' work and forgive themselves. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you're one of the fuckfaces. Just being a professor doesn't instantly give you a mandate in debate, particularly not when you're online, talking on a forum where I'm able to quote my criticized essay back at you and go point-for-point about how it's better and more logical and less jerk-offy than you want to say it is. Motherfucker, I grew up debating on the Internet. I learned how to form concise logical statements in writing before I was a high school freshman. Look at this comment in its entirety and there's a logical construct to it. If you're going to criticize me, go for my weaknesses. Don't suggest I don't know how to write a goddamn argument. But I don't think that's worth it for you. I think you should bow out, apologize for being a douche — because you were a douche: You called out my paper for no reason other than to be a dick about something somebody else said they liked — and call it a night. Let's not start measuring our e-dicks, because all respect, my e-dick is something monstrous. Your tumblelog linked in your profile is a series of random-ass quotes and ramblings. Me, three times a week I sit down and write long essays about how I feel. And I don't submit them online places, I don't promote myself, because — apologies for the arrogance — apparently what I write is good enough for people I don't know to like. So my story was submitted here, and people upvoted it, and then when it was killed somebody cared enough to post comments complaining about it. I'm not raising a stink about myself, but I'm not going to let you be an ass about the work I do, not if I'm not being a cock about it and irritating you, not if you're only being an ass go get over whatever irritations you have about your job. So apologize, say you didn't mean to be an ass, and we'll smile and shake hands and not waste our time arguing with people we'll never meet, and it'll be cool. Or you can decide it's somehow worth insisting that you were right to be a fuckface, and I can take an hour of my free time to grind you, point by point, into the fucking dust, until you're forced to act like the troll you are. When I get uppity, you're allowed to smack me down; but when I write something on a personal blog that means something to somebody, you are not allowed to slap them without me challenging you to a fight. I'm aware of my weaknesses and flaws; some other time you can point them out to me and I'll try and grow. But when somebody else innocently says they like my stuff, you will not use my writing as a prop for your own insecure bashings, or I'll take sides, and motherfucker, I play to win.

unalone 17y ago
> Those dozens of pages aren't boring, they're mostly terrific, but the density can be overwhelming. I think you know this and you talk about this a bit in your post, but in this comment you kinda gloss over this and overshoot your target. Yeah: I tried to mention that in the post as best as I could; in the comment I was addressing that sneering idea that nobody's able to read Joyce. I didn't mean to suggest that Ulysses is a breeze. > Take it for what it is; and if the tone seems too didactic, ignore the tone, I couldn't afford the time to fine-tune it. Not at all: Thanks for taking the time to make an argument! > Generally, I think you're not trying hard enough; to put it coarsely, _you're not highbrow enough_. You've put Joyce on the pedestal of the impossibly perfect and feel content with throwing the rest of literature to its feet. That is a terrible trap to fall into; it can rob you of appreciating brilliant things in other writers that you won't find in Joyce. It slowly saps you of the ability to understand and connect to true genius elsewhere. Most Joyceans in the academia, for example, are in this position, and their work is usually no good as the result. They start out with exactly the kind of all-encompassing rush of delight and certainty that _nothing can compare to this_ that you're feeling, and slowly work themselves into little more than extreme fanboyism, clad in respectable academic jargon. I tried not to sound like this by bringing up Beckett as a contrast. I do think Joyce is incomparable, but it's not because he's somehow the Best Writer. It's that for what he wanted to do, he captured it on a grander scale than anybody could hope to compete with. Other writers on a similar scale — certainly what Kafka I've read seems like he's comparable; Proust I haven't started yet, though I have a copy of his works lying ten feet from me — are similar in that they're not writers you can compare others to except to note differences. With literature it's tough because I honestly don't think there are very many great novelists. The novel is an extremely difficult form of writing, and not many are able to really pull together and make something dense and powerful. I think it's easier to clarify what you're trying to say by talking music. The Beatles are brilliant, for instance, but so are the Beach Boys, and Velvet Underground, and Frank Zappa, and so even in the short frame of the 60s you have a dozen absolute geniuses who are unique and incomparable, all in tandem, and there's no one "right" musician among them. When you expand into world music and the avante-garde the point is proven even more, because at some rarefied points every single musician in a scene is equally brilliant because every single one of them is constantly pushing at boundaries. With novels I don't get that as much, because the novel form is so immense that I feel there ought to be an enormous amount to justify it. So I don't just think of Joyce, but there're only a dozen or two writers I'm really in love with in that way. Even among them, though, there's an enormous variation in ambitions and goals between them. So I include Steven King on that list because his novel It encompasses horror better than anything else I've ever read, on a level nobody, King included, can hope to match. Anybody who writes a comparable horror novel will have to do so by fundamentally changing the nature of horror. So at once it's highbrow and lowbrow. It's highbrow in that you constantly have to strive to find bigger and better things, and it's lowbrow in that you can find those things almost anywhere, even in unconventional places. tl;dr: I agree with you completely. :-) (I've never heard of The Last Samurai; placed an order at your recommendation.)
- anatoly 17y ago
  I hope you like the book :)