from Hacker News

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

by hn-0001 on 4/28/22, 3:04 PM with 131 comments

• by scyclow on 4/28/22, 3:50 PM

  When I read the title of this post, Jon Bois was the first thing that came to mind. 17776 is one of my all time favorite websites, and my goto example of amazing hypertext fiction.

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

• by labrador on 4/28/22, 5:35 PM

  > I once told a friend that there are a lot of books I enjoyed as one enjoys a piece of candy

  After 8 paragraphs of this sort of thing we get to the book

  The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles follows the adventures of a fictionalized version of Tim Tebow who, brokenhearted over his inability to make it as an NFL quarterback, arrives in Toronto to join the Argonauts

  What school of writing is teaching writers to bury the lede in a page or two of personal anecdotes?

• by dfxm12 on 4/28/22, 3:51 PM

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

• by Dotnaught on 4/28/22, 6:34 PM

  "Best Novel of Our Generation"

  Best out of how many novels that you've read over what period of time? And based on what criteria?

  Isn't the proper headline here something more like, "I enjoyed this book"?

• by brimble on 4/28/22, 3:45 PM

  Rather, "Nobody Will Admit that A Novel about Football is the Best Novel of Our Generation". This does not appear to be about people denying that the book is about football.

  Also, the novel is actually a novella.

  Also, it seems not to be a book, but a web page:

  https://www.sbnation.com/2014/8/18/5998715/the-tim-tebow-cfl...

  [EDIT] Also, from the story:

  > Raghib Ismail. Call me Raghib.

  sensible-chuckle.gif

  [ANOTHER EDIT]

  Further into the story now—in case it helps anyone decide whether or not to read it, this isn't slightly-twisted reality or magical realism or light urban fantasy or any of that, really, but full-on dream-logic.

• by w0mbat on 4/28/22, 4:07 PM

  The best book about sport is Fever Pitch, not a novel but stories of Nick Hornby's own football fandom as he grew up. I don't even like sport and I loved it. He then peaked when he wrote Hi Fidelity, a fantastic novel about relationships and music.

• by Aaargh20318 on 4/28/22, 8:43 PM

  I skimmed through the article to get an idea about the premise of the book. I don’t see how this book would manage to include large scale space battles. I have therefore concluded that this cannot be the best novel of our generation.

• by soneca on 4/28/22, 4:05 PM

  Interesting book review. Bizarre title choice. Not only clickbaity, but doesn’t capture any point present in any part of the review. It doesn’t go into who don’t admit, or why, why it’s the best novel and according to whom (the author only go as far as saying “very good”), what is the contention point about being about football.

• by f154hfds on 4/28/22, 4:10 PM

  Jon Bois is remarkable. I never would have imagined that my wife could watch 20m youtube videos on sports statistics trivia but she would get excited when a new Jon Bois video was uploaded! I never knew he wrote fiction too.

• by zokier on 4/28/22, 4:42 PM

  I do find the thesis in the ending quite weak:

  > For a longer time before the gritty period, we all dedicated ourselves to the idea that anything we’d acknowledge as very good had to be both serious and artsy. People really liked Good Will Hunting (see: very serious); it was also a good movie, so it won an Oscar. Zillions of people love movies like The Princess Bride and Happy Gilmore; it’s incredibly likely both dwarf Good Will Hunting in terms of total views, but you can’t even imagine a world where either could have possibly won an Oscar.

  [...]

  > This is a short article by my standards, but it does have me thinking: What kind of world could we actually live in, if we were willing to treat works of art made with the goal of making us happy as if they were important? What if we were willing to make them? We’ve seen what happens in a world where all the Oscars go to movies that make you cry, or that we pretend make us think even though they generally don't

  There are plenty of widely acclaimed movies that can not be considered "very serious", picking some recent Oscar winners as examples with categorizations from wikipedia:

  * Parasite ("black comedy thriller")

  * Green Book ("comedy-drama")

  * The Shape of Water ("romantic fantasy")

  * Birdman ("black comedy drama")

  * CODA ("comedy-drama")

  * La La Land ("comedy-drama")

  * Life Of Pie ("adventure-drama")

  Are all those completely feel-good movies intended to make you happy? Maybe not, but still its not like happy/humorous/feel-good is completely disregarded category even among grumpy art critics.

• by digb on 4/28/22, 4:05 PM

  If anyone here likes this book I highly recommend his documentary series, Fighting In The Age of Loneliness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK3FHjiwb_8)

• by neil_b on 4/28/22, 3:48 PM

  The History of the Seattle Mariners and Atlanta Falcons are two fantastic documentaries produced by the author of the discussed novel.

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

• by wldcordeiro on 4/28/22, 4:05 PM

  I really enjoy Jon Bois' work and what his influence on SB Nation/Secret Base turned into. Their content now is really great even if he himself has taken a backseat to the newer creators.

• by hprotagonist on 4/28/22, 3:39 PM

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

• by kvathupo on 4/28/22, 8:47 PM

  As others have noted, the author is no literary authority (even if they were, they'd still encounter criticism, see Harold Bloom). That said, I think these critiques overlook the fact that Jon Bois's work speaks to _the author's_ personal experience. As a result, it's interesting to see how heavily our personal lives influence our interpretations of art. Perhaps this is no surprise? In this regard, I can't help but be reminded of our reverence of religious texts, which seem to very much reflect the a priori views of the interpreter/translator.

  The author may enjoy books within the New Sincerity realm [1]. They often have magical realist elements [2]. In particular, _Infinite Jest_ seems like a clear recommendation; or for less surrealism, Franzen's _The Corrections_.

  I wholeheartedly agree that art allows us to empathize with the lived experience of those who are ostensibly different.

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

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

• by brightball on 4/28/22, 3:48 PM

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

• by perardi on 4/28/22, 6:07 PM

  I do enjoy the idea of a novel that grossly exaggerates the US stereotypes of Canada.

  Although some Canadian facts are so weird that they are nearly impossible to believe until you research them. Like the extremely well-appointed throne room at the top of the CN Tower that is kept in reserve for the British monarchy in case the UK is occupied during a war, and the royal family needs a secure and luxurious backup.

• by thazework on 4/28/22, 5:31 PM

  A highly recommended book about (real) football that transcends the genre is The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. Ostensibly an 'account by American writer Joe McGinniss of the first season Italian association football club Castel di Sangro Calcio spent in Serie B' it's really about an author's descent into madness through fanatical self-identification with his subject matter.

• by ughitsaaron on 4/28/22, 4:26 PM

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

• by kerblang on 4/28/22, 8:50 PM

  For a real-life story of a heisman trophy quarterback who bombed out of the NFL and became a hall-of-famer in canada, ref. Doug Flutie. His brother was also pretty successful up there. And they have a rock band together.

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

• by kwhitefoot on 4/28/22, 4:04 PM

  I immediately thought of Unseen Academicals.

• by auto on 4/28/22, 6:03 PM

  It can't be coincidence that the author mentions Happy Gilmore, and then goes on to describe the point of the book being finding a world built for you not to fail in, when you thought the other world you did fail in was your destiny, which is basically the whole schtick OF Happy Gilmore, right?

• by sudden_dystopia on 4/28/22, 6:28 PM

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

• by agentdrtran on 4/28/22, 7:30 PM

  Bois also has a documentary on MMA up on youtube, I went into it knowing nothing about MMA but greatly enjoyed it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DoaUyMGPWI

• by huhtenberg on 4/28/22, 4:30 PM

  > Canada is a real country. It’s sort of a mix between San Francisco, North Dakota, and ice.

  Hilarious. Probably took the author ages to arrive at this particular formula.

• by seshagiric on 4/28/22, 5:44 PM

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

• by universa1 on 4/28/22, 5:46 PM

  just skimmed through the article, but it somehow reminded me about "Playing for Pizza" by John Grisham[1], but that one is probably a somewhat lighter read ;-)

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_for_Pizza

• by platz on 4/28/22, 7:30 PM

  I thought it was Infinite Jest.

• by haunter on 4/28/22, 6:23 PM

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

• by DantesKite on 4/28/22, 4:46 PM

  That was a surprisingly fun read.

• by jacobjr23 on 4/28/22, 4:09 PM

  "Montreal Argonauts"

• by rambojohnson on 4/28/22, 4:01 PM

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

• by udev on 4/28/22, 8:15 PM

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

• by balls187 on 4/28/22, 8:59 PM

  Whose generation?

• by clevergadget on 4/28/22, 6:42 PM

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

• by yodon on 4/28/22, 4:00 PM

  When the author starts their post off insulting David French they lose all credibility in my mind as an arbiter of literature. David French has written an enormous number of posts I disagree strongly with, and an equivalent number that I agree strongly with. That's because he thinks and writes about extremely complex matters of morality and does not reduce his views to the "liberal" or "conservative" orthodoxy.

  He started out as a darling of the religious right, because he played a major role in causes the religious right considered "theirs." When he began to write with equal clarity about how other aspects of the religious right's focus are at odds with those same deeply held principles that led him to do the work the right loved, they turned on him like this.

  Complex moral issues are exactly that, complex. We need more intelligent people thinking hard about them, not more polarization into "you're either with us or against us" mindsets.

  I'll be clear here that I'm not interested in judgements on literature provided by someone who frames their worldview as hating one of the few writers willing to address the real complexities of real issues today.

• by lkxijlewlf on 4/28/22, 5:17 PM

  > Nobody Will Admit The Best Novel of Our Generation is About Football

  Just stop. We all have different preferences.

  Personally I hate American football (it's too much like a stupid video game now), so you'll never even get me to read whatever book this person is talking about.

• by ChrisArchitect on 4/28/22, 5:13 PM

  Nobody Will Admit what the title of the book I'm writing about is...... had to read too much of this drivel without even knowing what they were referring to, ridiculous. Also to slowly realize it wasn't about soccer. Why was this submitted here?