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All possible plots by major authors (2020)

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166 points ohjeez | 2 comments | 15 Oct 24 19:06 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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russellbeattie ◴[15 Oct 24 21:40 UTC] No.41853399[source]▶
What does it say about me that I've only actually read 14 of the 56 authors in the second list [1] as an adult (i.e. by choice)? I know of quite a few, but haven't read most of them.

Here's my list (++ indicates more than 1):

  Fitzgerald
  Hemingway ++
  Shakespeare ++
  Christie ++
  Brown ++
  Dickens
  McCarthy ++
  Wodehouse ++
  Steinbeck ++
  Stoppard
  Kafka
  Conan Doyle ++
  Seuss (of course) ++
  Lee
A missing classic author is Robert Louis Stevenson - all his books are amazing, even 150 year later.

If you've read more than one Dickens novel, you have my deepest respect.

1. https://www.the-fence.com/all-possible-plots-ii/

replies(2): >>41853570 #>>41853795 #
crtified ◴[15 Oct 24 22:29 UTC] No.41853795[source]▶
Humanity would be a pretty bland experience if everybody universally read the same toplist of influences. Some may aspire to study The Classics at Oxford, but to me that sounds like a nightmare of deprivation.

Accordingly I see your balanced, partial foray into those classics as a positive. It shows you're an individual bespoke personality with broader influences. We won't know which of the modern works we read are future classics - that'll come in hundreds of years.

replies(1): >>41854164 #
1. troupe ◴[15 Oct 24 23:28 UTC] No.41854164[source]▶
I would argue that a shared corpus that everyone has read is a key foundation to a society with rich and nuanced social intercourse. That doesn't mean everyone has read the same books, but there would be significant benefits in kids coming out of high school or college having all read 50 or 100 of the same great books (plus anything else they wanted to read).

I've had the pleasure of listening in on some discussions from high-school students that study classics meeting each other for the first time. Their discussions tend to be very different from what you'd hear from a typical high-school student. While other students might share the language, the ones who have read the same 50 or so great books tend to have a shared vocabulary of ideas at their disposal that doesn't seem to be there without the shared books.

replies(1): >>41854631 #
2. crtified ◴[16 Oct 24 00:55 UTC] No.41854631[source]▶
The reality is that the average high school student will not have truly read 50-100 novels, and the opportunity cost of doing so would be substantial for the diverse aptitudes that comprise the entire youth population.

I believe my life has been richer and more joyful for having had some companions whose minor concessions to the fiction reading hobby in childhood leant more towards Asterix and Obelix than to Charles Dickens; I'm certainly not getting "second best" from them in either company or conversation!

Nonetheless I take your point about the potential benefits of shared corpus, despite contending that the extreme of One Universal Prescription also brings the potential downsides inherent to any artificial scope constraint. Diversity and balance of focus are important too.