alt Hacker NewsThe Typo Generation Is Damaging Literature
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I don't think the difference is in the writers so much, as in the publishers. If you look at manuscripts by famous writers they're often full of typos. And if you look at old correspondence between writers and their publishers there are often discussions of continuity errors and the like.
These days lots of books are self published. And even the big publishers spend less money + time on this kind of thing.
I think there’s well-founded criticism in here, but the opening chunk confuses bad copy-editing — ultimately in the hands of the publisher — with bad writing. Which, especially from someone who’s job requires a good understanding of how publishing works, is bad. Surely Brighton Grace has submitted a manuscript and gotten back copyedits? One badly edited book justifies labeling an entire generation?
Perhaps the most important clue is in the first paragraph: “one thing I can always rely on is being let down by a popular or acclaimed piece of contemporary art.”
It’s hard to be a contrarian unless you’re willing to go to some lengths to find something to be outraged about.
I started my undergraduate years intent on the study of English literature. I dreamed of libraries and professorships. Then I met a hoard of useless people like the author of this rage bait and quickly pivoted to computer engineering.
It's LLM-allergies.
The best fully-human writers of the next generation will be those who are very conscientious at grammar class and master all the rules, because by breaking them, they'll be able to push their prose to the most remote and unlikely locales in the geodesics of LLM-next-token-prediction-probability space. Such places where the Machines deign not trudge.
They're talking about written communication, not literature. Literature is written communication that endures, has meaning, is canonical. Writing, even if published on paper, prose or poetry, isn't literature automatically. It can become literature if it's of high quality and provokes thought, communicates important ideas, captures ephemera. Eventually.
I think I agree, it's not just literature only, it includes our day to day conversation as well especially when it's not your native language. I noticed for myself as well.
From the book author's bio: "PERCIVAL EVERETT is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC"
The straitjacketed "correctness" that's policemongered by dictionaries and spell-checkers, is a sandbrained illusion. Make more typos; nurture neologisms; disregard dignity. It's a ratp.
tldr; nobody pays for editors and more than automated proofreading anymore for any form of printed matter. Used to be worthwile that unintentional ambiguities and errors can be cleared up or left in, when at least a second pair of eyes goes over a text. This should help the reader not take anything away from the authors intent.
2brnt2bthtisth?
Arggg. Also the Then vs Than problem. And using Disclaimer when you mean Disclosure. And my damn phone switch out perfectly good words for a different work.
> The Trees makes some extremely questionable decisions that I see as “macro typos” — thematic and stylistic mistakes made in haste that alter the appearance and feel of the entire text — which deflate its satirical power and social utility.
Defining "The author made creative choices I didn't like" as a typo is an impressively bold move.
“Fondle took long pull on his beer.”
it's wrong , yes, but otoh it's funnier this way
People who say "up" or "upped" instead of "rise" or "raise" or "rose". Straight to jail.
and omg people that type without capitializing anything wtf i hate them
I would like to posit that as grammar dies, we execute the apostrophe first. Somehow, despite the simple rule of “this is never EVER used to show plurality”, it is almost exclusively used for that these days.
My hottest take of the era: LLM voice is perfect grammar and spelling. What’s going to damage Literature?
Man the irony of this piece. I think I'll have Gemini translate it into modern English because I was really interested in the subject. (ouvre?)
Two thoughts:
1) There's a lot of "This could be a stretch, but do jokes like this not risk further cementing the falsehoods peddled by right-wing outlets (controlled by the actual elite) that the university-educated view everyone else as inhuman?" sort of hedging here.
It's healthy to admit that a book written by a professor named Percival that is shortlisted for the Booker prize that critics are afraid or too blinded by groupthink to criticize (the thesis of this article) might be a product by and for the "actual elite."
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2) I think a lot of this is just cheapness. The "slop" paragraph near the end gets very close to that. One thing I've realized as an adult is how hard older 20th century books were edited - sometimes to the point that if you knew the details you might think the editor was more the author that the person with their name on the front of the book.
It was like the publishers used the authors' output as raw material for the product that they were going to sell. And while that editor likely didn't have much to say about the world, they knew how to polish something someone else had done until is was a professional, marketable product, like a music producer does.
In the days of monopoly and of fear of being locked out of access to monopolies, there's really no reason to put any effort into your output. You don't have any competitors to say it's garbage; you can announce it's a masterwork before anybody gets to read it and be assured that it will be announced a masterwork when released by people who have to make a living from access.
Also, an editor who can actually create a masterwork is hard to find, and has to be trained over many years in a meritocratic system by other editors who can create masterworks. That is far rarer now, and that makes it very expensive or hard to find for any price. The qualifications for getting into almost any industry now, but especially industries that have no objective metrics for success like the arts or other elite tastemaking, are who your parents are, who you know, and if you can support yourself in NYC for years without being paid while attending fancy parties and widening your social circle. This is a filter that eliminates talent almost completely, not one that generates it. Bonus: they'll also do the job almost for free - in fact, their parents might invest in your personal project.
Again! Another website that annoys visitors with slide-in widgets click-to-continue. So, my perma-ban list of websites grows. Now I need to find an extension to block websites that use those slide-ins ...
"none of these typos, with the exception of the jammed-together dialogue, prohibit access to meaning"
I hear that excuse constantly on the web if I try to correct people. And maybe it doesn't "prohibit access", but it does force me to think about things that aren't the point of the message, in order to figure out the point of the message.
I've given up correcting people. I'm old enough now that it's time to just watch people's choices come back on them. The whole world will pay for it, and I've done what I can.
I can't even get people to stop using "weary" to mean "wary". That's a whole different meaning, and there are so many people that use it wrong.