Doctor Faustus
A new translation of a 1948 novel by a German writer based on the Faust legend. The protagonist is Adrian Leverkuhn, a musical genius who trades his body and soul to the devil in exchange for 24 years of triumph as the world's greatest composer.
Stats for nerds
0recommend
5mentions
5people
2019–2025years
80% neutral20% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > Don't be fooled into thinking that a Nobel Literature winner is difficult to read, none of them are
Kind of a stretch there. No casual reader can handle Doctor Faustus (Thomas Mann) or the Glass beads game (Hesse) without serious effort. Sure, one can try, in the same way one can try running a marathon without training, with the same predictable results.
- So not having the tool to measure something makes it not part of reality? Makes me think of how our worldview every now and then expands, from geocentrism to heliocentrism and so on. Surely the earth revolved around the sun before it was understood to be that way. And surely our experiences are real even though our minds are isolated from eachother. In Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, the devil told Adrian roughly this: Your brain is sick, yes you are hallucinating me, but that doesn't make me less real.
- There is huge potential if you abstract a little, like in the transmitter - receiver model.
In short: AI has no ego and does not care about self-expression and telling "my story". It gives people, what people want. Put another way: AI's style his highly flexible, while human authors struggle even with slightest of critic.
I can relate. ;)
Also consider the average human being not having an IQ of 130+ (even though 80% thinks otherwise ;)). We all live in a bubble and at least AI does not care, if you use highly academic phrasing ("Because I studied hard, I use these words!" or not.
If you consider A/B testing and real-time feedback, you can image some sort of translator with sliders for "Which audience do you want to address?" Every note then becomes designed.
This has some potential. We all love R. Feynman for his metaphors, that explain complicated topics.
This might work also in the other direction, accessibility: Insert Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus - and voila, even a 15 year old finally can understand the book.
- Just two other examples:
Goethe: West–Eastern Diwan (age 70), Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years (age 72) Marienbad Elegy (age 73).
Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus (age 72)
I have randomly picked a few people from the list of Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature[1] who have made it to old age, and most of them seem to have been quite productive even then.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Lit...
- During the past six months I have been challenged intellectually and aesthetically by these works:
Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol 1-3, by Werner Jaeger
Diary by Witold Gombrowicz
Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach by Sedgewick
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
The Linux Programming Interface by Michael Kerrisk
Tomie: No Use Escaping by Junji Ito
L’homme aux cercles by Fred Vargas
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong.
The Weird by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The Federalist Papers, ed. by Kesler
The Anti-Federalist Papers, ed. by Ketcham
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, new translation by John Woods
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman
Loren Eiseley in the Library of America Edition
Tu rostro mañana by Javier Marías
The Complete Essays by Michel De Montaigne, translation by Screech
Earning The Rockies by Kaplan
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
Nature Stories by Jules Renard
Mac y su contratiempo by Enrique Vila-Matas
Olinger Stories by John Updike
Greek Science in Antiquity by Marshall Clagett
At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell
100 Diagrams That Changed The World by Scott Christianson
Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter Wilson
Alec "The Years Have Pants" by Eddie Campbell
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane
