J.N. Nagel
2.5K posts
J.N. Nagel
@PiousArtist
Musings of a sensitive young Norwegian man. «He is dressed in a striking yellow suit and has a small bottle of prussic acid hidden in his vest pocket…»
Beigetreten Aralık 2020
361 Folgt707 Follower
@PiousArtist Better to read deeply a limited number of masterworks from great thinkers than jumping promiscuously from text to text.
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Deep-diving into a few books a year, writing long-form essays on different themes in the books, and reading academic articles on them, is arguably more rewarding in the long run than reading as much and quickly as possible. I fear this is a lost art in the age of quantity.
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@NickDixon Hunger and Mysteries are both brilliant, but Victoria, Pan, Growth of the Soil (my personal favorite), and the Wanderer-trilogy are also top notch. Hamsun is massively underrated in the «best novelists» conversation. A wizard of words.
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One of the greatest novelists of all time. Yes I know he sided with the painter in later life, but Hunger is so good, people seem to have given him a pass.
J.N. Nagel@PiousArtist
«There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.» - Knut Hamsun
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To compose poetry is about listening, not to contrive, it is about bringing forth something that already exists. This is why when one reads great poetry, one often gets this feeling of «I knew all of this already, I just didn’t express it.»
Language listens to itself.
Jon Fosse
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J.N. Nagel retweetet
«There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.»
- Knut Hamsun
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This is an excellent reason to have a Zettelkasten by the way
Nothing over-engineered, just little notes that talk to each other and grow over time
J.N. Nagel@PiousArtist
Deep-diving into a few books a year, writing long-form essays on different themes in the books, and reading academic articles on them, is arguably more rewarding in the long run than reading as much and quickly as possible. I fear this is a lost art in the age of quantity.
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Young dreamer: «I want to be a writer.»
Every writer ever: «Don’t. Just don’t. It’ll ruin you.»
Young dreamer: «Ooo woow!! Existential agony and torment!!😍😍😍»
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@leahprime Could be any really. If you find something of substance, write about it. Entertain that thought, elaborate it, connect it to your own life, expand it, transform it. An example is TBK, which contains unlimited things you could write about.
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@PiousArtist there’s so much to be found in the dedicated, intentional encounter with literature.
this is also a real, serious “leisure pursuit,” and it’s one of the most worthwhile uses of your time and energy
what books are you thinking of?
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@jarvis_best Why did she eat ice cream with metal nails? Must take forever to finish.
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Flooding the world with an avalanche of synthetic trash will place a premium--a high premium--on organic literature created by human hand.
Just as everyone knows a mahogany desk made by a craftsman is superior to a million robot-created plastic desks.
Art always wins.
Brett Winton@wintonARK
We have been surpassed: AI written output exceeded human written output in 2025
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J.N. Nagel retweetet
“Overpopulation in literature has gone beyond Malthusian dimensions, and soon the world’s computers will enhance a Noah’s flood of productivity. If I live long enough, I fully expect individual computers themselves to declare their possession of personality and genius, and to bombard me with the epics and romances of artificial intelligence.”
—Harold Bloom, “Foreword: Northrop Frye in Retrospect”
Elon Musk@elonmusk
AI content will vastly exceed all human content
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