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Comment by pessimizer | Hacker News Reader

You can explain why you disagree, but simply shaming someone about their opinion doesn't add to any conversation. It helps no one to know that you are one additional person who likes a successful commercial product (unless someone is trying to buy you a birthday present, but we don't know you), it helps when you say why you like something.

edit: you may argue that the comment you replied to was simply disagreeing with the article, not explaining why. I would argue that you're simply disagreeing with a comment simply disagreeing with the article - which is a position already filled by the article, with adequate explanation.

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I mean, the original post didn’t explain why they considered almost the entire list to be trash either. Not sure why only one person is getting chastized here.

I’m not shaming him, but the idea that Wolf Hall and The Nickel Boys are “trash” is bizarre and, as I said, ridiculously dismissive. They both won multiple national-level awards for best novel of the year. This is also ridiculously dismissive:

> It helps no one to know that you are one additional person who likes a successful commercial product (unless someone is trying to buy you a birthday present, but we don't know you)

First of all, the rank condescension is really not ok. Second of all, it wasn’t that they were “commercially successful” (another argument dripping with condescension), it’s that they had unanimous critical approval, and that Wolf Hall in particular is widely regarded as among the best English-language novels since World War II. Many critics consider it the best historical novel ever written.

It would be like if I said “Citizen Kane is trash, only ignorant philistines like that movie” - it’s a very strong argument with no explanation, and whose dismissiveness and ignorance is self-evident. I don’t have to explain why the movie is good to criticize that comment.

On the other hand I found Wolf Hall and its sequels rather underwhelming, and failed to evoke a sense of the past. It's characters seemed to think as if they were living in today's world, and it is lacking in description and establishment of a firmly historical premises.

For example it makes no effort to give a sense of the vocabulary or pattern of speech of its time.

So in which sense Wolf Hall is to be feated as great historical novel in a language which has a grand tradition of historical novels from the time of Walter Scott onwards is debatable.

Reminds me of Alfred Lord Duggan's "Count Bohemond" where Sichelgaita of Salerno comes off as one of Bertie Wooster's harridan aunts. Also trash historical fiction, but unlike the above authors, Duggan never pretended otherwise.

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