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Comment by miguelmurca | Hacker News Reader

> Note in which Hitchhiker’s writer reminds himself he will finally get pleasure from process to be part of book based on his archive

Are words missing from this or am I having a stroke?

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This is a classic garden-path sentence [1] if I ever saw one. It happens sometimes in "headlinese" when editors or authors try to squeeze as many characters out of a headline as possible.

"[A] note[,] in which [The] Hitchhiker's [Guide To The Galaxy] writer reminds himself he will [']finally get pleasure from process['][,] is] to be part of [a] book based on his archive."

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

I think the crime here is that this tortured sentence isn't even the headline but the byline, and The Grauniad seems to permit up to three lines of text, e.g.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/23/thomas-bernhar...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/22/kate-briggs-re...

The headline of this article is a garden path for me too, because at first I thought they discovered a book he wrote on torture or something.

I think I've figured it out after reading the article, but I'll be damned if that's not some strange phrasing:

Note (In which Hitchhiker's writer reminds himself (he will finally get pleasure from process)) to be part of book (based on his archive)

You can see how it happened. Now that you've explained it, it's easy to read, even without any assistive punctuation. But the first time I tried to read it through, it was impossible. The writer is obviously already at the latter stage, so they can't even see that it's unreadable.

Note that the first word of the phrase, “note”, is a noun rather than a verb.

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