Ideas Aren't Worth Anything

A rant against careless books.

This past week I received a pitch from a PR firm for a new satirical novel written by an author with a significant reputation as an expert in technology - including a book that some consider a seminal contribution to artificial intelligence.

This is an obviously accomplished person, an apparently brilliant person, and I was like, sure, I’ll take a gander at a self-published satirical novel by an accomplished person with a premise that sounds reasonably interesting, idea-wise.

I looked at the sample made available, and the book is terrible, truly awful, amateurish and lame. The author fundamentally misunderstands how to make satire work. An effective satire takes our recognizable world, turns the dial up just a smidge past reality, and then reflects the world we actually live in back at us through the lens of satire. I’ve recently written about two books/authors that do this incredibly well, including Gary Shteyngart in Super Sad True Love Story, and also Ryan Chapman in his novel, The Audacity.

The overwhelming response to a good work of satire should be the reader thinking that what we’re reading could be, or at least could become true. My novel, The Funny Man, failed to find an audience, but I’ll stand behind the central premise of the satire any day, where the main character, having become incredibly famous on the back of a stupid gimmick (doing comedic impressions with his hand shoved all the way inside his mouth), finds himself on trial for murder with an attorney who is trying to get him acquitted on the novel legal theory of “Not guilty by reason of celebrity.”

The idea is that our culture absolves famous people from the responsibilities of being decent human beings. All they have to do is be famous. We have a former and possibly future president who appears to have lived and (personally) thrived by this credo for his entire life. He literally operates against a different standard than any other politician and gets away with it.

Anyway, the satirical novel by the accomplished person was written more like farce, causing a fundamental incompatibility between a book with the stated intention of revealing something essential about our society’s relationship to artificial intelligence, and a form in farce that is ridiculous to the point of meaninglessness by design.

What most irritated me about what I read is the carelessness with which it had seemingly been produced. It seemed like this author assumed that it would be easy to write a satirical novel once the idea was in place, given how accomplished they are in general, and because of this, zero care was taken into making it actually good.

Though, in truth, I think what happened is that this is a person that has not done the work to develop any of the necessary underlying knowledge or experiences that are required to write a good work of fiction, and yet, because they have the name and resources to get what they’ve done into the world, they’re going to inflict this thing on audiences.

Look, this is not a big deal - careless books get published all the time - and it’s not entirely clear why this is sticking in my craw. I think part of what’s bothering me is that now that we have technology that can churn out careless books in minutes (or seconds) we have an extra responsibility to produce work that reflects the unique capacities of humans. Sal Khan’s book on the future of education offended me for this reason. He pumped an infomercial into a space that needs philosophy and critical consideration.

There is a famous quote on writing from Thomas Mann, “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than other people.” Mann is talking not about the physical act of writing, but is instead noting the degree of care and attention put into the act, the desire to get the writing right, and knowing that this is extremely difficult to do.

One of the core goals of my work as a writing teacher is to get students believing in the inherent value of this kind of difficulty, the sense that the process itself is what matters more than the product.

(Of course, if you are deeply involved in the process, the product is more likely to be of better quality too.)

I want students to see and believe that the experience of writing matters because life is lived through our experiences and there is real value in being present and engaged in ways that writing (and reading) make possible.

This is why the idea that artificial intelligence “democratizes creativity” makes my head explode. This notion was most distinctly expressed by Ethan Mollick, the AI whisperer of the consultant class.

It’s important to note Mollick’s framing, which values the idea, with the method and experience of production being removed from the equation. The “democratizing” going on is removing the need to be able to actually make the thing itself by outsourcing the process to automation.

To me, this is bonkers. The fact that writing can be hard is one of the things that makes it meaningful. Removing this difficulty removes that meaning.

There is significant enthusiasm for this attitude inside the companies that produce an distribute media like books, movies, and music for obvious reasons. Removing the expense of humans making art is a real savings to the bottom line.

But the idea of this being an example of democratizing creativity is absurd. Outsourcing is not democratizing. Ideas are not the most important part of creation, execution is.

Democratizing creativity would be making sure every school in America has programs for art, music, podcasting, video production, and writing for reasons beyond passing standardized tests. Instead, we’re going to give them tutor bots.

Mollick is expressing wonder at what I’m going to start calling “AI gewgaws.” Every time one of these new capabilities is trotted out our jaws drop and we think that here’s another thing that we don’t have to do anymore because an AI is going to do it for us.

But are these things any good beyond their novelty? Are they meaningful if they have been created in the absence of human intention and a creative process. I will admit that this song, “Ain’t Got a Nickel, Ain’t Got a Dime” generated using the Suno application is a convincing simulacrum of a 1970s soul, but in the end, who gives a shit? Do we need more new songs that sound like 1970s soul that were created via algorithm.?

This isn’t the democratizing of creativity. It is the commodification of creativity. It is the reduction of creative acts to a product. Mollick calls this “fun” and it is, of a kind, but it’s not as fun as getting together with other musicians and writing and performing a song, is it?

I think losing sight of these distinctions is a risk to our own humanity.

Does that sound alarmist?

Links

This week at the Chicago Tribune I expressed my appreciation for Rob Hart’s super fun new suspense novel, Assassins Anonymous.

In other John Warner creates content news, at Inside Higher Ed I wrote about the trend of “managerialism” among higher ed leadership and how it threatens the mission of institutions. At my

Engaged Education

newsletter I asked some questions to the leaders of the Human Restoration Project about their forthcoming Conference to Restore Humanity.

I highly recommend reading this essay by Leon Furze taking on Mollick’s statements about democratizing creativity for its much more thorough and reasoned breakdown than what I’ve mustered here.

At Esquire, Adrienne Westenfeld shares the best books of the summer.

Alta has 17 California books for Pride Month.

I found this breakdown of different tropes and subgenres in romance very enlightening. I now know exactly what “Romantasy” is, and better appreciate why its become the hottest genre in publishing.

At LitHub

Jess Row

explores why writers are pushed towards become brands, and why that’s a bad thing.

I found this piece by Sarah Garb writing at McSweeney’s both funny and charming: “Mantras for the Eight-Year-Old Boy About to Walk into Target.”

Recommendations

1. Aednan: An Epic by Linnea Axelsson
2. Our Share Of Night by Mariana Enriquez
3. Universal Harvester by John Darnielle
4. Tomas Nevinson by Javier Marias
5. Matrix Lauren Groff
6. My Year Of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Mosfegh

Scott C. - Ferndale, MI

Scott has defied the instructions by including a sixth book, but I will not hold it against him. Just know that the Biblioracle powers only require five books to generate an on-target recommendation. I hesitate to recommend novels as long as this sometimes, but Scott can see if it sounds like something for him before committing, The Savage Detectives by Robert Bolaño.

1. The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
2. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens 
3. Still Water by Viveca Sten
4. Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
5. Sol Invictus by Victor Pelevin

Leokadiia M. - Cologne, Germany

I’m going to take a bit of a leap and suggest J.M. Coetzee’s Foe, which uses Robinson Crusoe as a frame for an entirely different perspective¹

The recommendation queue has gotten on the low end again, so wait times should be shorter than usual

Each week brings the release of More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI closer to publication. It now has a publisher page with handy links for pre-ordering from the retailer of your choice.

Happy Independence Day to all of my fellow United States of Americans. I hope everyone has a safe holiday and doesn’t blow any thumbs off with firecrackers.

To the dogs of the country, I apologize on behalf of my fellow humans. The intention of these exploding things isn’t to terrify you, even if it feels that way.

See you next week.

JW
The Biblioracle

1. All books (with the occasional exception) linked throughout the newsletter go to The Biblioracle Recommends bookstore at Bookshop.org. Affiliate proceeds, plus a personal matching donation of my own, go to Chicago’s Open Books and an additional reading/writing/literacy nonprofit to be determined. Affiliate income for this year is $63.30.