IT’S OCTOBER, warm and cold, windy and gold, in New England. The most important month for Edgar Poe historians, as the anniversary nears of Poe’s mysterious demise, October 7, 1849. To the few in the know, Poe was the good guy, murdered and slandered by the bad guys (it would take too long to explain, but trust me). The craven kick Poe to this day. Why Jill Lepore, why?
THE LATEST ON POE
“Poe had been derailed by a familiar problem, alcohol, but Sartain [extremely unreliable Philadelphia witness born in England] was unaware of this as he contemplated the agitated Poe before him.”
The latest is from a guy from Ohio, Mark Dawidziak, who joins the Smear-the-Literary-Lion club with this year’s Poe biography, A Mystery of Mysteries, which crudely repeats old libel, sending Poe studies backwards in the blink of an eye. With all the new information available, Dawidziak informs us America’s greatest genius was done in by alcohol. (Eye-roll) He specifically refutes the work of John Evangelist Walsh (Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe 2000) without offering any facts, any logic, or any new research himself. A good biographer carefully contextualizes all the testimony on Poe. The fly-by-night bios simply report hearsay which fits the narrative that Poe was an unreliable drunk—and that’s it. Dawidziak, in the latest addition to the Poe biographical literature, drops the ball. (He never had the ball.) His curious, skeptical, detective, meter, on a scale of 1 to 10, registers a 0. Elizabeth Oakes Smith, a highly respectable author and contemporary of Poe’s, says Poe’s death was caused by a “beating.” John Walsh builds on this theory—Dawidiziak, without counter-evidence, contends Poe just had this tendency to get morbidly drunk. Dawidiziak takes the side of Poe’s detractors. Out of pure perversity, it seems. Does Dawidiziak mention Elizabeth Oakes Smith? Nope. He does no research. Throughout the book, after citing a fact or an incident, there’s no follow-up. He passes over things in silence. Is this his attempt to seem…reasonable? He brags that he talked to a number of Poe museum curators. He’s a middle-brow journalist. Mark from Ohio has merely typed up a book on Poe—to make some money. Well, these are hard times.
THE AI QUESTION
“the real threat to authenticity and originality is not machines…”
Below I respond to a FB post by Kai Carlson-Wee reacting to Atlantic magazine’s AI lawsuit piece (writers claiming they are special because their books are apparently the only ones feeding the great AI monster.)
First, Carlson-Wee:
Yeah, it bothers me that AI ingested my book to train itself on poems, but I’m not worried about the plagiarism claim.
AI algorithms are taught to replicate consistencies, medians, generalities, so they will never be able to create the associative plasticity of the imagination. They will be able to parody, but not invent.
Even future AI will not be able to create out of Experience, which is what bends all art toward Truth.
Just like in Blade Runner, there will always be a tell.
I’m much more worried about actual human writers who copy style, imitate other writers’ voices, and go around ripping off their contemporaries. This kind of deception (so common among writers) is more harmful and damaging than AI will ever be. The real threat to authenticity and originality is not machines, it’s other writers who create out of a lack of personal vision. Does AI pose an existential threat to artists and writers? Yes, definitely, but it’s a threat we already live with (theft, plagiarism, etc).
Maybe the benefit of all the outrage and hand-wringing will be a deeper appreciation for the authentic voice, which is already an amalgam of various influences, but is transformed by human Experience and attention into something organic, projective, true. Is this the end of cardboard prose and romance novelists? Probably. But is this the end of literature? No way.
Here’s a link to the Atlantic article with a list of the books used:
I don’t really argue with Carlson-Wee.
Here’s my Scarrietific take on AI:
***
AI cannot touch Keats if you know Keats.
Any AI attempt to replicate Keats will seem fake to you. For the simple reason that you have memorized, or know intimately, the Keats oeuvre. A poem with a “Keats theme” or a “Keats vocabulary” might be written by AI or a human—even sincerely! But it won’t be Keats. It can be argued that this is, in fact, the entire sum of literary study. Everything else is just reading—or buying and selling.
This is why we have a canon of authors which populate our syllabus, and we have learned not so much works, but authors.
I agree with Wee that machines are not the problem.
Plagiarism, it is important to note, existed before AI, and will always exist, and will always overlap in general with influence and homage, to some extent, but as long as we know our authors, plagiarism will do little harm. A really good author (and there are not many) demands we know, to some extent, all of their work.
An author who produces one good work is probably not worth studying, and most likely plagiarized, to some extent, that one impossible work.
We just need to identify the true genius and keep our eyes on them (as literature has traditionally done). This will neutralize AI and all pale imitation.
Wee’s argument that biology influences humans, but not AI, is a powerful one, and a real one, but finally will not, alas, protect us against AI.
Keats (as we know Keats) is dead and has no biology. “Keats” as it now exists, legitimately, is without biology. This is both the sadness and the advantage of “Keats” as we now know him.
As I see it right now, this is our only true defense against AI: “Keats, Keats, Keats.”
If AI sounds like a genius to you, why resist AI? What’s the problem?
Well, it will always be a “problem” to some, one too big and overwhelming to handle. An actual Canon of Authors is the only “defense” possible.
Secondly, my confidence, personally, is based on one fact. AI is not at a disadvantage because it doesn’t draw from “experience” or “biology.” Well, it is a disadvantage, but it’s the nature of writing itself that this is not a disadvantage. The one great disadvantage AI faces (and we should never forget this) is that AI cannot appreciate. It can form and copy and re-combine, endlessly, but it cannot do so with pleasure. Its inability to appreciate is what condemns it to the machine world forever. It will never rival human imagination for this sole reason, a reason so obvious, we may miss it for that very reason.
***
THE QUESTION OF LITERARY OBJECTIVITY
“The more educated, the less objective.”
This FB thread starts with remarks by Jon Stone, professor:
“Prompted by a perfectly civil exchange on Twitter: to what degree do you feel your judgement of the quality of a poem (or any other piece of media, I guess) is or needs to be objective? Are you content that it makes sense/means something to you personally, or do you feel that it undermines your judgement if the rest of the world doesn’t agree?
And do you feel you can explain your tastes to some degree, or are they deeply mysterious even to you?”
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The excitement really begins with my first response. Imagine all the usual “objectivity is impossible but we can try” replies and then reading this:
Me: “The more educated, the less objective. Those with no education are very objective. Ever notice that? They’ll call out the piddle the educated adore—and the uneducated are usually correct. It is, finally, piddle. The uneducated won’t dare take a swing at Milton, but they’ll glance at WC Williams and shrug. The aspiring-to-be-educated will favor Williams, because they implicitly understand to “learn” is to lose objectivity. The educated are dimly aware of this objective sphere inhabited by the uneducated, but they’re too educated to embrace it. The genius (rare) is a different animal. Truly educated and ruthlessly objective. The genius goes beyond, travels out of the atmosphere. It’s bracing and beautiful, I’ll tell you that.”
Naturally, all hell breaks loose.
Stone:
“I don’t really follow this at all — I would say that to the uneducated, Milton is just an insipid drone, barely even bordering on sense. That’s certainly the first impression he made on me. Those who ‘won’t take a swing at him’ are just educated enough to understand and respect canonicity — they’re unlikely to read or genuinely enjoy Milton but they appreciate the effort it takes to write thousands of orderly lines about big subjects and they see him as one who holds up the tapestry of civilised culture.
I would say that becoming more educated than that involves two processes — one is developing more ‘sophisticated’ tastes, a process which you are right to be cynical about, as it so often means distancing oneself from ordinary tastes on principle and, as you suggest, buying into a more obscure, more subjective framework. But there is also the process of expanding and deepening one’s capacity for enjoyment, becoming more alive to more than can be done with words on a page, and this is probably just as like to lead to people rating Williams as the first process.
I don’t really believe in genius — there are poets whose work I find easy to like or understand, but not a single one where I haven’t relied on my education or imagination in discover something truly impressive. I don’t think that anything in the canon of poetry would survive a lack of education. Nursery rhymes maybe!”
~~~~~~~
Mark Granier:
“The more educated, the less objective.” — Thomas Graves
“I love the uneducated.” — Donald Trump
You’re in great company.
~~~~~~~~
First, I take care of Stone:
“deepening one’s capacity for enjoyment” —a false assumption by the educated, that becoming less objective heightens pleasure. Quite the opposite. This is part of the burden borne by the educated—separated from the honest, immediate, sense-experience of the uneducated, the educated’s misery is in direct ratio to the matter described. The uneducated is lose-win; the genius is win-win, the educated is lose-lose.”
~~~
Warming up to Granier, my first reply to him is merely:
??
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Cathy Thomas-Bryant weighs in: “Thomas Graves I find your assertion that the uneducated are objective quite bizarre. Are you using the word ‘objective’ in an unconventional way?”
~~
Jon Stone attempts to defend himself:
I appreciate the effort put into this reply compositionally, but like most artful aphorisms, it’s really quite nonsensical. No amount of education separates a person from their “honest, immediate, sense-experience” — it merely gives them the means to further explore their relationship to whatever has provoked that experience, and to exercise some agency in shaping the experience. In the case of poetry, as with many other things, this allows them to perceive form, symmetry, music and meaning where at first blush there is just gibberish.
PS. I don’t mean ‘nonsensical’ pejoratively (so far as it’s possible to not mean it pejoratively); I just mean that again, I can’t follow it at all as logic or as an explanatory account.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leaving Stone be for a minute, I attempt to historically clarify:
“I do recall some who linked New Formalism in the 80s with Reagan. I suppose among intellectuals, there will always be outlandish attempts to prove fellow intellectuals, with whom one differs, to be “shallow, not truly intellectual”—in 2023 I’m inviting this by defending the uneducated (how quickly I was bizarrely associated with Trump!) and now Ms. Thomas-Bryant utters “bizarre!” the way someone of a 19th century sensibility might have greeted some free-verse proclamation by an Eliot or a Pound. I can only warn my educated friends: don’t overthink my point—by “uneducated” I mean just what the word denotes, but we shouldn’t assume by “uneducated” I mean deluded, or stupid.”
~~~~~~~
Reflecting a bit, I return to Stone:
“You have a great deal more faith in the sharpening and grounding powers of education than I do. Education, by its very nature, is unfortunately more likely to be common than exotic, and more prone to hide true insight than unearth it—especially when the education involves that which is apparently impractical (poetry). I doubt those crying “objectivity is impossible!” would say otherwise.
It is impossible for me to take offense. Allowing the uneducated into the room, as I have done, forces us (the educated) to “make sense” in specialized terms, which, in the end, needs rescuing by the uneducated—they were invited for a reason.”
~~~
Now Cathy Thomas-Bryant returns fire:
“I don’t think that the uneducated are deluded or stupid. There just doesn’t seem to be any connection to objectivity. That’s what I find bizarre. It’s as if you said that the uneducated were responsible for fruit, or better at world building, or something else that requires a leap you haven’t explained.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And more “humor” from Mark Granier:
“Also, the uneducated are all left-handed, as are all objectively minded people; the more education one receives, the more one tends to favour the subjective (i.e. right) hand. This is well known.”
~~~~~~
I respond to Thomas-Bryant:
“Let’s put it this way. I assume by your response, you agree objective judgment is possible. You just don’t see what it has to do with education. That’s your educated self saying that.”
~~~
And then to Granier:
“Your spoof depends upon a binary, but I’m arguing from three, remember. Uneducated (primitive sense-experience, objectivity) Educated (pride combined with prejudice strongly imitative) and Genius (objective, learned, nuanced, counter-intuitive).”
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Thomas-Bryant clarifies her position for me and then ends with a taunt:
“I don’t believe that objectivity is possible at all, as I say in a reply to a comment upthread. But regardless of my thoughts and beliefs, you have still said nothing to explain or support your idea that the uneducated are more objective. You aren’t going to, are you?”
~~~~~~~~~~
“Cathy Thomas-Bryant That’s nice to know. Since you don’t acknowledge objective judgment, it therefore follows you will not comprehend considerations of the phenomenon downstream from the thing itself. Why should you? How can you? I did give a very concrete example. The truly unlearned will always reject piddle which the educated admire—WC Williams, for instance. But if you don’t adhere to objective truth and your education has convinced you to admire piddle, your lack of understanding is the very proof of my argument. This explains not only your incomprehension but the outright hostility of a Granier, for instance, belonging to the drama going back to Socrates at Athens.”
~~
This is too much for Thomas-Bryant:
“Thomas Graves I was correct – you aren’t going to support or argue your case. Ok, I’m out of this one.”
~~~~~~~~
Stone responds to me (and Bharat, another person in the thread):
“Thomas – “You have a great deal more faith…”
It’s not faith; it’s experience. I remember having little insight, little idea of what I was looking at or what sense to make of it, and the process by which I came to enjoy and understand more was education — both formal and informal.
But it’s more that I don’t believe, as you seem to do, that the uneducated get anything out of Milton. Or Byron, for that matter. They’re far more likely to enjoy Williams, who is brief and comical. Who reads Milton and Byron??
Bharat — I don’t think you and I disagree in the way you think we do. You say, “I think a good education is ideally a refinement and sharpening of capabilities latent in all of us, even if only as possibility”, and that is my position too. If you are reading widely, you are educating yourself. A lay person can view art and bring their own experiences to it, but there can be no doubt that reading around art will broaden their understanding and appreciation of it, simply because it gives them the benefit of other perspectives on it.
My position here is in a sense very simple: if you study something and listen to what others have to say about it, you will learn more about it and deepen your own relationship with it. The opposite idea — that you know and see more the less you bother to consider something — seems to me just wilfully silly.”
~~~~~~~~~
I bid Thomas-Bryant adieu:
“As expected. Good luck!”
~~~~
I turn back to Stone:
“In your “experience,” have you ever seen the “educated” become dumber? And more defensive, narrower, arrogant, thin-skinned, and resentful, as a result? I have. I’m sure many have. Let me add an example for you of what I’m trying to get across: You have an illiterate person who owns inventive speech, is inventive, can imitate voices and attitudes well, and so forth. A very entertaining and honest person. Put next to this illiterate, you have a bookworm who owns multiple advanced degrees in literature—specialization, Shakespeare. Unfortunately, he’s a dull, humorless fellow. Who is closer to Shakespeare? The illiterate? Or the highly educated person?”
Stone pretends not to understand my example. The thread ends.
To sum up:
One: Poe continues to be dumped on in the popular press.
Two: The fatal flaw of AI is that it cannot appreciate. An simple, brilliant, optimistic observation for our gloomy era.
Three: Education makes one less objective. This is almost a truism—we fall in love as we see our beloved less and less objectively. My point speaks philosophically on the nature of knowledge itself. The thread wasn’t up to it (I’m not sure why no one could understand me). And the final example I give really seals the deal—the illiterate who can brilliantly mimic others as more like Shakespeare than the humorless Shakespeare scholar. The idea deserves more discussion.
Salem MA 10/3/2023