Writers

Setting Can Define the Story

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There is an article dated 15 February 2024 by Amanda Cassidy, on the Write.ie website, which makes some good points about how a location can help develop the story.

Amanda Cassidy

Amanda Cassidy is a freelance journalist, commissioning editor, former Sky News reporter and author. She has been shortlisted for the Irish Journalist of the Year Awards, the Headline Media writing awards and more recently the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger for her debut, Breaking.

She says, “I came up with the idea for my debut novel Breaking while sitting on the beach in Spain watching my children playing in the waves. From my perch on a bar stool with a notebook, I imagined the horror of how it might play out if something happened to one of them on my watch. The story of missing eight-year-old Alanna Fitzpatrick and her strangely composed mother, Mirren began.  The setting was absolutely key for what I wanted to achieve in the story. I needed a beach, but I also wanted the Fitzpatrick family to be far from home. It would make things harder and create more tension if they were abroad when the worst possible thing happened – their daughter went missing on holidays.

But I also wanted the family to speak the same language as the police, who would be investigating the case, so I transplanted the story to the US. The destination, in this case, Florida often represents a type of paradise, especially for the Irish (or me, growing up at least). As I wrote through the novel, I realised the soft white sandy beaches and turquoise setting of the beach was in delicious contrast to the craggy Connemara coast where the Fitzpatrick’s lived.

The setting of every story can evolve like this. But there are a few things to keep in mind when you decide to metaphorically pin your flag to the sand.

  1. The devil is in the detail

This might sound obvious, but if you have played things right, your readers will be hanging onto your every word. Not only do you have to get the location descriptions right if it’s an actual place, but this also feeds into your characterisation. (Actually, it feeds into the entire novel, but let’s stick with the characters for now) My lead detective, Antonio Rolle is a Miami cop, sent to Kite Island to try to find out exactly why little Alannah disappeared without trace. He refers to things like a ‘car trunk’ or money as ‘bucks’ while Mirren, the Irish mother of the young girl, stays true to her original destination. In her dialogue, she talks about the ‘boot of the car’. People always pick up on these small differences, so wherever you choose to set your novel, make sure you ‘know the lingo,’ as my late father would have said.

  1. It doesn’t have to really exist

Currolough is the setting for my second novel The Returned.  Detective Ally Fields returns to her hometown to investigate a house fire and ends up unearthing all sorts of demons. This fictional town is a mosh-up of some of my summer holidays spent in Dingle, Co. Kerry, Clifden, Co. Galway and Cobh, in Cork. The thrill of world-building for me is making up every last detail and the greatest part of this strategy that you can’t be wrong! I had so much fun conjuring up this extremely touristy town with whale-watching tours and fish and chip shops with picnic benches outside. I even imagined a bronze statue at the centre of the town that probably lived at the back of my imagination somewhere for many years.

The words in a story paint a picture, but the fun you can have deciding where a roundabout goes or how long it takes to walk to the fictional bus station, sparks joy too! The isolation of this particular town is another reason why I decided to dedicate my storyline here. There are lots of references to the bruise-coloured hills, and the clouds shadows being reflected on the lake where Ally grew up to (hopefully) add an injection of menace and pace.

  1. Use setting as character

What new writers often don’t realise is that your setting, when crafted with passion and attention to detail, informs the rest of your novel. Think about it. In real life, the places we grew up surrounded by or the cultures we are exposed to has a huge impact on the choices we make. It’s no different in fiction.

Whether you’re looking at a short story setting or the setting of a novel, the characters who populate your writing will be largely formed and informed by setting—the influences and mechanics of their everyday world. I decided to set my third novel, The Perfect Place, in the South of France. The destination meant something to me, I’d spent time going to school there when I was just sixteen and I’d worked in France on and off for years afterwards. What if my character, in this case, influencer Elle Littlewood, bought a French Chateau and charted her renovations across her social media channels. What if the previous owner of the chateau remained living there because of the nature of the deal she’d struck. In this case, the creaky old chateau becomes more than just a setting, it’s walls almost seem to breathe as Elle desperately tries to paper over the cracks of the walls (and her own crumbling life). Again, this was a lot of fun to write but it really invites the reader to get a sense of atmosphere from a place.

  1. Have a grá for the spot you choose

You are going to be spending an awful lot of time in the place you set your novel. At least a year, for some people, longer, so you might as well enjoy popping your head into the setting of your choice. I’m watching the latest True Detective series with Jodie Foster which is set in Alaska where even the day time is night-time during its ‘polar night’ and I have to admit, I’m finding it quite claustrophobic. Of course, the plot sits so well against that backdrop but writing a novel in the complete dark, with snowstorms swirling constantly might not be for everyone. I’m hoping to set my next book in the Maldives. I look forward to writing about palm trees and snorkelling trips. With murder of course. I better also do a recce!”

Review: Peacebuilding Expertise

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I bought the book Assembling Exclusive Expertise: Knowledge, Ignorance and Conflict Resolution in the Global South because I wanted to learn more about peacebuilding. (I am a chairman of a peacebuilding charity.) The book is edited by Anna Leander and Ole Waever. Ms Leander is a Professor at the Department of International Relations and Political Science, Graduate Institute Geneva; Institute of International Relations, PUC Rio de Janeiro/ Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School. Mr Waever is a Professor at the Department of Political Science, and Director of the Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts, University of Copenhagen. These guys know a lot more about peacebuilding than I do, but the book isn’t about peacebuilding, per se. It is more about how peacebuilding expertise is acquired and considered to be expertise. It discussess academic expertise vs. practical hands on expertise; the ivory tower vs boots on the ground. It delves also into the politics of acquiring peacebuilding expertise. Given that I have a lot of respect for peacebuilders – particular those who’ve learned their trade both on the classroom and in the field and who are dedicated to practicing the trade, I have also come to have respect for the eloquent experts who can tell how they got there.

This book is part of a series on international relations called “Worlding Beyond the West”. ‘Worlding’ implies the post-colonial redefinition of the colony by the coloniser. While much of the global conflict arises in colonised spaces, there is conflict within the West as well, and I’m no sure it is intellectually helpful to focus on conflict resolution expertise in colonised spaces. In fact, the book covers peacebuilding expertise acquired in Ukraine, which is not in the Global South, and was ‘colonised’ by the USSR.

There are three chapters on experts. The first on who knows Nigeria. The second on acquiring expertise on Somali piracy and the third on negotiations in South Africa. The second section deals with institutions. There is a chapter dealing largely with the Brazilian-based Global South Unit on Mediation, a chapter on how the NATO Defence College acquired expertise in Libya and Ukraine, and the ‘Singapore School’s’ contested expertise on terrorism. The third section covers databases: the techniques and politics of body counts, the UN’s SanctionsApp, and the use of Big Data in conflict knowledge. The fourth section covers Syrian art and artists as contributing to conflict resolution. While it is clear that art and artists can affect the perceptions of violent conflict, it seems to me that social media, generally, have more leverage.

I would not recommend this particular book for someone who wants to understand the many levers – social, psychological, economic, political, sensory, philosophical and physical that can be pulled in conflict resolution. This book is written by academics who may have some experience in conflict resolution, but their intention is not to clarify what they have done, can do and why it does or does not work, but their intention is it explain how they came to be considered experts.

Slow Writers

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Lauren Alwan has an article on The Millions website dated two days ago in which she discusses the virtues of being a slow writer.

Lauren’s fiction and essays have appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, The Bellevue Literary Review, Story Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Catapult, The Millions, World Literature Today, Alta Journal, and other publications. Her work is included in the anthology AMap Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family and the Meaning of Home (ed. Nicole Chung and Mensah Demary). She is the recipient of a First Pages Prize from the de Groot Foundation, the Bellevue Literary Review’s Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, and a citation of Notable in Best American Essays.

Lauren Alwan

“As a writer at work on a book that’s taken far longer than expected—a story collection begun in 2008 now a novel in-progress—I’m interested in how, in a world that values speed, the slow writer learns to tolerate the uncertainty that comes with the long project. Is it possible to tune out the noise of doubt and the proverbial ticking clock when writing goes into overtime? Having lost count of my revisions, and in need of advice, I went looking for other slow writers and discovered that more often than not, a book’s gestation takes place over years, frequently decades. I found too that the slow writer embraces the protracted and unpredictable timeline, seeing it not as fraught or frustrating but an opportunity for openness and discovery. As J.R.R Tolkien said to W. H. Auden, on the 12 years he spent writing Lord of the Rings, “I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me.”

The world can be impatient with slow writers. Nearly a decade after Jeffrey Eugenides published Middlesex, Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times, “It has been a long, lonely vigil. We’d nearly forgotten he was out there.” Garner’s2011 article, “Dear Important Novelists: Be Less Like Moses and More Like Howard Cosell,” argues the “long gestation period” among the period’s young writers (Middlesex was written over nine) marks “a desalinating tidal change in the place novelists occupy in our culturre.” The writer, hidden away in monkish solitude, is no longer a commentator on events of the moment in the vein of, say, Saul Bellow. Bellow wrote four massive books in 11 years, and in doing so, Garner says, “snatched control, with piratical confidence and a throbbing id, of American literature’s hive mind.” Comparing Eugenides’s books, he notes, “So much time elapses between them that his image in dust-jacket photographs can change alarmingly.” Write slowly and not only do you risk being forgotten, you may no longer be recognizable.

Books known for their protracted writing time—10, 20 years or more—span genre, length, and era. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, 10 years. Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, 28 years—and 11 for her debut, I Free Food for Millionaires Edward P. Jones imagined The Known World in his head for over a decade before writing it out in seven months, and John Steinbeck made notes for East of Eden for 11 years before writing it in a year of continual work.

Still, there are those writers who seem to work best at a clip. Anne Rice wrote Interview with a Vampire  in five weeks and Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in less than four. Kazuo Ishiguro drafted The Remains of the Day in four weeks—achieved, he’s said, by implementing a process he calls The Crash: “do nothing but write from 9am to 10.30pm, Monday through Saturday. […] One hour off for lunch and two for dinner. I’d not see, let alone answer, any mail, and would not go near the phone.”

Donna Tartt, known for long intervals between books, gets through on faith in the process. The Secret History was written over a decade, and The Little Friend appeared 10 years later. Of the 11 years Tartt spent on The Goldfinch (Garner describes the author during this time as “vanished”), she’s said, “Things will come to you and you’re not going to know exactly how they fit in. You have to trust in the way they all fit together, that your subconscious knows what you’re doing.”

Min Jin Lee has described the 28 years spent writing Pachinko—beginning with the novel’s inception during her student days at Yale to publication in 2017—as “far too long.” It wasn’t until years into the novel’s writing that the project took a turn. During a four-year stay in Japan, after interviewing Japanese Koreans in Osaka, Lee came to realize she’d “been wrong about everything,” and soon after rewrote the manuscript from the beginning. “I was so impressed by the breadth and complexity of the people I met in Japan,” she said, “that I had to start the book again in 2008, and I continued to write it and revise it until the sale of the manuscript in 2015.”

The writer engaged in the long project hopes for such turns of luck, and wanting to know firsthand how luck and persistence inform the long project, I turned to writers I know, hoping for advice on how to tune out my own questioning and cultivate a next-level order of patience.

John Huddleston, photographer and professor emeritus at Middlebury College, is the author of four books—hybrid works of text and image that examine time, history, and place. Killing Ground: The Civil War and the Changing American Landscape (2003), is the product of 15 years of travel and research, and pairs historical photographs of Civil War battle sites with contemporary photos of the same locations. Healing Ground: Walking the Farms if Vermont (2011), and At Home in the Northern Forest: Photographs of the Changing Vermont Landscape (2020) each took a decade, as Huddleston says, “to better understand what I was seeing.” His current project, an interrogation of Mexico’s religious sites and his own Catholicism—has run nearly 50 years. How does he pace himself? “I think the long periods of constructing my books have engendered a maturity in the editing and printing of images,” he says. “A more nuanced and interesting perspective develops with time.”

Drue Heinz prizewinner Leslie Pietrzyk, the author of This Angel on My Chest (2015), believes in staying open to change: “My advice is to remain flexible. Perhaps my greatest ‘being flexible’ moment was working on what I imagined was a novel about a political family for two and a half years, abandoning it, and picking it up again four years later.” She repurposed much of that material, including random and forgotten prompt pieces, into her most recent collection, Admit This to No One (2021), linked stories about power in Washington, DC.

Poet, essayist, and Fulbright fellow Natasha Saje’s five books include The Future Will Call You Something Else (2023), a book of criticism, Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory (2014), and a memoir-in-essays, Terroir (2020). Windows and Doors was written over 16 years, and Terroir, 10. A self-professed feedback junkie, she seeks out frank, even harsh readers. “There’s always some truth in what they don’t like,” she says, and then revises extensively, as she puts it, “like a maniac.”

Thaïs Miller wrote her first two books in less than a year and published both before she was 21. The author of Our Machinery (2008) and The Subconscious Mutiny and Other Stories (2009), Miller says of those early quicksilver efforts, “Beginner’s luck is an understatement.” Currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing, her dissertation includes a novel begun in 2009, one that’s still finding its shape. These days, Samuel Beckett’s words, “Fail better,” are pinned on a board above her desk, a reminder that “writers are always failing to achieve a perfectionist ideal. […] These words let me off the hook and enable me to experiment and play with my work, to try out new things.”

How, amid doubt, does a writer keep focus, and pace herself over years, even decades? Saje says, “I write and then get pieces published, which gives me confidence that there will be readers for the book.” Pietryzk writes prompts around her novel’s characters and settings and the material often becomes short stories she publishes in literary journals. For Huddleston, over time the work “integrates into the self, into one’s life. I generally work intensely until I can’t stand it anymore, let the work sit, then repeat. If I have a particular problem I’ll often hold it in mind without actively thinking about it.”

This immersion over years, or decades, what George Saunders calls “rigorous, iterative engagement,” can be fruitful, but it can also make a book’s endpoint more difficult to see. Huddleston’s 50-year project, which is nearing completion, has in the end surprised him. “I’ve returned to the project many times after feeling it was done,” he says, and in doing so, encountered an unexpected complication: wishing the work could go on. Similarly, Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao (2022), says of the 13 years it took to write her debut novel, “On some level I wanted to keep spending time with it, finding its unexplored corners, tunneling into its wormholes. I didn’t want to let it go.”

So—know when to let go, keep faith in the process, be flexible, fail better, and whenever possible, stay astonished. Though perhaps most importantly, recognize the value that comes with the passing of time itself. In The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections of Time, Craft and Creativity, essayist Louise DeSalvo writes, “We’ve internalized the idea that that the only actions worth taking are those that can be accomplished quickly, […] that if our writing takes so long, we might not be cut out for the writing life.” The Art of Slow Writing is a manifesto for giving a book the time it needs, for cultivating patience and connection. DeSalvo describes, among other things, the challenge of “not knowing how long a book will take, and being comfortable with not knowing.”

Of Jeffrey Eugenides’s slow pace, DeSalvo writes that he “works with rather than against the fact that his books take long to write.” The years writing Middlesex, she notes, saw both the death of his father and the birth of his daughter, and over time these significant life events led to preoccupations with family history and genetic discourse that found their way into the book: “He wanted the novel to respond to those changes as he worked.” This synergy can blur the line between life and art and make completing a long project its own challenge. But as DeSalvo observes, finishing isn’t really the end if “we see our writing life as a continuum,” a larger process that connects each project, whether short or long, within the learned experience of the writer’s practice.

And as DeSalvo notes, there’s always the next book.”

Have You Read These Bestsellers?

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Saskia Kemsley has an article dated 20 December 2023 on the Standard website in which she asks whether we’ve read these very important and very popular novels.

Saskia Kemsley is a shopping writer at the Standard; she is a recent graduate from the University of Edinburgh. Passionate writer, freelance illustrator & language lover.

“Reading a best-selling piece of literature not only has the power to expand one’s worldview, but it can plunge you back into a significant moment in history, to help you better understand the past, present and future. If you’re in the market to dive into a legendary book that’s somehow not made it to your bookshelf, you’ve clicked through to the right place.

To come up with this list, we’ve stuck to a simple criterion of novels which have sold between 20 and 100 million copies across the world. Spanning timeless fiction as well as cult classics, keep scrolling to discover 24 of the best-selling novels of all time to read in 2024.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

One of the first novels to feature an interwoven narrative, Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities follows the lives of one exiled aristocrat, Charles Darnay, and a lawyer named Sydney Carton. The two men become irrevocably intertwined in a battle for the affection of Lucie Manette, the daughter of a political prisoner. A work of historical fiction set in the years before and during the French Revolution, Dickens’ iconic novel revolves around the concept of duality, and it’s where you’ll find those infamous lines, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Originally written in French, The Little Prince is technically a children’s book yet serves as a parabolic tale of morality and virtue, the lessons from which many of us have taken with us into adulthood. If you’ve ever found yourself questioning the meaning of life, we highly recommend picking up this seemingly unlikely, beautifully illustrated guide.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

For all of J.K Rowling’s controversies, the Harry Potter series remains the bestselling set of fantasy books of all time. We’re not sure we have to remind you of the plot – which follows a young boy who discovers that he is a wizard – but take this as a sign to finally pick up a physical copy of your favourite magical series.

And Then There Were None

Perhaps the most beloved novel to come from the Queen of Crime herself, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is the story of a motley bunch of 10 strangers who are picked off one by one while on a remote island near the Devon coast. The year is 1939, and Europe is on the precipice of war. Hosted by two mysteriously absent, yet highly generous benefactors referred to as Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen – when the first member of the party is killed, the remaining survivors must piece together the unravelling events before they too meet a most terrible fate.

The Story of the Stone / Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢) by Cao Xueqin

Known as a ‘great novel of manners’ and one of the four great classical novels in Chinese literature, The Story of the Stone, which is also known as Dream of the Red Chamber is split into an eye-watering five volumes. Xueqin’s epic series charts both the glory days and devastating decline of the illustrious Jia family, while exploring universal questions of religion, philosophy, private and public lifestyle and social relations in 18th-century China.

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Published in 1937, the story which began the Lord of the Rings franchise is beloved by fans across the globe. When a simple hobbit by the name of Bilbo Baggins decides to set off on a wondrous adventure which takes him far away from the rolling hills of the Shire – Mr Baggins, alongside the wizard Gandalf and the thirteen dwarves of Thorin’s company – soon finds himself swept up in an unexpectedly Odyssean tale of heroism, sacrifice and delight.

She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard

H. Rider Haggard is credited with developing the ‘lost world’ genre which authors continue to emulate to this day. Her brilliant late 19th-century novel She follows a professor named Horace Holly and his ward Leo Vincey as they set off on an adventure to discover a lost kingdom in Africa. While on their travels, they encounter indigenous communities which lead them to the city ruled by Ayesha – otherwise known as she-who-must-be-obeyed.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

One for the lovers of codes and riddles, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code received high praise when it was first published. A few shoddy blockbuster adaptations later, and the general population seem to have forgotten the fantastic narrative-building and codebreaking achieved by Brown in the first novel in the brilliant series. When Harvard professor Robert Langdon is called to Paris after the brutal murder of an elderly Louvre curator, he and a gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu find themselves in the talons of a dangerous trail that leads them into the still-beating heart of Leonardo Da Vinci’s artwork.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

It’s rare to come across someone who has read Coelho’s The Alchemist, and who hasn’t declared it to be a life-changing piece of literature. It follows the journey of a young Andalusian shepherd who travels to the great pyramids of Egypt to discover a treasure which appeared to him in a dream. During his arduous journey, he is confronted by trials and tribulations which offer us greater moral lessons. Though often marketed as a self-help book, The Alchemist also serves as a philosophical text which offers insight into our motivations as human beings, and what we can offer to both ourselves and the world at large.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

The first of J.D Salinger’s books to be published, The Catcher in the Rye takes place over just two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield following his expulsion from prep school. An essential teenage read – whether you are currently a teenager, or you’ve found yourself caring for one – we follow Caulfield’s aggravated and convoluted stream of consciousness as he rails against the falsity of adult life.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

A masterpiece of magical realism this Nobel prize-winning novel follows seven generations of the Buendía family, and the town they built from the ground up called Macondo. Though scarcely considered a settlement, the isolated dwelling of Macondo suffers wars, disasters and even miracles on an almost global scale. As such, it slowly becomes clear that the Buendía family’s small town serves as a microcosm for Columbia as a whole. It’s extremely difficult to put into words the swirling, paradigmatic semantics of Márquez’s work, but it is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in world literature.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A timeless classic, The Great Gatsby tells the story of a wealthy man and his pursuit for his childhood sweetheart, all set against the backdrop of the glamorous 20s. A masterful example of the American Dream in action, Fitzgerald’s novel goes far beyond romance and addresses themes of excessive wealth, human follies and the fragility of life.

This special edition includes a foreword by famed movie director, Francis Ford Coppola as well as exceptional artwork throughout that brings to life Gatsby’s lavish parties and frivolous lifestyle.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

An extremely subversive novel that certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted, Nabokov’s Lolita is about the paedophilic poet Humbert Humbert and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl called Lolita. Often deemed an inherently comedic, yet entirely repulsive literary monster – Nabokov by no means seeks to condone the thoughts and actions of this savage narrator.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

In a slight subversion of the classic ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ parable, a young rabbit called Fiver is convinced that his burrow is in imminent danger. Yet the rolling hills of Sandleford Warren are experiencing fresh dapples of Spring sunshine, and none of the other rabbits have any concerns. Together with his sister Hazel and a few other daring rabbits, they nevertheless leave Sandleford in search of the safe haven of Watership Down – encountering many trials and tribulations along the way.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Though not as popular on the UK literature syllabus as it is in the US, Harper Lee’s seminal novel is nevertheless just as beloved on our side of the pond. A story about classism and racism in the American Deep South in the 1930s, To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age story told through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, the children of a lawyer who has been tasked with defending a black man who has been falsely accused of rape. Delivering anti-racist messages far beyond its historical moment, Lee’s novel offers fascinating, yet gut-wrenching insight into southern society during the Great Depression.

Flowers in the Attic by V.C Andrews

A Gothic drama to sink your teeth into, four siblings find themselves trapped at the mercy of their own mother and grandmother. After weeks become months, the children soon come to the realisation that their mother might not let them out of the attic after all, and they embark on a terrifying struggle to survive the conspiring members of their family that live below them.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Though often considered the book on one’s shelf that remains untouched from the moment it was purchased (due to its whopping 1,440 pages), Tolstoy’s War and Peace is still one of the best-selling novels of all time. Set during the time of Napoleon’s doomed Russian invasion, War and Peace follows the lives and motivations of five families from each tier of the feudal system throughout the tumultuous, early 19th century Russia.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

An unforgettable, heartbreaking literary feat, Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is the story of an unbreakable friendship between a wealthy Afghan boy named Amir, and the son of his father’s servant – a boy named Hassan. The tragic story is narrated by Amir, as he reflects on his childhood in Kabul and the life-changing event which catalysed his desire for redemption.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Set in a dystopian universe which has been ravaged by a bloody revolution, an annual event known as the Hunger Games exists to quell rebellion and keep the country’s factions in line. A battle to the death which takes two tributes from each of Panem’s twelve districts, the series follows the unlikely success of a tribute from district twelve as she finds herself in the heart of the Capitol, fighting for her life and her freedom.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This classic romance novel has captured the hearts of readers across the globe since its initial publication in 1813. Our supposedly plain Heroine Elizabeth Bennet wants nothing more than for her abundance of sisters to be married off, so she can live a quiet and peaceful life at home. Yet when she finds herself in the unshaking gaze of the handsome and wealthy Fitzwilliam Darcy – who judges, challenges and frustrates her beyond belief, all of Lizzy’s plans for herself appear to unravel.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Now’s the time to finally pick up your very own copy of the international bestseller. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first of Stieg Larsson’s six-part series which follows an unlikely team of murder investigators put together by the uncle of Harriet Vanger, who disappeared from a gathering on the family’s island forty years ago. Disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and tattooed hacker Lisbeth Salander risk everything to uncover the secrets of the twisted Vanger clan and solve the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

A chronicle of the life of Okonkwo, a wealthy, respected warrior and the leader of an Igbo community, Achebe charts the rise and eventual fall of the novel’s protagonist following his accidental murder of a clansman, while delivering wider insight into the cultural practises of Igbo society.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

A parodic chivalric romance, Don Quixote has become a reference point in language for likening someone to an impractical idealist. Nevertheless, the protagonist of this sprawling narrative, Don Quixote de la Mancha, is on a mission to restore chivalry to its former glory by transforming himself into an admirable knight, using famous works of literature as his reference point.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt’s The Secret History isn’t your average murder mystery – for we know who is killed, and who the killers are, within the first few pages of this dark tale. The narrator of this inverted piece of crime fiction, Richard Papen, transfers to an elite liberal arts college in Vermont to escape his disinterested and abusive family in California.

Papen finds himself enamoured by a small group of seemingly perfect, erudite Greek students who are taught in secretive tutorials by an eccentric professor. Desperate to enter into the folds of the seemingly impenetrable group, Papen manages to convince the faculty to switch majors – a decision which would turn out to be both deadly and damning.”

I’ve read nine of these books. I need to decide which one will be number ten.

Writing about Sex

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The recent edition of the Sunday Telegraph had an article by Claire Allfree “The art of writing about sex (and getting it right)”

Ms Allfree is a freelance journalist specialising in arts and entertainment.

Bottoms up: an 18th-century painting of Jupiter and Io by Edouard Gautier-D’Agoty (after Correggio)

Ms Allfree writes:

“My friends joke that I’ve become a pornographer,” says Lucy Roeber. “I haven’t, of course. But the English don’t know how else to describe a magazine about sex. So we joke about it instead.”

Later this month, Roeber and her deputy editor, Saskia Vogel, will publish the first edition of the revamped and relaunched Erotic Review. During the late 1990s, the Erotic Review was a high-end, lavishly illustrated print magazine, but for the past 14 years, it has languished as a little-read online newsletter. Now, at a moment when sex parties and orgies seem to be all the rage, it will be back to its pomp as a physical product, available from bookshops and published three times a year.

Each edition will include a guest art curator, while highlights from the inaugural publication include an essay on the blossoming popularity of romance fiction, a photo sequence from the performance artist Esben Weile Kjaer celebrating the art of the kiss, an explicit short story about a porn shoot from the veteran contributor Michel Faber, and a Chekhovian portrait of marital desire from the Welsh novelist Cynan Jones. Where the original at times felt like a magazine for overgrown schoolboys (Boris Johnson was a contributor), this new iteration feels like a magazine for grown-ups. “If we were going to bring it back, we had to take it seriously,” says Roeber. “But I also think in 2024 the audience is really shifting. Today, young people in particular are much more open and curious.”

The Erotic Review has a chequered history. First published in 1995 by the Erotic Print Society as a pamphlet featuring articles about sex and desire, in the late 1990s it became synonymous with Rowan Pelling. She became the editor in 1997, at the age of 28, and, over the next six years, transformed it into an 84-page publication with a circulation of 30,000, while attracting writers such as Barry Humphries, Auberon Waugh and DBC Pierre.

Under her reign, the sensibility was distinctly British, which is to say that sex was either filtered through a heavy dose of irony or with a hefty side helping of cheesy end-of-pier smut. The art tended to feature cheeky shots of posteriors and bosoms, while pieces included meditations on “the best nipples in town”. Pelling even cheerily encouraged her female staff to wear stockings in the office.

Vogel, a 42-year-old Berlinbased author and translator who interned at the magazine under Pelling, remembers a prevailing obsession with “nurses and spanked bottoms”.

“The British have this real thing about vice and corporal punishment,” she says. “I loved my time there, but I did feel that perhaps the magazine could benefit from a different perspective.”

In 2004, it was taken over by the media company that produces Penthouse, and after changing hands again several times it became an online magazine in 2010. A descent into obscurity followed, despite it being lovingly maintained by its founder, Jamie Maclean – now retired. It feels a bold decision to bring it back as a print edition at a time when the cultural winds are blowing firmly towards the digital sphere. But Roeber and Vogel are upbeat. “It feels important that it should itself be an object of desire, something you can hold and collect,” says Roeber.

Anyway, they argue, there’s not much space in the mainstream for serious writing about sex. “If something gets labelled as edgy or erotic, it tends to be untouchable by the mainstream,” says Vogel, pointing to Rebecca Rukeyser’s personal essay about the curious internet porn phenomenon of “goon caves” (an online subculture in which men saturate themselves with porn while simultaneously practising abstinence), which had previously been rejected by several American journals.

Yet today’s cultural climate is very different from the lad culture of the 1990s. How does a magazine that once featured a photo spread of its female staff in their underwear navigate a post-MeToo world? “We are certainly moving away from the heterosexual male gaze that we’ve all been used to,” says Roeber. “That’s not to say we don’t have heterosexual men in the magazine, because we must. But there are lots of ways of talking about desire.”

All the same, our new hypervigilance when it comes to issues of consent and power has the potential to make writing about sex a bit of a minefield, particularly if you are a heterosexual man.

“I wanted to write a story about the male gaze and how women can change the power dynamic,” says Michel Faber, whose smartly subversive contribution, “Not Just Anybody”, about a porn shoot, reckons directly with this issue. “But it took me ages to think of a story that wouldn’t be guaranteed to attract condemnation from people who are not interested in art, but very interested in quarrelling with strangers on the internet.” Vogel agrees that “there is potentially something a lot more fraught about writing about heterosexual sex”. She points to the American writer Garth Greenwell, who combines the literary with explicit homosexual eroticism. He has said that with his most recent novel, Cleanness, he wanted to see if he could write something that was “100 per cent pornographic and 100 per cent high art”.

Most pornography, however, dispenses with the art bit, which is a shame, according to Roeber. “Porn is incredibly effective at arousal, but it’s very one-note,” she says. “We have a guest curator for each issue and the aim is to open our eyes to different sorts of images, and different ways of exploring desire through art.”

But what about the prudes? In Britain, we tend to deflect our profound cultural reserve when it comes to matters of sex through a nudge-nudge, wink-wink larkiness that Roeber argues previous incarnations of the Erotic Review knowingly played up to. “We are making the magazine much more international in terms of contributors, partly to sidestep this Anglo-Saxon moral awkwardness,” she says.

“As a culture, we are certainly very embarrassed about romance,” agrees the Scottish poet John Burnside, who is contributing an essay about the eroticisation of travel to the second issue. “We are the only country in the world, for instance, which gives out a Bad Sex Award, much to the amazement of many countries across the world. How we write about sex says a lot about the culture, about how relaxed and imaginative it is.”

So, what makes good erotic fiction? Vogel points to a couple of sentences in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. “It’s a moment of anticipation. Patrick Bateman [the novel’s sociopathic fantasist narrator] is lying on the bed, waiting for a couple of women to arrive.” The novel’s extreme violence is considered so controversial, some countries sell it with a shrink-wrapped cover. Is she saying the best sex writing is transgressive? “For me, it’s where the mind wanders,” she says simply. Burnside, who thinks a lot of so-called classic writing about sex – Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller – is “boring”, believes that some of the best erotic writing pivots on the unconsummated. “These days, I look down on old men writing about voluptuous women. I’m much more interested in the almost. The look across a room that comes to nothing.”

In essence, Roeber believes there is a loosening of “moral correctness” around sex and art that makes 2024 the perfect time for an Erotic Review relaunch. In fact, “I’m not sure this incarnation of the magazine could have existed 50 years ago.”

The first issue of the relaunched ‘Erotic Review’ will be published on March 11; ermagazine.com

Let me know what you think.

Our Heroine: JK Rowling

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There is an article in today’s Telegraph by Allister Heath (the editor of the Sunday Telegraph) in which the editor, rightfully, refers to J K Rowling as a heroine.

J K Rowling

Mr Heath says, “JK Rowling is a modern British heroine, and all those who have vilified, defamed, threatened and traduced her should hang their heads in shame. She has proved to be a far more effective defender of common-sense values than all but a handful of MPs, exposing the cowardice and moral bankruptcy of much of Westminster and Whitehall.

She has fought indefatigably for ordinary people, for the truth, for the rights of women threatened by the rise of trans extremism, incurring horrific hatred from tens of thousands of deranged woke fanatics. She has had a dramatic impact on our politics, unlike the managerialist politicians who dominate the Cabinet, most of whom go with the flow on all “controversial” subjects and are thus content to be in office but not truly in power.

She has almost single-handedly neutralised trans extremism by running the most significant extra-parliamentary campaign in recent history, using little more than tweets and the occasional interview or speech. She is an inspiration to anti-woke dissidents across all continents, and to anybody who believes in the power of carefully chosen words to change the world.

Until Rowling entered the fray, the Tories, under the calamitous Theresa May, were poised to allow gender self-recognition, extremist trans groups had gone mainstream, it was taboo to scrutinise “gender-affirming care” for children or the Tavistock Centre, and Labour was careering into full woke mode. Today, thanks also to a few brave politicians, while the battle hasn’t been won, the extremists are in retreat.

Unusually given our selfish and venal public culture, Rowling has asked for nothing in return, has been given neither the damehood nor the peerage she deserves, and has in fact paid an immense price for helping to rescue her country. As if this weren’t enough, as the author of Harry Potter, she has done more for the UK, for our soft power, for the happiness of our children, for our economy and for the taxman than any current member of the Cabinet. 

How have we come to a point when a centre-Left billionaire author from Edinburgh represents Middle England’s views better than the London-centric establishment class, and even many “Conservative” politicians? And why did so few come to Rowling’s defence when she started to expose woke madness, most notably when she rightly slammed the growing use of the idiotic term “people who menstruate”? She tweeted: “I’m sure there used to be a word for these people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

When almost our entire establishment – politicians, judges, business leaders, cultural leaders – ran for cover, Rowling took on cancel culture and won. She has broken the spell, proving that the best way to defeat social-media mobs is to call their bluff. By sheer force of personality, by refusing to accept that she had lost her freedom of speech, by crafting tight, sharp and rigorous arguments, by standing up to the bullies, she has drastically shifted the Overton window on issues of gender and sex.

She was at it again this week, writing what many wanted to say but were still too scared to verbalise. Reacting to the fact that a transgender cat killer who murdered a stranger was being described as a woman – and that judges have been told to refer to defendants by their chosen pronouns, whether or not they have undergone surgery or applied for a gender recognition certificate – she lashed out. “I’m sick of this s—”, she said. “This is not a woman. These are not our crimes.”

Rowling has exposed the woke commissars’ ultimate lack of power: The mainstream majority will vote with its wallets and has no time for woke capital. The Harry Potter franchise continues to boom. Hogwarts Legacy, an action role-playing game, sold 22 million copies last year, making it the world’s best-selling video game, generating $1 billion and delivering more royalties to Rowling. 

In theory, the wealthy have the freedom to speak out; in practice, most feel that they have too much to lose and prefer to exercise their influence in private, by lobbying or via political donations. This is unhealthy. They should take a leaf out of Rowling’s book, as the likes of Bill Ackman, a fund manager, has done over the vicious epidemic of anti-Semitism in US universities.

Rowling’s emergence as our era’s leading feminist icon reminds us that the sensible Left and Right must work together, that they have much in common against the dark, extremist, authoritarian revolutionaries who seek to overthrow our society. I, for one, never thought I would come to appreciate Rowling so much, given her background as a Labour supporter. 

But none of that matters any longer: the attempt at eliminating the very concept of man and woman, the irreversible damage inflicted upon children who have had the misfortune of falling prey to social contagion, the attempt at cancelling gay people, the terrible risk to women and girls from the eradication of single-sex spaces in gyms and prisons, the despicable misogyny of those who seek to pretend that it is women, and not men, who commit many rapes and murders, all of these are issues of existential significance to our civilisation that require the unity of all sensible people, of Left, Right or neither. 

Rowling’s should be a model for other campaigns. At a time when Parliament is being cowed by Islamist extremists, we need more brave people to stand up for the silent majority. The answer isn’t to spout nonsense à la Lee Anderson, but to unrelentingly marshal reason and facts to expose the threat and danger to our liberties and democracy. Who will be the next J K Rowling?”

What a great piece of journalism!

Review: LUKA

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This novel was recommended to me by a friend, and as it is about civil conflict situations, I bought a copy.

The author, Ian Bancroft, is a writer and former diplomat based in the former Yugoslavia for over fifteen years. He has written travel articles for various publications, and he has produced foreign policy analysis for The Guardian, Radio Free Europe, UN Global Experts and others. Ian’s first book, ‘Dragon’s teeth – tales from north Kosovo’, was published in 2020.

There are four main characters in LUKA. ‘A’ is a beautiful girl who grew up in Old Town; she has lived through a prior war. She is single and now twenty-seven. ‘L’ is a talented young painter who also lives in Old Town. ‘U’ is a long-serving police officer who never questioned the wisdom of his superiors. ‘K’ is the mother of ‘A’, and an assembly-line worker in a munitions factors. She vigorously defends her father known by the nom de guerre ‘Jinn’, as in ‘djinn’, owing to his almost mystical ability to conjure things into existence. Her father is rumoured to profit from illegal arms sales. ‘A’s great grandfather – unnamed- also appears in the context of previous wars. Most of the book deals with the historic and current conflicts of Old Town, New Town, Upper Town and Lower Town. These are not straight forward military conflicts, but anti-civilian conflicts, involving snipers, rape, torture, imprisonment, and other crimes against humanity. ‘L’ is imprisoned in Luka, an assortment of warehouses in a port. His left hand, which he uses to paint, is crushed by an invisible woman using a hammer. The woman smells of vanilla. At the conclusion of the conflict, ‘A’ and ‘L’ plan to marry. ‘L’ visits ‘A’ at ‘K’s house, where he suddenly recognises ‘K’ as the woman who smells of vanilla. ‘K’ runs out of the house, pursued by ‘A’ and into a nearby forest which is mined. There is an explosion which ends the novel.

LUKA is almost a catalogue of crimes against humanity, presented factually, but there is relatively little explanation of the motivations, the reasons, impulses, etc. which generate these crimes. The characters are realistic, but the use of generic letters to identify them deprives them of flesh and blood. Similarly, the use of generic place names takes away their authenticity. The time line of the book is sometimes difficult to follow. The actual narrative covers about twenty years, but the historic references cover nearly a century. A more conventional structure, cause and effect, and real world identification would have been far more satisfying.

More Controversy at Royal Society

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Following up on last week’s post, there is an article in The Standard written by Merlanie McDonagh, an Evening Standard columnist on Salman Rushdie’s views on the dispute.

Sir Salman Rushdie

“Sir Salman Rushdie has intervened in the kerfuffle about the Royal Society of Literature under the presidency of Bernardine Evaresito, author of Girl, Woman, Other. Irked by questions from some members about whether the organisation is doing its job, especially protecting the interests of writers, she declared in the Guardian that this “historic institution” is doing just fine. But it had to be “impartial” about issues as in, though she didn’t mention it, the attack on Sir Salman at a literary festival.

The great man has responded on X: “Just wondering if the Royal Society of Literature is ‘impartial’ about attempted murder, @BernardineEvari? (Asking for a friend.)” Dame Marina Warner, a past president, had complained that the RSL hadn’t supported him.

Quite so, Sir Salman. If the RSL cannot bring itself to clamber onto its high horse about a homicidal attack on a writer because the attacker did not like Sir Salman’s views on Islam, it may as well shut down those agreeable premises in Somerset House and go home.

But the discontent about the society goes beyond this rather low bar. It’s a rarefied version of the problems that attend any institution that goes in for diversity and inclusion. It would be invidious to say that the appointment of Evaristo, a Booker prize-winner, is part of this, though she kind of invites the thought by saying that her presidency shows how the institution is modernising.

A more obvious example is the extension of fellowships to 40 under-40s. It took the waspish Philip Hensher to observe: “Some of the writers who have benefited from this widening are i) expensively educated and privileged ii) not very good.” Oof.

Most of us who keep authors afloat by buying books aren’t bothered about the RSL. But there’s a small stratum of writers for whom it matters desperately, whose status is bolstered by being a fellow. And it does do good work, for instance in getting books into prisons.

The row demonstrates the elephant traps that await organisations that try to modernise without taking on board what that entails. And Evaristo, though a feisty promoter of the RSL, is more activist than figurehead. Good for her, less good for the RSL.”

I agree completely with Sir Salman and Dame Marina!

AI Wins Prize

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An article in today’s RTÉ website titled: “Japan literary laureate unashamed about using ChatGPT” caught my eye. There is no author contribution shown.

“The winner of Japan’s most prestigious literary award has acknowledged that about “5%” of her futuristic novel was penned by ChatGPT, saying generative AI had helped unlock her potential.

Since the 2022 launch of ChatGPT, an easy-to-use AI chatbot that can deliver an essay upon request within seconds, there have been growing worries about the impact on a range of sectors – books included.

Lauded by a judge for being “almost flawless” and “universally enjoyable”, Rie Kudan’s latest novel, “Tokyo-to Dojo-to” (“Sympathy Tower Tokyo”), claimed the biannual Akutagawa Prize yesterday.

Set in a futuristic Tokyo, the book revolves around a high-rise prison tower and its architect’s intolerance of criminals, with AI a recurring theme.

The 33-year-old author openly admitted that AI heavily influenced her writing process as well.

“I made active use of generative AI like ChatGPT in writing this book,” she told a ceremony following the winner’s announcement.

“I would say about 5% of the book quoted verbatim the sentences generated by AI.”

Outside of her creative activity, Ms Kudan said she frequently toys with AI, confiding her innermost thoughts that “I can never talk to anyone else about”.

ChatGPT’s responses sometimes inspired dialogue in the novel, she added.

Going forward, she said she wants to keep “good relationships” with AI and “unleash my creativity” in co-existence with it.

When contacted by AFP, the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature, the Akutagawa award’s organiser, declined to comment.

On social media, opinions were divided on Ms Kudan’s unorthodox approach to writing, with sceptics calling it morally questionable and potentially undeserving of the prize.

“So she wrote the book by deftly using AI … Is that talented or not? I don’t know,” one wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

But others celebrated her resourcefulness and the effort she put into experimenting with various prompts.

“So this is how the Akutagawa laureate uses ChatGPT – not to slack off but to ‘unleash creativity'”, another social media user wrote.

Titles that list ChatGPT as a co-author have been offered for sale through Amazon’s e-book self-publishing unit, although critics say the works are of poor quality.

British author Salman Rushdie told a press conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October that recently someone asked an AI writing tool to produce 300 words in his style.

“And what came out was pure garbage,” said the “Midnight’s Children” writer, to laughter from the audience.

The technology also throws up a host of potential legal problems.

Last year, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and “Game of Thrones” author George RR Martin were among several writers who filed a class-action lawsuit against ChatGPT creator OpenAI over alleged copyright violation.

Along with the Authors Guild, they accused the California-based company of using their books “without permission” to train ChatGPT’s large language models, algorithms capable of producing human-sounding text responses based on simple queries, according to the lawsuit.”

From my point of view, the use of AI to produce literature must sort out the copyright problem. When that issue has been resolved, using AI to write, or co-write, books will be accepted as commonplace, legal and ethical. We human beings have always adopted new technology, even dangerous technology, having found the good in it.

Fighting AI

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There is an article in Monday’s issue of the Daily Telegraph concerning a lawsuit filed by the New York Times against Microsoft and Open AI that, on the face of it, is about imitating copyright news articles. But what is at stake is whether an artificial intelligence company could ‘train’ its software on the works of, say, Salman Rushdie, and then produce new Salmon Rushdi titles without paying the author any royalty. The article which bears the title “Silicon Valley’s mimicry machines are trying to erase authors” is written by Andrew Orlowski who is a technology journalist who writes a weekly Telegraph column every Monday. He founded the research network Think of X and previously worked for The Register. 

Andrew Orlowski

Orlowski says, “Silicon Valley reacts to criticism like a truculent toddler throwing its toys out of the pram. But acquiring a bit of humility and self-discipline may be just what the child needs most. 

So the US tech industry should regard a lawsuit filed last week as a great learning experience.

The New York Times last week filed a copyright infringement against Microsoft and Open AI. 

The evidence presented alleges that ChatGPT created near-identical copies of the Times’ stories on demand, without the user first paying a subscription or seeing any advertising on the Times’ site. 

ChatGPT “recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style”, the suit explains.

In other words, the value of the material that the publisher generates is entirely captured by the technology company, which has invested nothing in creating it.

This was exactly the situation that led to the creation of copyright in the Statute of Anne in 1710, which first established the legal right to copyright for an author. Then, it was the printing monopoly that was keeping all the dosh.

The concept of an author, a subjective soul who viewed the world in a unique way, really arrived with the Enlightenment.

Now, the nerds of Silicon Valley want to erase it again. Attempts to do just that have already made them richer than anything a Stationer’s Guild member could imagine.

“Microsoft’s deployment of Times-trained LLMs (Large Language Models) throughout its product line helped boost its market capitalization by trillions of dollars in the past year alone,” the lawsuit notes, adding that OpenAI’s value has shot from zero to $90bn. 

With Open AI’s ChatGPT models now built into so many Microsoft products, this is a mimicry engine built on a global scale.

More ominously, the lawsuit also offers an abundance of evidence that “these tools wrongly attribute false information to The Times”. The bots introduce errors that weren’t there in the first place, it claims. 

They “hallucinate”, to use the Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year. Publishers who are anxious about the first concern – unauthorised reproduction – should be even more concerned about the second.

Would a publisher be happy to see their outlet’s name next to a ChatGPT News response that confidently asserts, for example, that Iran has just launched cruise missiles at US destroyers? Or at London? 

These are purely hypotheticals but being the newspaper that accidentally starts World War III is not something that can be good for the brand in the long run.

Some midwit pundits and academics portrayed the lawsuit merely as a tactical licensing gambit. 

This year both Associated Press and the German giant Axel Springer have both cut licensing deals with Open AI. The New York Times is just sabre rattling in pursuit of a better deal, so the argument goes.

In response to the lawsuit, OpenAI insisted it respects “the rights of content creators and owners and [is] committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new revenue models”.

However, the industry is worried about much more than money.

Take, for example, the fact that the models that underpin ChatGPT need only to hear a couple of seconds of your child’s voice to clone it authentically. AI does not need to return the next day to perfect their impression. After that, it has a free hand to do what it will with its newfound ability.

So, the economic value of a licensing deal is impossible to estimate beforehand. And once done, it cannot be undone. As one publishing technology executive puts it, “you can’t un-bake the cake”.

Previous innovations in reproduction, from the photocopier to Napster, were rather different beasts, as the entrepreneur and composer Ed Newton-Rex noted this week. Past breakthroughs were purely mechanical or technological changes. But this new generation of AI tools marry technology with knowledge.

“They only work *because* their developers have used that copyrighted content to train on,” Newton-Rex wrote on Twitter, since rebranded as X. (His former employer, Stability AI, is also being sued for infringement).

Publishers and artists are entitled to think that without their work, AI would be nothing. This is why the large AI operations – and the investors hoping to make a killing from them – should be getting very nervous. They have been negligent in ignoring the issue until now.

“Until recently, AI was a research community that enjoyed benign neglect from copyright holders who felt it was bad form to sue academics,” veteran AI journalist Timothy B Lee wrote recently on Twitter. “This gave a lot of AI researchers the mistaken impression that copyright law didn’t apply to them. “It doesn’t seem out of the question that AI companies could lose these cases catastrophically and be forced to pay billions to plaintiffs and rebuild their models from scratch.”

Would wipe-and-rebuild be such a bad thing?

Today’s generative AI is just a very early prototype. Engineers regard a prototype as a learning experience too: it’s there to be discarded.  Many more prototypes may be developed and thrown away until a satisfactory design emerges. A ground-up rebuild can in some cases be the best thing that can happen to a technology product. There’s certainly plenty of room for improvement with this new generation of AI models. 

A Stanford study of ChatGPT looking at how reliable the chatbot was when it came to medicine found that less than half (41 percent) of the responses to clinical conditions agreed with the known answer according to a consensus of physicians. The AI gave lethal advice 7 per cent of the time.

A functioning democracy needs original reporting and writing so that we all benefit from economic incentives for creativity. We must carry on that Enlightenment tradition of original expression. 

Some may find such arguments pompous and any piety from the New York Times difficult to swallow. But there are bigger issues at stake. 

A society that gives up on respect for individual expression, and chooses to worship a mimicry machine instead, probably deserves the fate that inevitably awaits.”