I’ve been thinking about this question for quite some time, particularly after reading Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

One thing I’ve noticed throughout Dostoevsky’s novels is the recurring idea that isolation is a kind of hell, while human communion is something resembling heaven. We see this in The Brothers Karamazov, particularly through Ivan and Alyosha, and even in White Nights, where the Dreamer spends much of his life living through his imagination rather than experiencing the world around him. There’s something similar in Tolstoys War and Peace, particularly with Prince Andrei, who spends much of his life withdrawing from others before graduallly discovering something meaningful through love and human connection.

I’ve actually been exploring this question in a story I’m writing called Hannibal. It follows an isolated man who spends nearly his entire life reading, writing, philosophizing, and imagining. His imagination is so vivid that he can experience entire relationships, conversations, adventures, and even love without ever needing to experience them in reality. He eventually encounters Hannibal, an unusual character who challenges his understanding of life and human relationships. The central question is whether this imaginary existence is genuinely enough, or whether something essential is missing.

My own inclination is that human communion offers something imagination cannot entirely replace. Another person has their own thoughts, feelings, and freedom. They can surprise us, contradict us, love us, reject us, and change us in ways that our imagination cannot. But then there’s the other side of the argument. If someone genuinely finds happiness in solitude, why should we insist that their life is somehiow incomplete? Aren’t we simply imposing our own understanding of fulfillment upon them?
I don’t really have a definitive answer. I’m inclined towards Dostoevsky’s understanding of human communion, but I’m not entirely convinced that it must be necerssary for everyone.
Does literature give us any reason to believe that human connection is essential to a fulfilling life, rather than simply one way of achieving it?

TL;DR: Suppose a person lives eighty years in complete solitude, experiencing tremendous happiness through philosophy, art, and imagination, and dies without regret. Has that person lived a lesser life than someone who experienced love and friendship?

Just finished Franz Kafka's The Trial and I couldn't help but feel as if the absurdity lay more in Josef K's actions than the actual legal system he was in. (This is my first Kafka novel, so excuse my ignorance)

The system was mysterious, nonsensical, hypocritical and ridiculous but the legal system was not the most bizarre aspect of the book, to me.

Josef has been arrested for a crime that he doesn't know about and is fighting it in a legal system he can't understand and yet he continues to have faith in his own innocence and logic. He doesn't know what crime he has been charged with nor how to even properly fight his charge but he still has this unwavering confidence in himself that comes across as delusional.

The decisions he makes: arguing with the arresting officers, not confirming the time of his hearing, trying to make a grandstanding speech at his hearing, leaving a meeting with a potential lawyer to be with that lawyer's woman, dismissing any and all advice, and then firing his lawyer are just inconceivable. Why on Earth would any person do these things? It's as if he has determined that because he believes he is innocent he must be found innocent without having to actually play ball within the game he has been placed in. It doesn't matter what your personal opinion of the legal system is, you roll with it once you're in it. He was just this insanely arrogant man that couldn't imagine a world where he didn't know something and acted in defiance of that until his unfortunate end. Josef could not admit that he didn't know what was going on. He refused to do the logical thing which would be to adapt to the situation he was in.

It was as if Kafka was asking: Is It better to be right or to survive? And by demonstrating the silliness of Josef K.'s blind faith in "logic", the answer is to survive. Even when you know you are right, even when you know the situation you're in is ridiculous, trying to prove your point gets you nothing. Go along with whatever it is, acknowledge your own opinion in private, and move along with your life.

I interpreted The Trial as an icarian story warning of the dangers of beliefs in a perceived objective justice. There's no such thing as truth, justice, or even innocence. Your life is the only certain thing on this Earth and you do what you need to do preserve it.

I'm a huge Thomas Hardy fan but have just finished for the first time, The Return of the Native.

It's generally considered to sit someone between his major and minor works - not on the same level as Tess of the D'Urbevilles, Jude the Obscure, Mayor of Casterbridge or Far From the Madding Crowd, while much stronger than most of his other works.

Having just read it, I can understand why: at times the prose is quite clunky and the narrative is far too dependent on happenstance. And yet at the same time, the intertwining of environment and character, which I think Hardy does better than almost any other author, shines through every page.

One thing that did strike me was that the most compelling characters of the novel were two of the female leads - Eustacia Vye and Mrs Yeobright. They were complex and stood out in a way that none of the other male characters did.

This made me think about some of Hardy's other novels, and led me the conclusion that Hardy is actually better at writing women than men. Amongst his most compelling characters are Bathsheba (Far From the Madding Crowd), Sue Bridehead (Jude the Obscure) and the eponymous Tess.

I wanted to know if any others felt the same way and, if so, why he is much more effective at writing female characters than many of his contemporaries were (and sadly, many subsequent male writers). My own view is that Hardy is most effective at writing characters whose nature puts them at odds with society. His two strongest male characters are both outsiders: Jude who is perellinally on the outside looking in, and Michael Henchard whose social status masks his deep flaws. During the time of writing, I feel through his women he can most effectively depict how social status stifles and lessens people.

That is not to say his depiction of women is without flaws: most notably most are often described in terms related to their beauty. But I love how Hardy is often viewed as a romantic author (if tragic) yet his most compelling women's motivations have little to do with romance. Keen to know other's thoughts!

Initially this was the motto on Animal Farm belted by the sheep at almost every moment. Later they changed it to “four legs good, two legs better”. I understand the point of this in the plot, but I’m wondering if this is a parallel to something that happened under Stalin.

I believe that boxer was an allegory/parallel for soldiers who thought they were doing the right thing, but I’m not sure about the sheep.

Note: I know it’s a book most read in school, but I didn’t pay a lick of attention in 8th grade

I was wondering what people’s opinions on Iris Murdoch are? I don’t really hear her name talked about on these sorts of pages.

Only asking because I randomly picked up one of her books in a bookshop last week (A Severed Head) on a bit of a whim, basically just because my daughter is also called Iris. I knew that she had won the Booker back in the 70s but knew nothing else about her. If I’m totally honest, and I admit being completely ignorant here, I assumed it was going to be a bit of a soppy chick lit type book which I was kinda in the mood for.

It was not a soppy book at all. It was excellent and a bit brutal (possibly should have guessed from the name). I was reading it on the train to work and about 2/3 of the way through I actually audibly said “Nooo!” At something that happened and got a few funny looks from my fellow commuters.

But anyway was just wondering if anyone had any opinions on her and recommendations of other books of hers to read. I know her famous one is The Sea, The Sea which I’ll probably read next unless I get other suggestions.

The Man of Law’s Tale

I loved Constance, whose name fits her character and who is well rewarded for it after a VERY hard road.

The Knight’s Tale

The longest story, with lots of love and honor and a violent climax.

The Second Nun’s Tale

A poetic telling of the life of St. Cecilia.

The Miller’s Tale

This is the only “dirty” story I’m ranking highly not only because it’s the first one, but because it takes the prize in bad taste (in contrast to something like The Summoner’s Tale- see below)

The Franklin’s Tale

I enjoyed this frankly absurd story about love and honor.

The Merchant’s Tale

Another cheating wife story, but the conclusion is hilarious and I wasn’t expecting supernatural forces to get involved.

The Squire’s Tale

Too bad we don’t get the conclusion of this story, but what we have is great, including a mechanical horse and a ring that lets its wearer talk to birds.

The Shipman’s Tale

Another humorous cheating wife story (there are a few of these).

The Nun’s Priests Tale

Chanticleer is perhaps the most memorable protagonist of the tales, and this one is reminiscent of Aesop’s fables.

The Clerk’s Tale

This story is incredibly compelling, even if it’s unrealistic about human emotions and the husband is a terrifying sociopath.

The Manciple’s Tale

A tale of Apollo, and a much less humorous “cheating wife” story.

The Physician’s Tale

This one didn’t make much sense, though it’s certainly tragic. Why not just kill the judge? Or run? Or do literally anything else?

The Monk’s Tale

An interesting “Cliff’s Notes” of tragedy in rhym.

Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Topaz

I actually would have enjoyed this one, but it’s interrupted far too soon by the Host.

The Summoner’s Tale

Literally just the world’s longest (rhyming) fart joke.

The Pardoner’s Tale

This one is rather didactic, but I suppose ironic. The ending is not surprising.

The Reeve’s Tale

A lesser dirty story, entertaining enough in being outrageous.

The Friar’s Tale

This one is fine, but I found it one of the least memorable of the Tales.

The Prioress’s Tale

Antisemitic and didactic.

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

To be very clear- I HATE the rapist knight getting a happy ending. I LOVE the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. If Chanticleer is the most memorable protagonist in the Tales, the Wife of Bath is certainly the most memorable pilgrim.

The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale

Just a story about an alchemy con.

The Cook’s Tale

There is frankly just not much here, the least satisfying of the “unfinished” Tales.

...is a take I'm tired of hearing. I feel like modernism often gets described this way in general (Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway, and most of Faulkner's novels).

It's not *supposed* to confuse anybody. It's showing you different people's perspectives, different people's feelings, and different people's inner thoughts and private world.

If you step into somebody's life, many things are confusing.

But modernism is not meant to be incomprehensible or frustrating in the way people make it out to be.

A lot of times this "confusion" helps prolong or conceal plot points, and discovering what's happening in the confusion is exciting. But even there, you're meant to learn about the novel, not to be confused by it.

I usually post in food or music related subreddits, so I don't know how well this topic has been covered already.

Written between 1906 and 1909 this overly neglected work by Thomas Mann appears rather simple on its surface and is often regarded as being a fanciful reflection of his own recent marriage, stability, and happiness. But as with other Mann novels there is always a significantly deeper underlying purpose. Expecting the tensions between the traditional and modernity, as well as the fairy tale romance commonly referred to in book reviews, I was quickly perplexed by the early mention of a particular physical abnormality of the protagonist his Royal Highness Klaus Heinrich, heir apparent to the throne, which bore striking resemblance to the stunted arm and hand of Wilhelm II, Germany’s Emperor at the time of Mann’s writing. It is this abnormality and its meaning that I wish to address in particular regardless of many other noteworthy observations that can be made regarding Royal Highness.

With this infirmity in mind I considered Klaus Heinrich to be something of a Wilhelm II substitute. Mann presents Klaus in a very sympathetic manner throughout his childhood development, as a young adult, and through the formalities of his later court duties; a young man adrift but with no real world knowledge of how to alter or improve the ceremonial fate laid upon him. At this early juncture in the novel I would have taken Royal Highness to be leaning towards a nudging critique of Wilhelm II, and in some way it is, but not at all conventionally. It's not until Klaus Heinrich's love interest, Imma Spoelmann, enters more than half way through its 338 pages than we can truly determine who both Klaus Heinrich and Imma represent and to what purpose Mann may have intended.

Imma Spoelmann is the daughter and heir to the fortunes of Samuel Spoelmann, an American industrial magnate of German extraction who inherited his own father's wealth. Together they return to Germany to reside in one of the royal estates, the purchase of which is a boon to the failing finances of the kingdom overseen by Grand Duke Albrecht. Mr. Spoelmann, like both his daughter and the heir apparent Klaus Heinrich, have lived lives of self-recognized privilege, but unlike the Crown Prince Imma is a student of algebra, of a “mixture of blood”, and as described by Albrecht “very strange, very undomesticated, and, most of all, very original”. In short Klaus Heinrich eventually proves his worth to Imma in a prolonged courtship after being prodded by court intrigue to take interest in the welfare of the kingdom. And happily ever after, at least in the fairy tale.

In reality things were similar for a brief time. On February 11, 1905, Thomas Mann and Katia Mann (née Pringsheim) were married, he from the “First Families” of the Hanseaten class, she a student of physics and mathematics and the granddaughter of a wealthy Jewish industrialist. Four months later on June 6, 1905, the son of Emperor Wilhelm II, the Crown Prince Wilhelm married Duchess Cecilie Auguste Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who like Imma Spoelmann was loved by the population, was known to have a fiery temper, and of mixed blood stemming from royal lines of both Russia and Sweden. Similar to the fictional characters of Klaus Heinrich and Imma Spoelmann these four individuals of Thomas Mann, Katia Mann, Crown Prince Wilhelm, and Duchess Cecilie all came from lives of privilege, bear many similar characteristics to Klaus and Imma, and bore great hope for Germany's future, with the Mann's going on to have five children while the royal couple went on to produce six of their own. In many ways Mann’s fairy tale is a projection of a future he’d like to see for himself and Katia, but equally so for the royal house of Germany.

In conclusion what did Klaus Heinrich’s physical abnormality mirroring that of the real Wilhelm II represent and why did he possess it? It is nothing other than Thomas Mann slyly revealing that Wilhelm II is the deformity contained within Crown Prince Wilhelm. In this light Mann's Royal Highness is an open plea to the Crown Prince to be a less entitled, more engaged, and more caring ruler than his father. But as we know Wilhelm II never handed over power, but rather five years after the publication of Royal Highness joined the Great War of 1914-1918 and brought down the German Empire, ushering in the era of Adolph Hitler in 1933 and leaving no room for Mann's clear hope for Germany’s future through Crown Prince Wilhelm.

I mean, it's 4,000 pages. And it's blocks of text with no white space, no dialogue, just descriptions of flowers or churches or someone's psychological state. There's barely any plot. This guy was nuts.

It's said that some books teach you how to think. Proust teaches you how to feel. He has the ability (one peculiar to the almost pathologically introspective) to notice even the most fleeting, evanescent emotion, the kind that non-neurotic people don't even register, catch it before it vanishes, and put it under a microscope. Then he scrutinizes it from every angle, classifies every organelle and every protein, pours reagents over it, and writes an entire treatise on that particular 0.13 second emotional shiver.

Then he moves on to the next one. And keeps going like this for 4,000 pages.

By the end (if you make it to the end), you'll have become hypersensitive to yourself and the world around you. Your inner antennae will be so finely tuned that they'll vibrate at the faintest emotional breezes, the kind you would previously have been completely oblivious to. Your sensory taste buds will be raw nerve endings, and the slightest caress will make them scream.

I'm not saying this is a desirable outcome, but it's what Proust will do to you.

I was reading up on where the whole concept of "finding your other half" actually comes from, and it’s honestly wild. It’s so much more dramatic and beautifully tragic than the watered-down version we get in modern romantic movies.

The idea actually comes from a speech by a comic playwright named Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, written about 2,400 years ago.

According to his story, humans didn’t start out looking like we do now. We were originally these round, super-powerful creatures with four arms, four legs, and two faces looking in opposite directions. We were apparently so fast and strong that we got incredibly arrogant and actually tried to storm the heavens to attack the gods.

Zeus wanted to stop us, but he didn't want to just wipe us out with lightning bolts. If he did that, the gods wouldn't get any more worship or sacrifices from humans. So he came up with a compromise: he literally sliced every human right down the middle. That way, he instantly cut our power in half and doubled the number of people paying tribute to the gods.

Apollo then stitched up the wounds—leaving the belly button behind as a permanent scar to remind us not to mess with the gods again—and turned our faces forward.

The myth says that ever since that day, every single one of us is born as just a fraction of a whole. We spend our entire lives wandering the earth, carrying this deep, aching loneliness, just searching for that exact missing piece so we can finally feel complete.

I am a brazilian researcher of literature, and it's almost universally agreed that Grande Sertão: Veredas is the best Brazilian book, "our Ulysses."

However, the excessive use of local dialects, which is already a difficulty for Brazilians, makes adaptation practically impossible. Furthermore, the sheer number of neologisms would be a Joycean task to find an English equivalent for.

The book can only be fully appreciated in its entirety in Portuguese (but there are good German translations). As a Brazilian, this saddens me. I was curious to know if anyone from another country experiences a similar situation with some book, which functions much better in its original language.

Hi everyone! How are you? Today I'm here to talk about the beauty of contemporary Brazilian literature, more specifically about the writer Carla Madeira. I really like her books, despite the controversies saying that she romanticizes domestic violence in "Everything is a River". I disagree. I think she finds, in her own way, a way to show the reality that happens when we are overcome by the blindness of passion. I don't think we can judge Dalva for what she did, after all, isn't forgiveness precisely for that? To forgive the unforgivable? I find the way she plays with the unforgivable interesting. What is the limit of forgiveness? I believe it's a different limit for everyone.

Carla's books mostly feature disgusting and disturbing men (I don't know if this happens in her latest book, as I haven't read "When" yet), and we wonder why the protagonists do what they do. My favorite book of hers is "The Nature of the Bite", for many reasons. Many times it seems that Carla writes sexual/erotic scenes unnecessarily, I think it's part of the discomfort she wants to cause, but sometimes I feel that having certain scenes wouldn't make any difference to the story. In "The Nature of the Bite" I don't feel that way. Everything is extremely difficult, but necessary. That's the beauty of the melancholy in this book. I don't think I would forgive as Teresa did, I don't feel entitled to judge her, we don't know the intensity of the feelings that come to her heart. Besides, "Those who see from the outside make better arrangements, but it's inside, right in the place we don't see, that the inability to cope occupies everything." She did what she did because of the lack her heart felt. She didn't understand her mother's estrangement, so she found refuge in what she lacked.

Biá is certainly one of my favorite characters among all the women written by Carla. I like the depth, the regret, the reflections that haunt her. She regrets it. I don't think she regrets saying "Go" but the way she reacted to losing the love of her life. She needed to have done what she did. To protect her daughter from her dreams. In her forgetfulness, she then remakes the memories, recreates the moments with her imaginary grandson, as if she could change what she would have liked to have done with her daughter. She blamed her daughter, in a way, "she wasn't to blame, but she had a body," deep down she felt that the blame for her unhappiness lay with her daughter. She realized too late that it had nothing to do with the girl. That she lost a father and a mother overnight. Biá got lost in unreal memories and in what could not be undone. And then she was gone. Biá rested in happy memories. Regret no longer exists. She made one last friend as sad as she was, full of regrets, before leaving. That's what allowed her to go in peace.

Forgiveness is a much-discussed topic; when people read about it, they say "I would never forgive," but "pepper in other people's eyes doesn't seem to sting as much." Only those who live it know. Only those who survive understand how to find forgiveness coming from immeasurable pain. "Life has a way of keeping us alive even when we are dying of pain." Forgiveness cannot be explained.

Despite many criticisms, I appreciate Madeira's writing. I think it resonates with me a little. I find comfort in freeing myself from my ghosts through the forgiveness I learned from reading her books. It doesn't mean staying together, like Dalva, or living together, like Teresa. No. It's simply letting go of the pain of missing those people and the pain of what they did, so they don't define our lives. That's how I see Carla Madeira's characters. Women much stronger than I could ever imagine.

Forgiving is a very heavy burden. Resentment dries up and stains the tapestry.

One of my favorite passages from the book "The Nature of the Bite":

"I want another word for all this, Teo. Another word to name the pain one feels when loving too unsuccessfully. 'Ador,' that's what I'll call it. Amor (love in English) and ador, both with four letters, so there's no doubt about how they align in obvious symmetry. I could say: 'I feel ador for you, daughter,' and thus confess my failure, freeing her from all blame. She was just there, and yet, I can no longer say: I feel love for you, daughter. Because after everything... my heart no longer obeys me. I'll need another life to fix things. This incarnation is lost."

Before leaving because I've already gone on too long hahaha I ask you, who are reading this far, the same question that Biá asked Olivia:

"Olivia, what do you no longer have that saddens you so much?"

Thank you for reading this short reflection on the beauty of Carla Madeira's contemporary literature.

hey readers ,I'm reading notes from underground by Dostoevsky in English (my third language) and I feel like I don't understand the composition of sentences even though I do translate the words I don't understand and read slowly but It's kind of hard.
how do you deal with this and make understanding ideas easier??

As a French person who's passionate about literature and is a french teacher, I've always been curious about how French classics are perceived outside of France, especially since they're such a significant part of our literary and educational culture.

I'm also curious about how translation might affect the reading experience, especially when it comes to irony, humour, or an author's particular prose style.

So, if you're not French, what's your favourite French classic, and what made it stand out to you? Did it change your perception of French literature or culture in any way?

And conversely, have you ever read a French classic that you genuinely disliked or found overrated? I'd be just as interested in hearing why!

Wow!
The obvious connection between Antoinette and the sea itself is beautiful (and that’s just the cover!) Antoinette floating with no roots and not belonging to one country, like the Sargasso sea (named after the seaweed “Sargassum”, a floating, rootless algae in its waters).
Antoinette’s journey into Bertha and animalistic traits has been fascinating to read—I am just thoroughly impressed! If you have not heard of this book (which I had not until this class), it is a must read! Beautiful!

Hey everyone, first of all, the thing is that I'm autistic (with ADHD) and I'm starting out in the world of literature. Proceed if you're interested in the subject.

Well, I tend to take things very literally, and, as a result, I think that everything the book proposes has a symbolic meaning behind it. This hurts me, because then I can't pay attention to the reading, I end up researching and thinking about the meaning of things that shouldn't even exist or shouldn't exist... Could someone help me with some really effective advice? I spend more time researching the meaning of something that doesn't actually have a meaning on the internet than reading the book itself... Thanks

Wow, what a book. Definitely gonna be one of my favorites of the year. Written in 1971, as relevant today as it was back then. On the surface it's an action novel set in the Harlem reinassaince, but it's so much more.

It defies description. It’s like a Pynchon novel from a black POV, creative formatting and a healthy dash of Assassin’s Creed. It’s a cultured take down of American society combined with an action film, a bizarre look into a parallel reality where the Titanic is sailing in 1929 and Moses (of Egypt fame) had a rock band. At times it felt like reading a counterculture pamphlet, or a Freire/Chomsky combined essay, at others like watching a movie Tarantino would rip off and add even more n-words.

In an even more bizarre description, it's what Kuang's Babel tried to do, but by a competent author. It's a real takedown of colonialism and the dominant cultures that has real depth. It's not just a series of stereotypes thrown around. You will come out of this book more educated, asking more questions, with a reading list 5 pages long.

"Fever dream" is overused, but that's what it is. Handwritten pages, unrelated photography, anachronisms, real people weaving in and out of the story.

Has anyone read any other of his books? I understand this is his masterpiece but curious if others match the same vibe.

Edit: Forgot to ask, do you think the art thieves being called mutafikah is intentionally both an Islamic reference and a bastardization of motherfuckers?

I think I need a Brandy after that. What an incredibly powerful book. I could see the ending coming quite a bit before it did come but that just made it even more devastating in a way. I wanted to stop it but I felt so powerless as a reader. Graham Greene has the most wonderfully simple and unpretentious prose. He doesn't need to use a million flowery words to get to "the heart of the matter" at all. He manages to say so much about life and human nature in so little words. Nearly every page of his books has a little passage that just floors me with how succint and on point it is. I often find myself pausing to take a photo of certain lines because they resonate with me so much so I can go back to them later.

This is the 7th of his books I have read now and this is how I would rank them so far I think:

1. The Quiet American

2. The Heart of The Matter

3. Our Man in Havana

4. The Power and The Glory

5. Brighton Rock

6. The Comedians

7. The End of The Affair

What are your thoughts on The Heart of The Matter and Graham Greene in general? What Graham Greene should I read next?

I have to get something off of my chest about the Creature: he was a monster.

It irks me when I hear people say "The Creature wasn't the monster; it was Frankenstein." I feel like those that say that don't remember the story well.

After the Creature was rejected by the family in the cottage that he helped and secretly cared for, he gave into his despair and decided to "force" people to love him, the first of which was Victor's son. He decided that a child would be pliable enough. He didn't know that the child was his Creator's son at first but once he did, he didn't hesitate to kill him and strangled him to death.

And then, as most people know, he asked Victor to make a companion for him, in the same fashion as he had been made. Seeing as he was struggling with fitting in with society and finding his own identity, it was selfish of him to not consider that she might have similar misgivings. Even though he promised Victor that he would leave to live in the wild after his Companion had been created, what if she didn't want to live with him? He didn't consider the possible feelings of Her, just as Victor never considered his own.

The Creature wasn't a monster because of his appearance; he made himself into one because of his actions.

I know that a lot of books are called unfilmable for depictions of gore or some problematic aspects, but I want to know about the other kind. Why books such as the house of leaves, and others are unique to the medium. There is an underlying aspect to what is only possible in literature. A lot of advancements have been made in film technology and there are aspects which blow me away. But what kind of techniques are in books that films/video games etc can't emulate, or at least to the same degree.

I want to know about the narrative encyclopedias that are just unique to the medium.

Any and all suggestions/modifications to the question are welcome.

At some point in my life I've gotten fairly bored with fiction, or at least story-telling as such. I'm reading more novels these days, but very selectively and nowhere near as many as I used to when I was younger: I've never stopped being passionate about essays though, which is perhaps a rather curious thing. A short but interesting introductory fragment from Virginia Woolf's Essayism by Randi Saloman (p. 16-18) – as food for thought.

The modernity that Woolf identified in the essay stems primarily from its ambiguous position along the generic spectrum. Free from the expectations of linear narrative, the essay has no obligation to complete, or even to tell, a story – or to tell only one story. The essay is ordinarily classified as a non-fiction genre, yet it is not bound to ‘prove’ the truth of its statements in an objective fashion, and a certain license is more or less assumed by the reader. The essayist is understood to be speaking not as a scholar, or as an expert on a given subject, but simply as one who is interested in the topic at hand and wishes to open a dialogue with the reader, feeling that an idea or a question of interest has been uncovered. Essayists make no claim that their works are ‘finished’ or closed to further argument, but rather look to their readers to continue the thought process they have initiated. The most natural and appropriate response to an essay (as any number of essayists have demonstrated) is another essay.

The novel is more remote from its audience. The novel reader enters a given work at its start and leaves at its close, with the implicit understanding that the novel (however experimental or ambiguous it may be) is complete in its own right. The novel seeks approval and consent, rather than ongoing engagement. The reader’s job is finished when the novel is read to completion, at which point one is expected to depart peacefully and without incident, making no further claim upon the events with which she has been temporarily engaged. Nowhere is this idea more vividly expressed than in a journal entry of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Always deeply suspicious of novels, Emerson attempts to make sense of his own frustration after re-reading Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward, and finding himself unceremoniously dismissed at its conclusion. As he does so, he puts his finger on the problem I am attempting to set out here:

[Emerson quote:] To find a story which I thought I remembered in Quentin Durward, I turned over the volume until I was fairly caught in the old foolish trap and read and read to the end of the novel. Then, as often before, I feel indignant to have been duped and dragged after a foolish boy and girl, to see them at last married and portioned, and I instantly turned out of doors like a beggar that has followed a gay procession into the castle.

E.M. Forster addresses the problem more succinctly, declaring that ‘[n]early all novels are feeble at the end’,9 and that this is ‘the inherent defect of novels’. When the essay moves openly into the realm of fiction, it aims at very different ends than those of the novel. The essayist’s goal is to communicate directly with the reader, rather than to present that reader with a closed narrative. The ability of the essay to incorporate non-narrative fiction – or self-contained fictions within a larger non-fictional work, or fictions that may or may not be fictions at all – allows for a new approach to fictionality, one that frees imaginative modern prose from the restrictions imposed by the traditional novel’s structure.

Just to preface this post with a statement right away— I am against AI-generated ‘art’ of any kind and do not consume this in any format on principle. And on that basis, all em dashes in this post are also my own. Appreciate that people are welcome to their own opinions on AI art and literature, but I think on the whole most people are against it and I think most users of this subreddit would concur.

My question comes off the basis of a post-work chat at the pub with a colleague. My colleagues are all quite smart, well read people, and definitely the person I was speaking to in particular—although I do not know whether or not she reads fiction regularly. She made the claim that yes, most AI ‘art’ at this point in time is probably slop, but if hypothetically it could come up with a genuinely ‘good’ book then it would be no different from a human-written piece of work and should be similarly lauded for its merit. She added if you read an article on current affairs written by AI, for instance, it would be the same principle. I argued that yes, if such an article can be fact-checked/verified or otherwise if we can ensure there the LLM makes no factual errors, you could say it’s somewhat similar/useful to read (although you could refuse to pay for it or engage out of principle).

But art and literature is different for me, because the value of literature is not just in the words contained within the boundaries of a specific work but more that it was written by a person. She argued that if I read a book and thought it was incredible on multiple fronts without knowing it was AI, changing my mind on it after discovering the fact is irrational, perhaps even hypocritical. I think we ultimately agreed to disagree, but I don’t think that I had the correct words to articulate what I actually feel about the value of human versus AI literature. I suspect this is not the last time in my lifetime this argument will come up, so keen to hear what others think and if you share my anti-AI views, how you would phrase your arguments.

I did have a think and if, say, people and writers who I highly respect were to come out and say they really thought X AI-generated novel was amazing and the next East of Eden or Middlemarch (in that it’s of similar high literary quality and most people could agree on that claim) then I would have to read it out of sheer curiosity. But I don’t think I would 1)enjoy it as much or 2) think it’s as good as if it were written by a human. But it’s not very easy to break it down and explain why, it just feels like an innate opposition for me as someone who reads a lot and wants to write her own novel in the near future.

And just to note further, this particular argument is not necessarily about not wanting to spend time discovering the potential literary worth of AI novels because they could easily be bad, or about refusing to engage because we believe that AI appropriates others’ work and displaces human authors, and that our money should go to human artists and writers. Or about the environmental and social impact of AI/data centres. Those arguments stand, but I am more interested in what you all all think about the literary merit—or lack thereof— of AI fiction in general, especially if some day AI could be capable of creating an objectively ‘good’ novel. How would you argue that this is less worthy of our time and attention and respect than a more imperfect book written by a human author? And how would you back up that argument? Or do you, like my colleague, think there is no fundamental difference (monkeys on typewriters writing Shakespeare, etc.)?