On Halloween: Two Recent Novels Set in Ireland Where Magic Still Casts Its Spell

 

 My children's friends dressed up for Halloween and went trick or treating--all except those who lived up the street in one of the more modern houses.  At the time I thought this was a little strange, but who am I to judge?  The fact that the mother was from Ireland weighed in there somewhere, I suspected, but I didn't realize how strong the magical, sometimes threatening world of fairies and other creatures was a part of Irish society, even among folks who were completely "modern" until I recently read two novels by Irish writers where the other world is very prominent.

 

The books are Land by Maggie Farrell and The Time of the Child by Niall Williams.  The first takes place mostly in the middle to late 19th century in Ireland and other places to which many Irish fled following the Great Hunger of the Potato Famine. The second is firmly anchored in the mid 20th century, as electricity and television are coming to the country. What they have in common--in addition to evocative descriptions and a compelling story--is the role that belief in magic plays in everyday life.  You aren't supposed to mess with fairies or sacred wells or curses or the like, not because they are unChristian but because they still have power.

 

Both writers paint this backdrop of belief vividly, but without giving it much credence.  Christianity doesn't fare much better: it also is part of the landscape but prayer doesn't work in a world where folks are poor and caught in changing colonial and technological traps. Both novels also are engaging stories, well worth seeking out particularly as the days grow short, winter approaches, and darkness menaces.

 

So now I understand better why my neighbour kept her kids home on Halloween.  You don't mess with forces you see out of the corner of your eye: best to stay on their good side.

Do We Need a New Standard for AI-assisted Writing? The case of Thélyson Orélien

 

On Friday Éditions Boréal, a respected French language publisher in Quebec, pulled the plug on a novel by the Haitian Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien.    C'était ça ou mourir had been on the short lists of several prestigious prizes and was flying off the shelves of book stores and libraries.  I know:  I was 47th in line when I tried to get an e-copy through Libby. 

But it appears that Orélien used artificial intelligence to write the book.  The possiblity was raised a month ago or so by someone who (anonymously at first) ran it through one of the programs that are supposed to be able to detect when a text has been written by a machine.  Orélien denied this, but he also was caught out in several incidents of plagiarism over the last decade.   At first his publisher stood by him, but when Orélien did not/could not show proof that the book had not been AI-assisted, it finally announced it would no longer re-print the book or have anything to do with the writer.

Okay, perhaps this is a cautionary tale.  Maybe writers who take the easy way in creating a story should be called out.  Certainly plagiarism should not be rewarded.

 

But what if the AI-assisted work is really, really good?  This is a question I keep asking myself, because when I finally got my hands on a copy of the book I was amazed by it.  Whereas most of the AI-generated texts I've seen are stylistically mediocre, this book sings.  True, the story it tells--of a migrant from Haiti trying to find a safe haven somewhere--is not original.  But it rarely is the originality of a tale that is important, it's the way it's told.

 

And I found C'est ça ou mourir captivating. 

 

Must we find a way to assess writing on some other basis than whether or not a machine helped it along?  What about the impossibility if avoiding AI when looking something up on Google these days?  How are we going to integrate AI into our lives and our art creatively? 

BFF: Betsy-Tacy and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace

 

     Didn't do a review of any book last week because my oldest friend (in duration, not in age) was visiting from San Francisco.  We met when we were 15, roomed together at Berkeley, had children about the same time, and shared political views and many good times over decades.  So there just wasn't time to consider a book review.

 

However, since she left to go home, I've had time to think about friendship, and a series of book has come to mind. They are the Betsy-Tacy-Tib books by Maud Hart Lovelace which I read with delight in early adolescence.  They take place in pre-World War I Minnesota, which is a long way in time and place from the years my friend and I were growing up and where we live today.  Somehow, though Lovelace caught the joy and troubles of good friendships which appear to speak to young people even today, judging from the fact that the books are still in print. 

 

Friendship is hard to write about, but Lovelace did a good job of it.