But here\u2019s a catch with A.I. It\u2019s easy to tell when a reference, or a comparison, or a sentence, doesn\u2019t belong to a writer. Erudition and style aren\u2019t forgeable for long; they still must be earned. As for A.I.\u2019s sleek, space-efficient text, we\u2019ve already grown accustomed to what that sounds like \u2014 the flat, consistent tone, the pert little summary bits, the repetitions, the impersonal and fluorescent-lit mood. Reading it, you feel you\u2019ve been through the desert on a horse with no name.<\/p>\n
It will get much better. Like a Nakamichi Model 500, perhaps, A.I. models will probably someday be programmed to calculate range and trajectory and to spit out rich critical prose. But as John Berryman put it in one of his \u201cDream Songs,\u201d speaking of dead-on-their-feet essayists everywhere, \u201cWhen the mind dies it exudes rich critical prose.\u201d A.I. machinations can reflect the consensus, but it\u2019s part of a real critic\u2019s job to not go flopping along with the times, to wage guerrilla warfare on that consensus. Je suis Claude? Nix to that.<\/p>\n
Book reviews may survive if only because, as Elizabeth Hardwick observed, publishers need praise for their new releases \u201cas an Easter basket needs shredded green paper under the eggs.\u201d But the breakup of the monoculture, the rise of algorithms and the flattening of taste mean that critics will never, for better and worse, have the consecrating power they once did.<\/p>\n
Pauline Kael, Albert Murray, Lester Bangs, Edmund Wilson and Kenneth Tynan \u2014 five of my critical heroes \u2014 knew what to notice, in ways that can\u2019t be taught or imitated, and they knew how to make their prose and their ideas stick. I\u2019m cheered by the young critics out there, swimming in this sea without drowning in it, trying not to be cast into gaol by their creditors, and working to make certain that the last snatch of book criticism isn\u2019t three fire emojis, two jazz-hands, a crying face and a facepalm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But here\u2019s a catch with A.I. It\u2019s easy to tell when a reference, or a comparison, or a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[66,36197,9,11,10,23328,47307],"class_list":["post-213396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-books-and-literature","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-newspapers","tag-writing-and-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}