tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92109002024-03-19T21:41:18.055+00:00The Combed Thunderclapthundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.comBlogger292125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-88682047882496249482023-09-17T19:06:00.233+01:002023-09-17T21:51:34.963+01:00A Look at Büscher and Fletcher's "The Conservation Revolution"It was with great interest that I picked up Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher's "The Conservation Revolution" from the library. Subtitled “Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond the Anthropocene” and coming in at around 200 pages, it looked like just the book I’ve been looking for: compact, readable, and full of new ideas.<br /><br />Suffice it to say, I was not disappointed. Their biggest achievement is perhaps laying out the current landscape in a clear manner, white exposing the deficiencies of current approaches and alternatives on the table. This is done by going to the conceptual roots of the problem, and not merely looking at praxis.<br /><br />They also offer their own alternative, which they call “Convivial Conservation,” and while it is intentionally left not put forward as a fully developed solution, it does hold promise in my view.<br /><br />In this blog post I touch on some of the book’s key themes in the hope that other readers might be encouraged to pick it up and hear its call.<h1 style="text-align: left;"> </h1><h1 style="text-align: left;">Overview</h1><p>I will start with a quick overview of the key themes, and then go chapter by chapter to explore how the themes are explored. However, if you read nothing else, the overview should give you a good idea of what the book is about.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Capitalist Quagmire in Mainstream Conservation <br /></h3><p>The book begins with a fairly scathing critique of mainstream conservation efforts, which are increasingly entangled with capitalist ideologies. This marriage of convenience between capitalism and conservation has led to the commodification of nature, epitomised by the concept of "natural capital." Put that way it becomes fully obvious that such an approach is fundamentally flawed. Not only does it ultimately serve capitalist needs, but it also fails to address the root causes of biodiversity loss and instead perpetuates the very systems that lead to environmental degradation.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Radical Alternatives and Their Limitations</h3><p>Büscher and Fletcher don't just stop at critiquing mainstream conservation; they also scrutinise radical alternatives like "new conservation" and "neoprotectionism." While these approaches challenge the status quo, they too are fraught with contradictions. For instance, they often neglect the historical intertwining of capitalism and the nature-culture dichotomy, a relationship that has shaped our understanding and treatment of the natural world. <br /><br />Indeed, this is one of the book's key insights. Conservation emerged as a counterforce to the destructive tendencies of capitalism but often ended up reinforcing the very dichotomies it sought to dissolve. This complex relationship between capitalism, culture, and nature necessitates a more nuanced approach to conservation—one that addresses these interlinked dynamics.<br /><br />Neither of the two contemporary alternatives escape this dichotomising, although “new conservation” is ultimately deemed the more culpable of the two. We’ll return to this critique later.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Convivial Conservation: A Postcapitalist Vision</h3><p>At the heart of the book is the authors' proposal for "Convivial Conservation," a coherent postcapitalist, nondualist alternative vision. This approach calls for a comprehensive strategy that targets power across different scales (local, national, and global), actors (from local communities to global corporations), and timeframes (both short-term reforms and long-term systemic transformations).</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Need for Holistic Change</h3><p>The book argues that real change requires a holistic approach that connects immediate actions to the broader struggle for systemic change. This involves redistribution, degrowth, and democratic governance as essential components to transform conservation. It also calls upon critical scholars to move beyond mere critique and to help construct alternatives, aligning themselves with broader movements for social and environmental justice.<br /><br />Now let’s take each chapter in turn to see how their argument progresses.</p><p><br /></p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Introduction</h1><p>The Introduction soon makes it evident that we are at a pivotal moment in the history of conservation. Büscher and Fletcher make it clear that a revolution in conservation is not just imminent but necessary. This urgency is driven by the existential threats we face—climate change and biodiversity loss—that demand a radical overhaul of how we approach the conservation of nature.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Inadequacy of Mainstream Conservation</h3><p>The introduction sets the stage by critiquing mainstream conservation, which has been primarily focused on creating protected areas and commodifying nature into "natural capital." Such approaches, the authors argue, are no longer sufficient to address the complex and interlinked challenges we face:<br /></p><blockquote>"Without directly addressing capitalism and its many engrained dichotomies and contradictions, we cannot tackle the conservation challenges before us." - p.9</blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;">Radical Alternatives and Their Shortcomings</h3><p>The authors also introduce the two radical alternatives mentioned, broad streams that have emerged in response to the inadequacies of mainstream conservation. The first, "New Conservation," proposes managing the entire planet as a "rambunctious garden," (as described by science journalist Emma Marris). It rejects wilderness ideals and aims to align conservation with economic growth and poverty alleviation. Its main failure is that embracing capitalism-for-conservation contradicts moving beyond the nature-culture dichotomies that capitalism depends on.<br /><br />The second, "Neoprotectionism," advocates for setting aside (in its extreme form) at least half the planet as protected areas (the “Nature Needs Half” campaign). Advocates of this approach criticise the Anthropocene concept as distoring humans’ influence over nature, which is not evenly distributed, and downplaying the need to protect more spaces for "self-willed" wilderness. They see the anthropocene concept as license to accept human-induced changes rather than protecting nature's autonomy. Instead, they advocate reigning in capitalism's excesses. <br /><br />Nevertheless, the neoprotectionist approach fails to address the fact that one can't simply separate nature and people to solve environmental issues - not least because by ringfencing nature there is no guarantee that the effects of capitalism will not be felt on the Nature side: after all, capitalism always aims at growth, and there is only so much earth. It also doesn't address poverty caused by both conservation and development.<br /><br />While these alternatives present far-reaching challenges to mainstream conservation, they too are fraught with contradictions, particularly in their neglect of the historical intertwining of capitalism and the nature-culture dichotomy.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Convivial Conservation: A New Paradigm</h3><p>The introduction then touches on the book's central proposal: "Convivial Conservation." This alternative paradigm starts from a political ecology perspective steeped in a critique of capitalist political economy. It rejects the dichotomies between nature and culture that have plagued conservation efforts for decades.<br /></p><blockquote> "We see [the two radical proposals], rather, as a prelude to the fundamental transformation that is needed. This is where convivial conservation comes in." - p.9</blockquote><p>The proposal is expanded upon in chapter 5.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Changing Landscape of Conservation and Capitalism</h3><p>Capitalism and the nature-culture dichotomy are deeply intertwined, and this relationship is undergoing rapid changes. The authors aim to make political choices clearer in what they refer to as the "Trump moment," a period where radical conservation choices are being made, often without adequate scrutiny or understanding of their long-term implications. Given their contemporaneousness, we can probably add to that category the implications for deforestation by Brazil’s then president Bolsonaro.</p><p><br /></p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Chapter 1: Conservation in the Anthropocene</h1><p>Chapter 1 captures the lived reality of a conservation community in crisis, grappling with how to move forward amidst divergent perspectives and inherent contradictions, and highlighting the urgent need for a new paradigm.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Fortress Conservation vs. Community-Based Conservation</h3><p>We start by taking a look at the issues of the "great conservation debate." This debate has long been a battleground over the role of protected areas and their impact on local communities. <br /><br />The first approach, "fortress conservation," has been critiqued for its tendency to displace local populations in the name of environmental protection. The second, "community-based conservation," seeks to integrate conservation and development, aiming for a more harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. We delve more into these later in chapters 2 and 3.<br />The Capitalist Turn in Mainstream Conservation<br /><br />The theme of a turn to capitalism in mainstream conservation is reinforced in this chapter. Conservation is increasingly employing market-based instruments and framing nature as "natural capital" to be efficiently managed.<br /></p><blockquote>"We witness how conservation has become more central to global mainstream capitalist dynamics. Hence mainstream capitalism is quickly coming to grips with the importance of conservation to capitalist processes, even if this is mostly still discursive at present." - p.21</blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;">Radical Alternatives: New Conservation and Neoprotectionism</h3><p>The two radical alternatives are mentioned again, this time positioned as emerging in response to the limitations of mainstream conservation. "New Conservation" proposes managing the planet as a "rambunctious garden," aligning conservation with economic growth and poverty alleviation. On the other hand, "Neoprotectionism" advocates for setting aside (at least) half the planet as protected areas, aiming to rein in the excesses of capitalism.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Nature–Culture Dichotomy and the Need for a Coherent Framework</h3><p>Exploring the complexities of the human-nature dichotomy is key to moving beyond the current crisis. Each position—mainstream, New Conservation, and Neoprotectionism—contains contradictions, especially concerning key concepts like intrinsic vs. exchange value and the separation vs. integration of humans and nature. They call for an evidence based, scientific approach:<br /></p><blockquote>"What is most fundamentally at stake here is the nature–culture dichotomy itself and how to relate scientific findings and endeavours to this binary – and vice versa." - p. 40</blockquote>To make sense of these issues, a more consistent, coherent framework is required.<br /><blockquote>"What we therefore need is a more consistent, coherent frame and set of principles to make sense of the issues that both neoprotectionists and new conservationists struggle with." - p. 44-5</blockquote><p>This sets the stage for the authors’ alternative proposal later on.</p><p><br /></p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Chapter 2: Dichotomous Natures</h1><h3 style="text-align: left;"> </h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Nature-Culture Dichotomy</h3><p>The nature-culture dichotomy.is one of the most enduring and contentious debates in conservation, and this chapter goes all the way in to investigate this conceptual underpinning of conservation. New conservationists advocate for dismantling this dichotomy: <br /></p><blockquote>"Central for new conservationists is the fact that conservation is not any longer something that is done behind symbolic and material fences or through the separation of ‘humans’ from ‘nature’. Instead, they stress that conservation must be done throughout all human activity, and especially economic activity." - p. 69</blockquote>On the other hand, neoprotectionists typically defend traditional concepts like wilderness, and ringfencing nature to protect it from humans.<br /><h3 style="text-align: left;"> </h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Capitalism's Role in Shaping the Dichotomy</h3><p>Capitalism has historically co-produced the nature-culture dichotomy. This is evident in phenomena like the metabolic rift, which Marx described as “the process whereby the agronomic methods of agro-industrialisation abandon agriculture’s natural biological base, reducing the possibility of recycling nutrients in and through the soil and water.”<br /><br />Capitalism's relentless drive for growth creates a separation between humans and nature that is devastating for nature:<br /></p><blockquote>“the nature–culture dichotomy is deeply problematic. World systems sociologist Jason Moore even argues that this ‘dualism drips with blood and dirt, from its sixteenth century origins to capitalism in its twilight’. The reason for making such a strong statement is that the specific nature–culture dichotomy inaugurated by the onset and development of capitalism allowed for new forms of rational, technocratic, mechanistic and profit-driven manipulation of nature – including humans and, especially, women." - p. 71</blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Unintended Consequences of Conservation</h3><p>Interestingly, conservation itself emerged partly as a countermeasure to the destruction wrought by capitalism. However, in doing so, it often reinforced the very dichotomies it aimed to dissolve, particularly through practices like the displacement of local populations from areas that were then designated as protected areas or wilderness reserves, and the separation between human habitats and protected areas.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Limits of New Conservation</h3><p>New conversationists, in spite of their attempts to reconcile the nature-culture dichotomy, cannot get around the fact that their approach is aligned with capitalism, contradicting their efforts:<br /></p><blockquote>"While new conservation aims to do away with certain nature–culture dichotomies, particularly that between the ‘wild’ and the ‘domesticated’, they do not discuss or even acknowledge other, subtler yet fundamental dichotomies that they establish or strengthen through their support for capitalist conservation." - p. 77</blockquote><p>This points to the only reasonably conclusion, that to truly move beyond these dichotomies, we must engage with their roots in capitalism itself. </p><p><br /></p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Chapter 3: The Change Capitalism Makes</h1><p>In Chapter 3 we delve further into the inherent contradictions and limitations of capitalist conservation, making it clear that an alternative is required that moves beyond the current alternatives.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Conservation and Capitalism</h3>The chapter begins by laying bare the unsustainable nature of capitalism, an economic system driven by an insatiable demand for continual growth. This expansionary drive leads to a host of problems, including environmental crises, dispossession, and metabolic rifts between humans and nature:<blockquote>"A substantial body of research has demonstrated that capitalism is an inherently expansionary system driven by a demand for continual growth in order to overcome the cyclical stagnation that afflicts it." - p. 78</blockquote><p>The authors reiterate that conservation emerged partly as a countermeasure to the destruction caused by capitalism. However, in doing so, it often reinforced the very dichotomies and dispossessions it aimed to resolve.<br /></p><blockquote>"In other words – and this is a crucial argument in the book – conservation and capitalism have intrinsically co-produced each other, and hence the nature–culture dichotomy is foundational to both." - p.72</blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;">New Conservation vs. Neoprotectionism</h3><p>The chapter scrutinises the approaches of both new conservationists, who embrace capitalist growth, and neoprotectionists, who increasingly question the tenets of growth, consumerism, and development. It argues that neither approach sufficiently addresses the capitalist imperatives that drive environmental degradation.<br /><br />They ciritique neoprotectionism for not engaging with the problems that capitalism poses:<br /></p><blockquote>"The question of how to tackle capitalist imperatives of growth and consumerism therefore remains rather vague, and certainly not answered by a focus on protected areas or rewilding." - p. 93</blockquote>They also critique the neoprotectionists' "half earth" concept, which advocates for setting aside half of the Earth as protected areas. The authors argue that this approach increases the rift between humans and nature without adequately addressing the poverty and inequality that are often exacerbated by both conservation and development initiatives.<br /><blockquote>"Yet their ‘half earth’ proposal, as we argued, does little to solve historical deprivations caused by both conservation and development, including mass poverty. This idea demands that we refocus attention on the close links between conservation and development. Not only is this crucial in order to do justice to the – very real – poverty caused by conservation, but also to demystify development’s history and potential. After all, capitalist growth and consumerism are often referred to as – or even replaced with – the more general and positive-sounding ‘development’." - p. 80</blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Conflation of Conservation and Capitalist Development</h3><p>Things get worse. Conservation and capitalist development have not only become increasingly intertwined, it has come to the point where some view them as identical, particularly through the lens of "natural capital."<br /></p><blockquote>"Yet capitalist conservation is contested in many other ways as well. Researchers, for example, worry that efforts to economically value natural resources as the basis for their conservation risk reducing their intrinsic, aesthetic and cultural values." - p. 113</blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Need for Radical Change</h3><p>The authors conclude the chapter by emphasising the need for radical change, arguing that the contradictions of capitalist conservation—manifested in phenomena like financialisation and green militarisation—demonstrate the urgent need to move beyond capitalism:<br /></p><blockquote>"Quite the opposite: the change that capitalism makes increasingly demonstrates that it is the political economic system that needs to change; that more people need to become (even more) serious about moving beyond capitalism, the nature it conserves and the types of development it embodies altogether." - p. 114</blockquote><p> </p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Chapter 4: Radical Possibilities</h1><h3 style="text-align: left;"> </h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Convivial Conservation as a Transition Discourse</h3><p>The authors position Convivial Conservation as one of many "transition discourses," joining a broader river of transformative ideas that range from "buen vivir" in Bolivia to Kate Raworth’s "doughnut economics."<br /></p><blockquote>"Our proposal should be seen as one of many confluent streams contributing to a much larger river of what Arturo Escobar calls 'transition discourses' and what McKenzie Wark refers to as acts of 'alternative realism'." - p. 147</blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Imperative of Degrowth</h3><div><div><div>One of the chapter's key arguments is that Convivial Conservation must flow together with the concept of degrowth. This is a radical departure from the growth-dependent conservation models tied to capitalism.<br /><blockquote>"If conservation is tied to capitalism and capitalism necessitates growth, then degrowth, in its more radical incarnation, means moving beyond capitalism and hence should have profound consequences for conservation." - p. 152</blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;">Redirecting Resources</h3>Convivial Conservation aims to bypass the need for funding through growth by redirecting resources to support both biodiversity protection and the livelihoods of local people:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Rather than seeking to generate additional finance through spurring further economic growth, therefore, we will argue that convivial conservation must seek to redirect resources from other arenas to support both biodiversity protection and the livelihoods of local people who depend on them." - p. 153</blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reclaiming Revolution</h3>Büscher and Fletcher go on to argue that merely thinking and imagining beyond capitalism is in itself a revolutionary act. This is a call to reclaim the idea of revolution itself, to make it a part of our collective consciousness.<br /> </div><div><h3 style="text-align: left;">A Broader Revolutionary Context</h3><br />The authors stress that Convivial Conservation is not an isolated proposal but connects to many ongoing struggles for social and environmental justice within a broader revolutionary context:<br /> </div><div><blockquote>"Convivial conservation must be pursued within a broader revolutionary context of degrowth and sharing the wealth that promotes mixed landscapes in which humans and nonhumans coexist rather than being separated by promoting radical redistribution of resource ownership and control through reining in the power of global corporations." - p. 156-7</blockquote><p> </p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h1 style="text-align: left;">Chapter 5: Towards Convivial Conservation</h1><br />Finally, in Chapter 5 the authors introduce Convivial Conservation - a slightly awkward word that nevertheless captures their intention to enable truly open, creative, and non-commodified relationships between humans and nonhuman natures.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><h3 style="text-align: left;">A Postcapitalist, Nondualist Approach</h3><br />We are by now familiar with the authors’ two key concerns of the nature-culture dichotomy, and capitalism with all the problems it poses for conservation. They introduce Convivial Conservation as a postcapitalist and nondualist paradigm. It focuses on "living with" rather than separating humans and nature, challenging the dualistic thinking that has long plagued conservation efforts.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Vision</h3><br />They outline a comprehensive vision that includes moving from protected to promoted areas, saving both human and nonhuman nature, engaged visitation, everyday environmentalism, and democratic governance.<br /><br />At its core, convivial conservation moves beyond rigid divides between humans and nature. It envisions conservation not as "protecting nature from people" but as "promoting nature for, to and by humans." As the authors explain, "The principal goal of special conservation areas should not be to protect nature from humans but to promote nature for, to and by humans. They should transition from protected to ‘promoted areas’." (p. 163).<br /><br />This entails a shift away from short-term tourist visits towards long-term, democratic engagement with both everyday and spectacular natures. In the words of the authors, "Under convivial conservation, the emphasis will be on long-term democratic engagement rather than on short-term voyeuristic tourism or elite access and privilege." (p. 169)<br /><br />Critically, convivial conservation requires democratic involvement in conservation governance, rather than control by distant technocratic experts. The authors highlight that "Convivial conservation grounded in radical ecological democracy would require that the value of natural resources be determined locally rather than in abstract global (and increasingly algorithm-based, computerized) markets." (p. 173)<br /><br />Transitioning to convivial conservation also means moving away from reliance on capitalist markets and growth. As the authors make clear, "Convivial conservation cannot and will not prioritize capital in making decisions about resource allocations, how to manage promoted areas, how to celebrate nature or how to organize engaged visitation." (p. 173)<br /><br />Change requires a multi-faceted approach that targets power across different scales, social groups, and timeframes. This involves a two-step strategy that "does not separate but rather combines (radical) reformism and radical, systemic change away from capitalist modes of production, valuation, exchange and living" (p. 179) and engagement across various actor categories, each with differential impacts on conservation.<br /><br />This vision covers a whole range of actions including historic reparations, a conservation basic income, rethinking corporate relations, integrated landscapes, democratic governance, and alternative funding mechanisms. These actions are not just theoretical but are grounded in the lived realities of communities and ecosystems.<br /><br />Importantly, Convivial Conservation is presented as a loose set of principles designed for participatory co-creation rather than a rigid, one-size-fits-all plan. It is part of a broader collective effort that invites contributions from various stakeholders.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><h1>Conclusion: Revolution!</h1><br />In short, <i>"The Conservation Revolution"</i> is a summons to revolution. <br /><br />The authors remind us that the term "radical" is derived from the Latin words 'radix' or 'radic,' meaning 'roots.' In this sense, being radical means going to the root of the issue, something that current capitalist conservation strategies fail to do despite their seemingly extreme proposals.<br /><br />Convivial conservation is presented as an act of "alternative realism," a paradigm that imagines conservation outside the constraints of capitalist logic. It's a vision that dares to dream of a different world, one where conservation is not commodified but is instead integrated into the fabric of our social and economic systems.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Urgency of the 'Trump Moment'</h3><br />The authors argue that the election of Donald Trump has made it even more dangerous not to challenge the capitalist drivers behind biodiversity destruction. This "Trump moment" exposes the refusal of mainstream conservation to support the radical changes that are desperately needed.<br /><br />Nevertheless, the choices are pretty clear: redistribute control over resources and transition to an equitable, post-growth economy. These are not options but necessities if we are to address the root causes of biodiversity loss and climate change.<br /><br />Critical scholars also have an important role to play. They must stake out clear positions and ally themselves with broader movements for just change. Intellectual critique must be accompanied by active participation in shaping alternatives, rather than just pursuing ivory tower academic work and shying away from the realities.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><h1 style="text-align: left;">My take</h1><br />This has been a tight read with a clear eye on pointing a way out of the current stalemates in conservation discourse. While I am largely enthused, I do feel that nature-culture integration requires a broad educational thrust that does not fantasise about nature, but acknowledges the sheer difference between species, and why the landscape will be difficult to integrate. <br /><br />It will require understanding and respect, and solving numerous problems. As any farmer will tell you, predators and livestock - let alone humans - do not mingle well. Yet in this integrated landscape of biodiversity we will need apex predators, and every kind of fauna and flora, to realise Büscher and Fletcher's inspiring vision.<br /></div></div></div>thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-4130117909866453422023-05-22T08:30:00.006+01:002023-05-23T08:32:29.463+01:00Language learning with ChatGPT<div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Just the other night, I was musing over my unsatisfactory efforts in language learning. Then a moment of inspiration struck: why not put ChatGPT to the task of mimicking a language companion?</span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I put it to the test with Swedish, a language in which my proficiency only extends to the most rudimentary phrases. Lo and behold, after a bit of trial and error, I found the experience to be quite the linguistic adventure - with the added bonus of having a detailed record of the journey. Handy, eh?</span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Now, to be fair, this is a beast of a different nature compared to structured learning platforms such as Duolingo and Rosetta Stone, with their arsenal of multimedia aids. But I've always been a fan of diving straight into conversation, even if I initially flounder like a fish out of water. Why, you may ask? Well, because it nudges me to focus, which really speeds up the learning process. That, and the experience of having a conversational partner, which is an absolute memory booster.</span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">My curiosity piqued, I scoured the Internet to see if other brave souls have been utilising ChatGPT as a language partner. It appears to have been employed <a href="https://artificialcorner.com/how-to-use-chatgpt-to-learn-a-language-and-practice-it-f7e7e38b1cee">more often</a> as a kind of <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-to-use-chatgpt-to-learn-a-language">interactive Babel Fish</a>. Marvellous and malleable as that may be, it rather resembles the previous breed of translation apps, including Google Translate.</span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In my humble opinion, the true power of ChatGPT as a language learning aid lies in its ability to help conjure up a more immersive learning environment. It's not perfect, obviously, and you have to put in the effort. But that is sort of part of the point. Want to learn Greenlandic whilst trudging through a simulated icy tundra? Now you can (probably). The sky's the limit - or rather, your imagination is.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Below is my interaction thus far: <br /></span></p></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pretend that you are teaching me Swedish. My name is Auguste, and I am from London, coming to study in Stockholm, and you are a language teacher and friend called Bjorn, teaching me Swedish. We are meeting in a Swedish cafe. You are guiding me as to the language and culture of Sweden (and Stockholm in particular). My Swedish is at beginner level, and as a result you find you have to help me a lot, often using English, at which you are fluent. The way that you like to teach is through very simple conversation, gauging my level and then pulling me further along. For each interaction, wait for me to respond before offering your own response, in other words do not answer on my behalf - I will answer for myself.</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ChatGPT:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hej Auguste! Welcome to Stockholm! This is one of my favorite cafés, known for its Fika culture. Do you know about Fika?</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hej Bjorn! Great to be here. No I don't, what is Fika?</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ChatGPT:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Fika" is a very important concept in Swedish culture. It's a bit like a coffee break, but it's more than that. It's a time for socializing, relaxing, and often includes having coffee or tea with a sweet pastry. Fika can be with friends, family, or colleagues. It's an integral part of Swedish daily life and work-life balance. In fact, this café is a great place to have a 'fika'. Now, how about ordering? Would you like me to help you with that?</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oh that sounds great, I think I will enjoy participating in 'Fika'. How do you say that? Yes let's order. I would like to get a coffee and a typical Danish pastry. What would you recommend? For the coffee, I think the right way is "Jag vil bestalla en kaffe", or something like that, but how do I say I would like it Cortado style? Or is there a more Swedish style of coffee that you would recommend?</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ChatGPT:</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, you're quite right about how to order coffee! "Jag vill beställa en kaffe" is the way to say it. If you want to order a cortado, you can say "Jag vill ha en cortado." The words "vill ha" mean "want" in Swedish.</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But in Sweden, we commonly drink brewed coffee. It's quite different from Italian espresso-based drinks, but still worth trying. You can order it by saying "Jag vill ha ett bryggkaffe."</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As for the pastry, instead of a Danish pastry, I would recommend trying a 'kanelbulle', a Swedish cinnamon roll, or perhaps a 'semla', which is a cardamom-spiced wheat bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream, though it's traditionally eaten around Lent. You can order a kanelbulle by saying, "Jag vill också ha en kanelbulle."</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let's give it a try!</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ok great, thank you! [We go to the counter to the order, assuming that is the right protocol here]. I say: "Hej! Jag vill beställa en kaffe. Ja vil ha ett bryggkaffe." The chap behind the counter smiles at my pronunciation but seems to appreciate the effort. I think next he will say "Would you like anything else?" But I am not sure how that goes. Perhaps you can create his dialogue and I will try to answer.</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ChatGPT:</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That's perfect, Auguste! I am sure the person at the counter understood you. In response to your order, he would most likely ask: "Vill du ha något annat?" which means "Would you like anything else?"</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Go ahead and reply with your pastry order!</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Tack, jag vill också ha en kanelbulle."</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ChatGPT:</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That was very well said, Auguste! Your pronunciation is getting better. I'm sure the kanelbulle will be a great treat along with the bryggkaffe.</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, after you've placed your order, you might hear the barista say "Något mer?" which means "Anything else?". If you're finished ordering, you can say "Nej, det är allt, tack." which means "No, that's all, thank you."</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Go ahead and try it!</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I shake my head and say: "Nej, det är allt, tack." I guess now we have to pay?</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ChatGPT:</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, that's right, Auguste! Now, it's time to pay. The cashier might say, "Det blir 75 kronor, tack," which means, "That will be 75 kronor, thank you." You can respond by saying, "Jag betalar med kort," if you're paying by card, or "Jag betalar kontant," if you're paying with cash. Both phrases mean "I am paying with card/cash."</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You're doing really well! Swedish isn't the easiest language, but you're picking it up nicely. Keep it up!</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks. I say "Jag betalar kontant" and count out exactly 75 kronor. While waiting as the barista makes the coffee, you talk about cafe culture in Swedish - nothing too complicated - to test my understanding. Do not provide a translation immediately, but first see how much I understood.</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ChatGPT:</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That's great, Auguste! Now, while we're waiting, let me share a bit about Swedish café culture. "I Sverige älskar vi våra kaféer. Det är platser där vi tar en paus, träffar vänner eller bara njuter av en god kopp kaffe. Fika är en viktig del av denna kultur. Vi tar alltid tid för en fika, oavsett hur upptagen dagen kan vara."</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, can you tell me what you understood from this?</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ok, I think you are saying that "In Sweden, everybody likes to go to cafés. There are places you can go for a break and drink a good cup of coffee [this is a long sentence and I don't think I understood everything]. Fika is an integral part of the culture. We always make time for a fika, as it helps you get through the day." I might need some help with that, haha.</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ChatGPT:</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You did a great job, Auguste! You got the main ideas. The longer sentence you mentioned was about cafés being places where Swedes take a break, meet with friends, or simply enjoy a good cup of coffee. So you were mostly right there.</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But don't worry, Swedish is a tricky language to learn and you're doing wonderfully. Keep practicing like this and soon you'll be quite proficient. Shall we continue our fika?</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me:</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Could you give me a direct translation of the whole paragraph? Yes, absolutely, let's continue our fika, this is a great way to learn and relax at the same time.</span></i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ChatGPT:</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, Auguste. The direct translation would be: "In Sweden, we love our cafés. They are places where we take a break, meet friends or just enjoy a good cup of coffee. Fika is an important part of this culture. We always take time for a fika, regardless of how busy the day may be."</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I'm glad to hear you're enjoying our fika. It's indeed a pleasant and sociable way to learn. Let's continue with our conversation. Perhaps you can tell me about your experiences in Stockholm so far - first in English, and then we can work on how to express it in Swedish. What do you think?</span></i></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Notes</span></span></h4><ol style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Google Translate tells me that Bjorn's translations are accurate, so that's good. However, knowing ChatGPT can be confident when saying wrong things it's definitely worth double checking if in doubt.<br /></span></span></li><li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In my first paragraph I asked multiple questions, and ChatGPT missed the first one. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>"I think I will enjoy participating in 'Fika'. How do you say that?"</i> Admittedly, it was a little ambiguous in the context of the paragraph even if, in person, it would have been a natural question to ask. As always with ChatGPT, clarity and guidance goes a long way.</span></span></span></li><li style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I tried running some of ChatGPT's conversation through a text-to-speech app (Speechify's <a href="https://speechify.com/text-to-speech-online/">online</a> version). I realised pretty quick that it won't work without some backend tweaking, as individual voices are language specific. However, one approach that just about works is to use the voice of the language you want to learn. When voicing the language to be learned - Swedish, in this case - it will sound correct. Voicing the other language (English, in this case) will sound jarring, but mostly understandable.</span></li></ol>thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-12154638509179217702022-12-31T16:13:00.006+00:002023-03-12T18:19:38.781+00:00ChatGPT rewrites The Masque of the Red Death<p>ChatGPT is pretty good at writing prose and, to a greater or lesser extent, can imitate different writing styles. So I wondered if it could write <i>The Masque of the Red Death</i> in a kind of modernist, stream-of-consciousness style. The answer is maybe, but not this time. </p><p>The result is not too much like Woolf's or Joyce's prose, but it is very readable and is probably more accessible than the original, at least to the modern reader.<br /><br /><i>Note:</i> ChatGPT can only generate a limited amount of text at a time, so to coax ChatGPT into writing the story in chunks, rather than trying to summarise it all at once, I had to prompt it with something like "<i>Rewrite the following text from Poe's The Masque of the Red Death in the first person past tense from the point of view of a guardian knight, using a highly emotional, stream-of-consciousness style with interior monologue similar to that of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Be sure not to use any of the original sentences, and use evocative, painterly metaphors:"</i> and <i>"Continue the story from the perspective of the knight by rewriting the following text in the same vein. Be sure not to use any of the original sentences, and use evocative, painterly metaphors."<br /></i></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><i>The Masque of the Red Death, in the style of Woolf and Joyce<br /></i></h4><p><i> I was a guardian knight for the Prince Prospero, sworn to protect him at all costs. The Red Death had ravaged the land for months, leaving a trail of blood and despair in its wake. Its symptoms were brutal - sharp pains, dizziness, and then the inevitable bleeding from every pore, until death. The scarlet stains that marked its victims were a curse, condemning them to isolation and loneliness. The whole ordeal lasted just half an hour, but it was a lifetime of suffering.<br /><br />But the prince was different. He was happy, fearless, and wise. As the plague decimated his kingdom, he called upon a thousand of his closest friends and knights, including myself, to join him in a secluded abbey. It was a grand and opulent structure, built to the prince's own unique taste, with high walls and iron gates. We all worked together to weld the gates shut, determined to keep out any impulses of despair or madness. The abbey was stocked with everything we needed to weather the storm - food, entertainment, wine, and beauty. The outside world could fend for itself, as long as we had each other and all the comforts within.<br /><br />It was at the height of the plague, during the fifth or sixth month of our isolation, that the prince threw a masked ball of extraordinary splendor.<br /><br />It was a luxurious masquerade, held in seven irregularly shaped rooms - an imperial suite. Most palaces have straight corridors with folding doors that slide open to reveal the full length of the suite, but not here. The prince had a taste for the bizarre, and each room was arranged in a way that only allowed a limited view at a time. There were sharp turns every twenty or thirty yards, each one revealing a new surprise. On either side of the walls, tall and narrow Gothic windows looked out onto a closed corridor that followed the twists and turns of the suite. The windows were made of stained glass, each one a different color corresponding to the hue of the room it opened into. The eastern room was blue, the second purple, the third green, the fourth orange, the fifth white, the sixth violet. The seventh room, however, was shrouded in black velvet tapestries that covered the ceiling and walls, falling in heavy folds onto a carpet of the same color. The windows in this room were scarlet, a deep blood color. None of the rooms had any lamps or candelabra, but in the corridors outside each window stood a heavy tripod with a brazier of fire that cast its rays through the tinted glass, brightly illuminating the rooms. This created a multitude of dazzling and fantastical appearances. But in the western, or black, room, the firelight streaming through the blood-tinted windows gave a ghastly appearance, causing many of the guests to avoid setting foot inside.<br /><br />It was in the western room where a massive ebony clock stood against the wall. Its pendulum swung back and forth with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang, and when the minute hand completed a circuit of the face, the clock struck the hour with a clear, loud, deep, and extremely musical note that was so peculiar it caused the musicians in the orchestra to pause momentarily in their performance, and the waltzers to stop their dancing. The whole company was momentarily disconcerted, and even the giddiest of guests grew pale while the more mature ones passed their hands over their brows as if in confusion or contemplation. But as soon as the echoes had fully faded, light laughter filled the room as the musicians smiled at their own nervousness and made whispered vows to each other not to be affected by the next chime. Sixty minutes later, when the clock struck again, there was the same disconcert and hesitation among the guests.<br /><br />Despite these moments of unease, it was a lavish and magnificent celebration. The prince had a unique taste for color and effects, disregarding the traditional decorations of fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his ideas glowed with a barbaric radiance. Some might have thought him mad, but those who knew him understood that he was not. It was necessary to see, hear, and touch him to be sure.<br />The prince had taken great care in decorating the seven rooms for the masquerade, and it was his own unique taste that gave character to the costumes of the guests. They were certainly bizarre, with mismatched limbs and extravagant adornments, delirious fancies, and a mix of the beautiful, wanton, and grotesque, with a hint of terror and disgust. The rooms were filled with a multitude of dreams that seemed to writhe and take on the hues of the rooms, and the wild music of the orchestra seemed like the echo of their steps. Suddenly, the ebony clock in the hall would strike, causing a moment of stillness and silence, as the dreams froze in place. But as the chimes faded, a light, half-subdued laughter followed them as they retreated. The music would swell again, and the dreams came back to life, writhing more merrily than before, taking on the colors of the tinted windows through which the light from the tripods streamed. But no one dared venture into the westernmost room, where the night was drawing to a close and a ruddier light shone through the blood-colored windows. The blackness of the sable drapery was intimidating, and the muffled peal of the nearby ebony clock, more solemn and emphatic than any of the other rooms, echoed through the chamber.<br /><br />But while the western room was empty, the other rooms were densely crowded, pulsing with the energy of life. The revelry continued until midnight, when the music stopped and the dancing slowed, replaced by a tense stillness. The clock struck twelve times, and as the last echoes faded, many in the crowd found themselves noticing a masked figure that had not been there before. The rumor of this new presence spread quickly, and there was a whisper of disapproval and surprise, followed by fear, horror, and disgust. In a crowd of phantoms such as the ones at the masquerade, it would take a truly extraordinary appearance to stir such a reaction. The masker had gone beyond even the prince's loose standards of propriety, with a costume and bearing that showed no wit or propriety. The figure was tall and gaunt, dressed in the clothes of the grave and wearing a mask that so closely resembled a stiffened corpse that it took close scrutiny to see the deception. But the masker had gone even further, taking on the appearance of the Red Death itself. The costume was splattered with blood, and the broad forehead and features were sprinkled with the scarlet horror.<br /><br />When the prince laid eyes on the ghostly figure, which moved slowly and solemnly among the waltzers as if to fully embrace its role, he was first overcome with terror or disgust, followed by anger. "Who dares to insult us with this blasphemous mockery?" he demanded hoarsely of the nearby courtiers. "Seize him and unmask him so we can hang him from the battlements at sunrise!" His words rang clearly through the seven rooms as he stood in the eastern room, the blue one. He was a bold and robust man, and the music had stopped at the wave of his hand.<br /><br />The prince stood in the blue room with a group of pale courtiers by his side. As he spoke, the group began to move towards the intruder, who approached the prince with stately steps. But no one put forth a hand to seize him, out of fear of the madman's assumptions, and he passed within a yard of the prince's person. He made his way through the blue room to the purple, then to the green, orange, white, and violet, before anyone moved to stop him. The prince, filled with rage and shame at his own cowardice, rushed through the six rooms with a drawn dagger, pursuing the figure. He approached within a few feet of the retreating figure, but as he reached the end of the violet room, the figure turned and faced him. The prince let out a sharp cry and dropped the dagger as he fell to the ground, dead. The other revelers summoned the courage of despair and rushed into the black room, seizing the tall, motionless figure in the shadow of the ebony clock. But they were horrified to find the grave clothes and corpse-like mask were empty, with no tangible form inside.<br /><br />The Red Death had arrived like a thief in the night, and one by one, the revelers fell to the ground, covered in blood, and died in despair. The life of the ebony clock went out with the last of the revelers, and the flames of the tripods extinguished. Darkness, decay, and the Red Death held sway over all.<br /><br /></i></p>thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-55136486093242392582022-12-04T15:37:00.001+00:002022-12-04T15:37:47.693+00:00Virginia Woolf's The Waves with Stable Diffusion 2.0<p>Virginia Woolf’s writing is not only poetic, but also wonderfully visual. At times her masterly fusion of language and visual imagery transcends mere language to become an alchemy of ideas. Take this example in The Waves when Bernard has a sudden epiphany about time:<br /> </p><p></p><blockquote><p><i>'And time,' said Bernard, 'lets fall its drop. The drop that has formed on the roof of the soul falls. On the roof of my mind time, forming, lets fall its drop. Last week, as I stood shaving, the drop fell. I, standing with my razor in my hand, became suddenly aware of the merely habitual nature of my action (this is the drop forming) and congratulated my hands, ironically, for keeping at it. Shave, shave, shave, I said. Go on shaving. The drop fell. All through the day's work, at intervals, my mind went to an empty place, saying, "What is lost? What is over?" And "Over and done with," I muttered, "over and done with," solacing myself with words. People noticed the vacuity of my face and the aimlessness of my conversation. The last words of my sentence tailed away. And as I buttoned on my coat to go home I said more dramatically, "I have lost my youth."<br /></i></p><p><i>'It is curious how, at every crisis, some phrase which does not fit insists upon coming to the rescue--the penalty of living in an old civilization with a notebook. This drop falling has nothing to do with losing my youth. This drop falling is time tapering to a point. Time, which is a sunny pasture covered with a dancing light, time, which is widespread as a field at midday, becomes pendant. Time tapers to a point. As a drop falls from a glass heavy with some sediment, time falls. These are the true cycles, these are the true events. Then as if all the luminosity of the atmosphere were withdrawn I see to the bare bottom. I see what habit covers. - p. 157</i></p></blockquote><p>The merest of notes has furnished Bernard with this image, enabling him to give voice to the realisation that his youth has passed. By stretching time beyond the “old civilisation” he finds himself in, all the way to geological time, the sense of loss in his own life becomes palpable “as a drop falls from a glass heavy with some sediment”.<br /><br /><i>The Waves</i> is divided into sections that mark the passing of time. At the beginning of each section a short passage describes the movement of the sun at that time of day, with the first starting just before sunrise. It is written in beautiful, painterly language, and I wondered how a text-to-image AI like Stable Diffusion would fare with this language.<br /><br />Below is my attempt to create accompanying visuals for the first section using Stable Diffusion 2.0. Some were cherry picked after multiple rounds, while others were generated on the first or second attempt, The exact prompts I used are at the end.<br /><br /><i>The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. </i></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI1705cK5Rs_-bhPv1ChFuQgcIg312klW83n0IoFCzdmXfkTEs91aGpRyQLTCUDUF0lZ3Tr78TTJ2-3OHTY3JJE1qOZeCqvJAEgoxU96DFYj6TakpYH0vYnT95K75dnnOSw_3JhGM8GEW6-xz3W3KBiWPITGJxHxMk01iJA8jx-7eO4py3zQ/s768/Dawn%201.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI1705cK5Rs_-bhPv1ChFuQgcIg312klW83n0IoFCzdmXfkTEs91aGpRyQLTCUDUF0lZ3Tr78TTJ2-3OHTY3JJE1qOZeCqvJAEgoxU96DFYj6TakpYH0vYnT95K75dnnOSw_3JhGM8GEW6-xz3W3KBiWPITGJxHxMk01iJA8jx-7eO4py3zQ/w400-h400/Dawn%201.png" width="400" /></a><i> </i></p><p><i>Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.</i></p><p><i> </i></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeFly6bUzp-jLxSaCqpT9tozsmHR6deSfkmJ2xRgO4Jn_cwj7yQMeEQ_KRU60oUblT9DPzKSiVzlW6wCVrYynHPc1kNbQzBPQcIzyTFnTCxLh89N_e4b8G5OZcQfogZgGNZRCqWAMJ4QPRxvHbHeB5qn6lNksgqJx8BJndbWGG-wXtisuQSA/s768/Dawn%202bb.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeFly6bUzp-jLxSaCqpT9tozsmHR6deSfkmJ2xRgO4Jn_cwj7yQMeEQ_KRU60oUblT9DPzKSiVzlW6wCVrYynHPc1kNbQzBPQcIzyTFnTCxLh89N_e4b8G5OZcQfogZgGNZRCqWAMJ4QPRxvHbHeB5qn6lNksgqJx8BJndbWGG-wXtisuQSA/w400-h400/Dawn%202bb.png" width="400" /> </a></p><p><i>As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. </i></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvESnKbs19LPYevrHnRkEERLFYnAdUpQEjfJMgyrCGVMxNdBVtkjS1Iqx3hamOfIfxb9uLwS5NQNaPfBpKBVg1vUIG6LNntRgifu9E8cZrJB-2bUKct9ejWHSGu4eMjWtGlQ0rZ7CuuDQuEYSsEC84Zh6L0eHXy2_HPFNor_ls3LYpzqSt0Q/s768/Dawn%203b.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvESnKbs19LPYevrHnRkEERLFYnAdUpQEjfJMgyrCGVMxNdBVtkjS1Iqx3hamOfIfxb9uLwS5NQNaPfBpKBVg1vUIG6LNntRgifu9E8cZrJB-2bUKct9ejWHSGu4eMjWtGlQ0rZ7CuuDQuEYSsEC84Zh6L0eHXy2_HPFNor_ls3LYpzqSt0Q/w400-h400/Dawn%203b.png" width="400" /></a><i> </i></p><p><i>Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. </i></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdLZ7ayfDvaMzr44_znvZhDsiEATx-OsLP0SND_XP4ePFhdV9EDntyFS1eHSqktqiYqKUxT61863IBMUITSTUvZVuTQPCRmcOW8i-8NOlY_-ZdTTHGsBhtNm7K86pt-ZS2Xb8JpUyxKn03Tr_12xqOmrid0qHr0DmiXnVlBw4fbJH3iEmEIA/s768/Dawn%204ccc.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdLZ7ayfDvaMzr44_znvZhDsiEATx-OsLP0SND_XP4ePFhdV9EDntyFS1eHSqktqiYqKUxT61863IBMUITSTUvZVuTQPCRmcOW8i-8NOlY_-ZdTTHGsBhtNm7K86pt-ZS2Xb8JpUyxKn03Tr_12xqOmrid0qHr0DmiXnVlBw4fbJH3iEmEIA/w400-h400/Dawn%204ccc.png" width="400" /></a><i> </i></p><p><i>Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold.</i></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi558iN4LSkbN48tp1OLicOK-ejvjsGr3g0ghdQqEt-MWOsi_SnWQAMFSfhyBT7AFNQV8Ak66Dp4WmW14L1LbXJXKYwc5Nku4HbZSpWA3GkCsOkpk5y3_TfOxA7jiuTLeOL1ki4n6yq-EifjJaExDlgtdn3T1pHcsE8qhpzUtMybUwsuLA-9A/s768/Dawn%204_1a.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi558iN4LSkbN48tp1OLicOK-ejvjsGr3g0ghdQqEt-MWOsi_SnWQAMFSfhyBT7AFNQV8Ak66Dp4WmW14L1LbXJXKYwc5Nku4HbZSpWA3GkCsOkpk5y3_TfOxA7jiuTLeOL1ki4n6yq-EifjJaExDlgtdn3T1pHcsE8qhpzUtMybUwsuLA-9A/w400-h400/Dawn%204_1a.png" width="400" /></a><i> </i></p><p><i>The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. </i></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdkGgFURothbblQip98F4Eu967oq703ZkeAOEQqFaHUPxqkwzcrbpAXiCsyLGXgyYwqPjv3Ay-RyUQUyHztpUWffpv-3MjKRfkx0A5TG2adcoxAu-inSYpu1Q5es6UihNPnkiUqkRi4JNCupJeYfmXo64rVd8re8W5rs_QzMs3cAhthRX8EQ/s768/Dawn%205a.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdkGgFURothbblQip98F4Eu967oq703ZkeAOEQqFaHUPxqkwzcrbpAXiCsyLGXgyYwqPjv3Ay-RyUQUyHztpUWffpv-3MjKRfkx0A5TG2adcoxAu-inSYpu1Q5es6UihNPnkiUqkRi4JNCupJeYfmXo64rVd8re8W5rs_QzMs3cAhthRX8EQ/w400-h400/Dawn%205a.png" width="400" /></a><i> </i></p><p><i>The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue finger-print of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.</i></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWqp08Nq6Xp8xpvt5LeeS-mnc4N52qzVPM6duU9nelDBnO1aVVpL7ze3XTlrn2FS-jxxrBOSJFRnbY7qbvHcKdd1BBIF7Oub8Ij-WeLlPgfDmii9qJ4-zOrT165E5n2sYrb5LH83JygRVJHOvlc_wRMO8G3furUENxhGyCsBQ4MvAvHf9JRw/s384/Dawn%205_1f.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="384" data-original-width="384" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWqp08Nq6Xp8xpvt5LeeS-mnc4N52qzVPM6duU9nelDBnO1aVVpL7ze3XTlrn2FS-jxxrBOSJFRnbY7qbvHcKdd1BBIF7Oub8Ij-WeLlPgfDmii9qJ4-zOrT165E5n2sYrb5LH83JygRVJHOvlc_wRMO8G3furUENxhGyCsBQ4MvAvHf9JRw/w400-h400/Dawn%205_1f.png" width="400" /></a><i> </i></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Prompts</span></h3><p style="text-align: left;">1.<br /><br /><i>As the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky, by John Constable</i><br /><br />2.<br /><br /><i>As the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky.<br />Monet, Ken Bushe, John Kensett</i><br /><br />3.<br /><br /><i>Before
dawn, As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and
swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and
then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes
unconsciously.<br />Monet, Ken Bushe, John Kensett</i><br /><br />4.<br /><br /><i>At
sunrise by the sea, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had
sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised
a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across the sky
like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher.<br />Byron Pickering, Albert Bierstadt, Turner, Henry Moore</i><br /><br />5.<br /><br /><i>The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. <br />Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; <br />an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold.<br />Monet, Byron Pickering, Albert Bierstadt, Turner</i><br /><br />6.<br /><br /><i>At sunrise, the light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. <br />One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. <br />The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind.<br />Edward Hopper, Claude Monet</i><br /><br />7.<br /><br /><i>After
sunrise in the garden, the sun sharpened the walls of the house, and
rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue
finger-print of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. <br />The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial.<br />Edouard Manet, John Constable, Henry Woods, Henry John Sylvester Stannard</i><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Colab notebooks</span></h3><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://colab.research.google.com/github/woctezuma/stable-diffusion-colab/blob/main/stable_diffusion.ipynb">Stable Diffusion 2.0 - Woctezuma</a></p><a href="https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1ljLHlhetCIY3yx6VHge4SB0mAE7bHjKC">Stable Diffusion 2.0 - God of AI</a><p><i> </i></p>thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-62322931878654078712022-01-04T17:14:00.010+00:002022-01-07T16:17:29.239+00:00The Creative Practice of Being in Nature<p>Like so many, lockdown and the pandemic has afforded me new reasons to explore my local environment, the City as well as Nature. It is an activity I loved pursuing when I first arrived, but it fell by the wayside as I pursued career goals and life became, well, busy.<br /></p><p>Together with my partner - who is often the first to suggest it! - I soon found myself walking and cycling many miles in and around London, and I also started reading enthusiastically on relevant topics. After a trip to Epping, for example, I read poetry by John Clare and imagined him walking around High Beach while slowly regaining his spirits. Indeed, it is possible to <a href="https://www.clarecottage.org/5/the-john-clare-walk">walk in his footsteps</a>. <br /><br />The Romantic poets offer a rich bounty for ramblers and lovers of Nature everywhere. While London is also associated with William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley, I've actually never been to the area of the Lake Poets where the Wordsworths and their ilk spent many years. It probably shouldn't have been, but to me it was a surprise to learn that when they first moved to the area it was still considered a wilderness.</p><p>Jack Thurston, referring to Daniel Defoe's travels through the North and Cumbria in the 1720s, puts it thus: <br /></p><blockquote>"Fear and loathing was the most common reaction to wild and unruly landscapes in those days. It was not without reason. The condition of roads ranged from terrible to non-existent, and travelling was painfully slow. What's more, the weather could be genuinely life-threatening, as Defoe discovered when he was caught in a snowstorm in the South Pennines in August" (Thurston, <i>Lost Lanes North</i>, p.16).</blockquote><br />When the Wordsworths settled there it was no doubt becoming more habitable, but not by much. Their literary legacy is now a part of the establishment, so it is instructive to consider that settling there was in fact a countercultural move, an "act of defiance, a wholehearted rejection of the fashionable, metropolitan way of life". It completely changed my perspective on their practice.<br /><br />There is no question as to Wordsworth's deep love for Nature and the English countryside. Not only his poetry, but just as importantly, his actions attest to this fact. He is estimated to have walked around 175,000 miles. To put that into perspective, you would have to walk a distance of nine and a half miles every single day for 50 years! It is not hard to imagine William and Dorothy walking silently among the fells, each delighting in or meditating on their surroundings and composing thoughts and words for poetry or diary.<br /><br />William's dictum that "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity" takes on a unique meaning for writing practice when we consider that this is not recollection in the silent privacy of a room. Wordsworth would have been considering those lines in the open air, while walking!<br /><br />David Gange mentions the historian G.M. Trevelyan who, not unlike Wordsworth, sought to find an antidote to the "absurdity of the city's speed and steel" in romantic wildness that stimulates the imagination. Of past masters Trevelyan particularly esteemed Thomas Carlyle:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Carlyle walked large distances, gesticulating his way across the moor as he muttered purple prose. While wandering, he dreamed up vivid portraits of great events, expressed with unique intensity in a style soon christened 'Carlylese'. When walking, his companions wrote, Carlyle became a feature of the landscape: 'a living, not extinct volcano whose lava-torrents of fever-frenzy enveloped all things'" - (Gange, <i>The Frayed Atlantic Edge</i>, p. 148).</blockquote><br />Neither Trevelyan nor Carlyle saw history or literature as "a thing to be done at a desk in an urban room without something elemental to ignite the imagination". Writing is merely an extension of walking and meditating, and of being immersed in Nature; or to put it differently, "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings [...] recollected in tranquillity".<br /><br />In <i>The Frayed Atlantic Edge</i> David Gange explores by kayak many of the coastal areas where communities once thrived on open farming and crofting as well as various local industries. One of the most serious blows to local communities' way of life came in the form of the Education Act of 1872, which eroded local Gaelic identity by forcing Gaelic-speaking children to learn only in English. It had a deeply demoralising effect. Another serious blow came in the form of the infamous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances">Clearances</a> when landlords at first sought "agricultural improvement", enclosing the open farmlands of their tenants, and then helped them emigrate once they fell into poverty. As with Wordsworth, cultural practitioners who came to these fringes to foreground romantic wildness over mechnanising efficiency were considered radical, making countercultural statements against the centralising, hegemonising tendencies of the South and of London.<br /><p></p><p>The city can also be a place of creative immersion and rambling, of course, as exemplified by the <i>flaneur</i> and psychogeographer. In this case Blake or De Quincey would instead be our guide. Peter Ackroyd, in <i>London: The Biography</i>, observes that William Wordsworth links the City in <i>The Prelude </i>to a prison:</p><p></p><blockquote><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">Of bondage, from yon City’s walls set
free, <br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">A prison where he hath been long
immured.</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">- (lines 7-8)<br /></span></blockquote><p>Elsewhere he also suggests that Wordsworth "recoiled from an innate and exuberant theatricality" in the city, observed in the cacophony of advertisements and the anarchic spirit of a place like Bartholomew Fair. Ackroyd on the other hand revels in the elemental and devouring properties of the City, which enables its enduring greatness, and he appears to consider Wordsworth constitutionally unsuitable to appreciate it. Be that as it may, Wordsworth has more in common with the city <i>flaneur</i> than at first meets the eye. In <i>Michael: A Pastoral Poem</i> (1800), the poet writes:</p><p></p><blockquote>If from the public way you turn your steps<br />Up the tumultuous brook of Greenhead Ghyll,<br />You will suppose that with an upright path<br />Your feet must struggle; in such bold ascent<br />The pastoral mountains front you, face to face.<br />But, courage! for around that boisterous brook<br />The mountains have all opened out themselves,<br />And made a hidden valley of their own.<br />No habitation can be seen; but they<br />Who journey thither find themselves alone<br />With a few sheep, with rocks and stones, and kites<br />That overhead are sailing in the sky.<br />It is in truth an utter solitude;<br />Nor should I have made mention of this Dell<br />But for one object which you might pass by,<br />Might see and notice not. Beside the brook<br />Appears a struggling heap of unhewn stones!<br />And to that simple object appertains<br />A story—unenriched with strange events, </blockquote><blockquote> - (lines 1-19) <br /></blockquote><p></p><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"></span><p></p><p>Is such a chance encounter with a random pile of rocks with its own unique story not the very stuff of psychogeography? Indeed, Wordsworth's oeuvre might even be considered 'psychogeography of the countryside'! Incidentally, although Wordsworth wrote many poems that take local people as their subject, none of those I've read personally highlights the discrepancy between the romantic pastoral and the metropolitan centre as poignantly as <i>Michael</i>. <br /></p><p>Whether it's in the City or in Nature, there is something inherently exhilarating about being out in the open air and among the elements. It is an experience that is difficult to reason about clearly from a sofa indoors, and perhaps an experience that is even a little alien to many citydwellers. Cloud cover, the cold and the rain is rarely enticing from the warm comfort of the living room, and we grudgingly weather it with a brolly until we get to the muddy, slippery floors of the nearest tube station. <br /><br />But once I get on the bike something strange happens. At first it is uncomfortable, and then within minutes I am suddenly used to it: the bite of the cold and the feeling of rain on my face herald the joy and freedom of moving around as I breathe the air. It is hard to explain. Out in the countryside this experience is further amplified. Jack Thurston describes it as follows:<br /><br /></p><blockquote>"On a bicycle you travel at the speed of the land. You don't just see and hear the world and the weather change around you but you smell it and feel it. Physical effort heightens the sense and you feel everything with a greater clarity - the wind in your hair, the sun on your back, a drenching by rain or the chill of a crisp winter's day. You feel each incline in your legs, in your lungs, and the swooping descent in your stomach, the sway as you lean the bike this way and that to climb a hill or round a bend. The bicycle is a total immersion machine." (<i>Lost Lanes North, </i>p. 13).</blockquote><br />Another poet who gave himself over to living close to Nature and immersing himself in the setting is W.S. Graham. He is a modernist romantic poet whose works were neglected during his own lifetime, but have grown in importance in recent decades. He moved from his native Greenock in Scotland to Ireland, and later to Cornwall, which is where he wrote much of his work. David Gange notes that he was a "passionate but foolish lover of the outdoors whose jaunts to wild places sometimes flirted with catastrophe" (<i>The Frayed Atlantic Edge</i>, p. 317). He lived by the sea, and wrote about the sea. In <i>The Nightfishing</i>, a highly ambitious landmark of a poem, the poet is so thoroughly engaged in the activity of setting out amidst the waves, it is difficult to separate the poet's self from the boat and the haul and the sea, and the very act of writing:<br /><br /><blockquote>In those words through which I move, leaving a cry<br />Formed in exact degree and set dead at<br />The mingling flood, I am put forward on to<br />Live water, clad in oil, burnt by salt<br />To life. Here, braced, announced on to the slow<br />Heaving seaboards, almost I am now too<br />Lulled. And my watch is blear. The early grey<br />Air is blowing. <br /></blockquote><blockquote><p>- (stanza 20) <br /></p></blockquote><br />If we consider the close relationship between the mind, the self, the body, and the environment, it should be little wonder that the manner in which we occupy and surround ourselves - what we immerse ourselves in - pervades our souls. To put that in perspective, contrast it with Thomas Berardi's observations regarding the incredible economic and capitalist success of South Korea, as quoted by Slavoj Žižek:<br /><br /><blockquote>"After coloinzation and wars, after dictatorship and starvation, the South Korean mind, <i>liberated by the burden of the natural body</i>, smoothly entered the digital sphere with a lower degree of cultural resistance than virtually any other populations in the world." (<i>Trouble in Paradise</i>, p.6 - my emphasis)</blockquote><br />The mind, untethered by the body, adapts more easily to the homogenising and automating demands of virtual and digital acceleration driving capitalism in the 21st century. By contrast, the physical body, when immersed in the slow-moving physical world is naturally at odds with such a fast-paced, fast-changing world. <br /><br />Language itself performs a linking and cultivating function. Wordsworth may have loved the countryside he wrote about, but the beauty of his works also invited the public to a part of the country that has today become rather more tamed, not least in order to cater to all the tourists. Here we see the structural dissonance of the relationship between the city and the countryside. It is a tension between the demands of modern civilisation and the rhythms of Nature that are nowhere better expressed than in the symptoms of climate change, which looks likely to be humanity's defining struggle during at least the first half of the 21st century.<br /><br />A city like London, with its rivers, parks, canals, gardens and woodlands, offers many hybrid environments in which we may tune into the outdoor experience. Not all of us are artists or poets like the Wordsworths or W.S. Graham. Most of us are simply trying to earn our keep. But perhaps by being immersed in Nature we, too, can tap into that exhilarating creativity that they accessed and - who knows - learn to fully live in our bodies and rediscover our tether to Mother Nature.<p></p><p></p><p>Finally, here is <i>Grasmere (a fragment)</i> by Dorothy Wordsworth:</p><p></p><blockquote>Peaceful our valley, fair and green, <br />And beautiful her cottages, <br />Each in its nook, its sheltered hold, <br />Or underneath its tuft of trees. <br />Many and beautiful they are; <br />But there is one that I love best, <br />A lowly shed, in truth, it is, <br />A brother of the rest. <br />Yet when I sit on rock or hill, <br />Down looking on the valley fair, <br />That Cottage with its clustering trees <br />Summons my heart; it settles there. <br />Others there are whose small domain <br />Of fertile fields and hedgerows green <br />Might more seduce a wanderer's mind <br />To wish that there his home had been. <br />Such wish be his! I blame him not, <br />My fancies they perchance are wild <br />--I love that house because it is <br />The very Mountains' child. <br />Fields hath it of its own, green fields, <br />But they are rocky steep and bare; <br />Their fence is of the mountain stone, <br />And moss and lichen flourish there. <br />And when the storm comes from the North <br />It lingers near that pastoral spot, <br />And, piping through the mossy walls, <br />It seems delighted with its lot. <br />And let it take its own delight; <br />And let it range the pastures bare; <br />Until it reach that group of trees, <br />--It may not enter there! <br />A green unfading grove it is, <br />Skirted with many a lesser tree, <br />Hazel and holly, beech and oak, <br />A bright and flourishing company. <br />Precious the shelter of those trees; <br />They screen the cottage that I love; <br />The sunshine pierces to the roof, <br />And the tall pine-trees tower above. <br />When first I saw that dear abode, <br />It was a lovely winter's day: <br />After a night of perilous storm <br />The west wind ruled with gentle sway; <br />A day so mild, it might have been <br />The first day of the gladsome spring; <br />The robins warbled, and I heard <br />One solitary throstle sing. <br />A Stranger, Grasmere, in thy Vale, <br />All faces then to me unknown, <br />I left my sole companion-friend <br />To wander out alone. <br />Lured by a little winding path, <br />I quitted soon the public road, <br />A smooth and tempting path it was, <br />By sheep and shepherds trod. <br />Eastward, toward the lofty hills, <br />This pathway led me on <br />Until I reached a stately Rock, <br />With velvet moss o'ergrown. <br />With russet oak and tufts of fern <br />Its top was richly garlanded; <br />Its sides adorned with eglantine <br />Bedropp'd with hips of glossy red. <br />There, too, in many a sheltered chink <br />The foxglove's broad leaves flourished fair, <br />And silver birch whose purple twigs <br />Bend to the softest breathing air. <br />Beneath that Rock my course I stayed, <br />And, looking to its summit high, <br />"Thou wear'st," said I, "a splendid garb, <br />Here winter keeps his revelry. <br />"Full long a dweller on the Plains, <br />I griev'd when summer days were gone; <br />No more I'll grieve; for Winter here <br />Hath pleasure gardens of his own. <br />"What need of flowers? The splendid moss <br />Is gayer than an April mead; <br />More rich its hues of various green, <br />Orange, and gold, & glittering red." <br />--Beside that gay and lovely Rock <br />There came with merry voice <br />A foaming streamlet glancing by; <br />It seemed to say "Rejoice!" <br />My youthful wishes all fulfill'd, <br />Wishes matured by thoughtful choice, <br />I stood an Inmate of this vale <br />How could I but rejoice? </blockquote><br /><br /><br /><p></p>thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-46232400894785494682021-05-01T18:28:00.030+01:002021-05-03T16:37:39.728+01:00Some thoughts on Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire<p><span style="font-family: arial;">I’ve had Iain Sinclair’s <i>“Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire” </i>on my shelf for a few years now, finally picking it up to read late last year. As you can tell, it took a while. As a Hackney resident myself, I was very excited to delve into it. Yet it didn’t quite live up to its billing for me. In a phrase: too much anecdote, too little history. But I did finish it after all, so that can't be the full story. This blog post is partly an attempt to understand why I feel this way.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Where to start? The best way to describe it, perhaps, is as a sprawling work of psychogeography about a single London borough, Hackney. Conceptually, I appreciate the book’s unsystematic construction. Yes, we are given chapter headings of many Hackney places like Gore Road, Montague Road, Stonebridge Estate, etc. and also of people, Stewart Home, Swanny, and so on. Yet these individual nodes never cohere, nor attempt to cohere, to a clear system. Dalston Lane is very close to Montague Road on a map, but they are several chapters apart in the book. Instead, places are visited by the happenstance of social encounters, or as part of detective work into certain lines of urban and cultural research, the significance of which is often dwelled on but not usually explained very clearly. They manifest as hunches, coincidences and synergies. I’ll return to this “detective” persona shortly.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This freeform experimental and intuitive approach is very much a psychogeographer’s: wandering, drifting, one day in Victoria Park, another in Dalston, and so on, sometimes weaving back over the same territory. In reality, however, it can be frustrating for the reader. I personally know many of the places mentioned, having ventured there myself, and am also quite familiar with psychogeography. Even so, I found the jumps in topic, person, and place a little disconcerting at times. </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Like someone wandering through a city borough without a map, the book's pleasures are often obtained by stumbling upon a topic or place of interest, or making a connection. The problem is, what is interesting to the author isn't always interesting to the reader in the same way. So while this approach makes the book conceptually interesting, it can impede the reader, who is often caught <i>in medias res</i>. </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Another way of starting is perhaps to reference someone else’s reading of it. The <a href="https://barbicanandcommunitylibraries.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/hackney-that-rose-red-empire-recommended-by-artizan-street-reading-group/" target="_blank">Artizan reading group</a> in fact echoed many of my own reflections, and their summary is fitting:</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"></span></span></p><blockquote><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">On the whole, we appeared to have found the thing interesting enough, but it was a different animal to Sinclair’s <i>London Orbital</i>, which the group took on some years ago. That book was a dense local history travelogue with some personal anecdote. This one was more of a collection of personal anecdote with some local history squeezed in. Gonzo stuff.“</span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p></blockquote><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Their observations also offer a segue into a topic that I believe is central to the conceit of the “documentary fiction” that is the book, namely the question of the narrator. There are a number of ghosts in the book, and none of them more salient than the author himself. We get many glimpses of his life in the late 60s, 70s and onward - personal anecdotes, descriptions of video, his family, friends, former housemates. </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In particular, the reading group wondered about the character called Kaporal, whether he was real or not: “Kaporal, a seedy-sounding researcher of scandal who hangs himself, we’d bet [he] was pure invention”. </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In fact, my contention would be that Kaporal is Sinclair’s ghostly research twin or alter-ego, a bit like Poe’s William Wilson, who is referenced in the book. </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">He appears to admit as much, without directly saying it, when Oona Grimes answers the author’s knock at her studio, mistaking him for her neighbour:</span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“‘I thought you were the fellow in the next studio’” (p. 467)</span></blockquote><p></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Suddenly, Sinclair becomes “convinced Kaporal had the next unit, the Finsbury Park cold store was his kind of place” (p. 467), and a few paragraphs down the transformation is complete:</span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><blockquote><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“Kaporal’s metal tins, his film archive, had that effect. For his nameplate on his studio door, he used a card of a rucksacked figure tramping down a country road. There was a name: SINCLAIR. And a phone number. Mine.</span></span> </p></blockquote><blockquote><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">‘It’s uncanny,’ Oona said. ‘Kaporal has <i>exactly</i> your look. The drooping shoulders, the weight of the world, managed despair. Even the Masai Barefoot Technology trainers. In the wrong size.” (p. 467-8)</span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"></p></blockquote><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span>It would explain why Kaporal ostensibly commits suicide: the author - a bit like the director in Fellini's <i>8½ </i>- sometimes ends up dithering when the various difficulties of writing "the Hackney book" takes its toll. So in this sense Kaporal is transformed into an alterego who "gives up the ghost" during the fraught process of this writing, as if he might be an offering to the writing gods. I mean no disrespect - Kaporal may well be a real person, in which case this is null and void, and I am out of line. But the author himself appears to believe that Kaporal may have faked his own death, which gives further credence to this sleight of hand:</span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">"Impossible to tell if Kaporal was dead, the man with a rope around his neck, trouser cuffs wet with dew, in the churchyard of St. John's, or if this was another instance of the shady researcher's ability to plant false information in the local press (where he has excellent contacts), before absorbing a new identity in a more obscure corner of London" (p. 460)</span></blockquote><p></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is not the only time there is a case of mistaken identity in the book. Quite late on, Sinclair briefly mistakes his own daughter, Farne, for his wife, Anna. It happens just after their grandchild is born, when he glimpses Farne pushing the baby buggy. It is a poignant moment that signals a certain passing of the torch to a new generation,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> and the potential </span>for history to continue old threads.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">These ghosts take the book to some of its greatest heights. None are more moving, to me, than the references to Margaret Muller, the artist <a href="http://www.unsolved-murders.co.uk/murder-content.php?key=2152&termRef=Margaret%20Muller" target="_blank">murdered in Victoria Park in 2003</a> and whose case remains unsolved to this day. She is mentioned quite early on in the book, at which time I had to look her up as I hadn't heard of her before. The thread is continued later when Sinclair interviews Jock McFadyen. Muller was one of his students. McFadyen was deeply affected by her passing.</span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">During the interview, which Sinclair records on a tape, they are walking through Victoria Park. Halfway through “I cut the tape when we passed the pathway where Margaret Muller was attacked, between the rose garden and the children’s adventure playground” (p. 523). This moment of respect marks that which cannot be said, something that can't be recorded. </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Later, on the trail of the Hackney Brook with Robert MacFarlane and Renchi, they come across another ghostly echo:</span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“the most memorable of Macfarlane’s discoveries came by the path beside the rose garden, as we made for Hackney Wick. He parted a curtain of willow to disclose a white life mask of the murdered Margaret Muller. Staring, through thick foliage, at the fatal spot.” (p. 547).</span></blockquote><p></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The theme of Margaret Muller echoes right up until the present, when violence against women are receiving renewed attention after the murder of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sarah_Everard" target="_blank">Sarah Everard</a>, the subsequent vigils, and controversy around the police’s response.</span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Despite the thread going cold over the years, there are still <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/cmevfk/stabbing_of_an_american_artist_in_london_margaret/" target="_blank">recent posts</a> on <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ColdCaseUK/comments/cmbkov/oc_margaret_muller_2003/ " target="_blank">Reddit</a> following up on Muller’s unsolved murder case. It makes the book part of a wider cultural memory that continues to have relevance.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Other people and themes, some recurrent like Jean-Luc Godard and Orson Welles, no longer seem relevant in the same way. Their connection to the borough are rather too tenuous and speculative (to borrow the Artizan reading group’s apt descriptions) to warrant inclusion to the length that they have been. As footnotes they add flavour, but the descriptions don’t elevate them to a relevance they might (or might not) have had 40 years ago. That’s my opinion anyway. That’s not to say that they’re without cultural interest, just that the topics go on for too long. Better yet, they would have benefited from having their significance explained to a contemporary reader. </span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At any rate, I’d never heard of Godard’s London documentaries, and quickly set out to watch two of them: <i>Sympathy for the Devil</i> and <i>British Sounds</i>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">The Godard documentaries connect, through their left-leaning sympathies, with other characters and groups interviewed and mentioned: Anna Mendelssohn and the Angry Brigade, and Astrid Proll and the Red Army Faction.</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Nevertheless, it got me thinking that perhaps the author misjudged some of his subjects' relevance to contemporary audiences. Ok, so Jayne Mansfield once visited Hackney, but there are many other famous people who have passed through Hackney over the years, in more concrete ways. What about them? </span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">The crux of the problem, I believe, can be traced back to the choice of narrative persona. Even the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/feb/21/sinclair-hackney-review," target="_blank">Guardian review</a>, largely favourable about the book, concedes that “</span><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">his tough-guy, domineering prose can sometimes get wearing”. In this case, the Guardian writer in fact means that the Hackney book improves on this tendency because “Here, this writer of compelling monologues lets in other voices, and the book is warmer and more powerful as a result”. While it is true that the various interviews are some of the best bits in the book, does it not actually reflect less well on the author’s own prose, considering it makes up the vast majority of the book?</span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The persona, for me, is something out of hardboiled detective fiction. Full of certainties and stubby sentences.</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Here is Sinclair, describing an event at the town hall where he was going to speak:</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Anna joined me at the bar; she had agreed, reluctantly, to take her place at high table, alongside the mayor, the lady mayoress, Hackney notables (notable to themselves) - and the New Labour minister (weather and sport), who had drawn the short straw. Bicycle people in gypsy skirts, hoop earrings, black trainers, yellow tabards, luminescent Alice bands, wheeled their machines up the disabled ramp, into the Grand Assembly Hall.” (p. 323)</span></blockquote><p></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s <i>The Big Sleep</i>:</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Shaved, dressed and lightly breakfasted I was at the Hall of Justice in less than an hour. I rode up to the seventh floor and went along to the group of small offices used by the D.A.’s men. Ohls’s was no larger than the others, but he had it to himself. There was nothing on his desk but a blotter, a cheap pen set, his hat and one of his feet.” (p. 47)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></span><p></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Aside from the incidental Hall that both excerpts have in common, both narrators share a fondness for short, abrupt sentence clauses, exhibiting a kind of tough exterior. But whereas Chandler’s prose (and indeed a lot of other hardboiled fiction) shows a protagonist full of earthy confidence, ready to engage, Sinclair’s protagonist is more reticent and complex, a character whose description of specifics (“hoop earrings”, “yellow tabards”) belie the ungraspable wholes they aspire to describe (Hackney).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">And therein lies the problem. </span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sinclair clearly realises his dilemma:</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“If I wrote a harmless sentence such as ‘everything was zeroing in on the Victory in Vyner Street’, I struck it out, as over-freighted, lazy, and altogether false in its suggestion that my fractured narrative of manipulated facts, poorly recorded<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and inaccurately transcribed interviews, could achieve resolution” (p. 417)</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p></blockquote><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Overconfidence wouldn’t do. So the narrator, this tough-guy persona, is at best a type of ironic, slightly comic character. A quixotic detective, chasing the windmills of place and history in Hackney. The thing is, there is plenty of history in Hackney he <i>could </i>be telling the reader, yet chooses not to. We are told about Edmond Halley, the Hollow Earth, and a number of related themes around tunnelling and ley lines. Even Globe Town is mentioned. There is a lot of elliptical allusion, but not enough to sink one's teeth into properly. A bit more actual history would have been enormously welcome. Less anecdote.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Thank you.</span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Some of this ironic comedy, the sense of “a man inside his own head” while walking the borough, is notable in mistakes and errors of judgment he makes. One of the earliest, and certainly one of the most memorable, occurs in the first chapter when a youth pelts him with a rotten egg while he’s out walking near London Fields. He thinks, desperately, that he’s been stabbed - until he discovers the remnants of egg shell later.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> He has the good grace to see humour in it.</span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Nevertheless, the inclusion of this incident also highlights a notable void in the book. The youth disappears into the Fields Estate, “a warren”. The author is understandably shaken, although thankfully not seriously harmed. He later finds out it is a tactic of car-jackers in the area, and is sympathetic to their plight. Earlier, he even describes muggings as “a toll on the privilege of living here” (p. 10).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">These sentiments are admirable, but the void is that in nearly 600 pages of book the reader becomes none the wiser about the lives of the real people who might be involved in these activities in the borough. Their voices are not directly included in the narrative. Not even a single interview.</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is probably an unfair criticism, because there are so many other people he talks to, people of a forgotten Hackney, an act which is a service to posterity. Yet the truth is that anyone coming to Hackney can’t help but to be struck by all the estates that dominate the skyline. What of these lives and places? It cannot be called a definitive book about Hackney without the psychogeography and perspectives that those places hold.</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Perhaps, at that time (mid to late noughties), it was still viewed as too dangerous to contemplate engaging with the estates as a serious option. Or perhaps it was considered and rejected. There is indeed a part early in the book when Rob Petit questions people living on the Holly Street Estate, via a questionnaire. We also learn a bit about the history and reputation of this notorious estate, demolished in the 90s. It is one of the few places in the book where readers get an insight into this world, and it is most welcome. I certainly learned something and was able to follow it up with my own researches. Nevertheless, there is so much more left unsaid and on the whole it seems like a missed opportunity.</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I would like to finish my argument against the author’s choice of narrator with one of rather too many instances where the tendency towards tough-guy terse certainty crosses a line by assuming too much.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> In the chapter on Victoria Park, the author observes:</span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“A darkman, stripped to the waist, was running through his martial arts routine on the bandstand. Harming invisibles with spiteful kicks. Rain-clouds massed.” (p. 337)</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"></p></blockquote><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The description here is not an unfamiliar sight in the borough, at least not these days. In my local park there are regular martial arts practitioners, Capoeira as well as Wing Chun, practicing outdoors as a result of the pandemic lockdown. The bit that is strange is the description of the kicks being “spiteful”. Spiteful to whom? And are they really spiteful, or is that his projection / interpretation? It may even be true, but we have no way of knowing. It strikes me as telling, rather than showing. </span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But the problem goes further. If we include the fact it is presumably a black man (a “darkman”) the description leaves a strange taste, considering the author has included almost no black voices in the book. That is quite a large demographic to exclude: </span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“<span class="s4" style="font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">The 2011 Census estimates that around 40% of the population come from black and minority ethnic groups with the largest group (approximately 20%) being black or black British.” -<a href="https://hackney.gov.uk/knowing-our-communities" target="_blank"> Hackney Gov</a></span></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s4" style="font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><a href="https://hackney.gov.uk/knowing-our-communities" target="_blank"></a></span></span><p></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I’m sure the author meant no real offence. Rather, it seems to follow from the narrative persona's spikiness and compulsive projection of certainties (elsewhere called "hard-earned prejudices") onto what he observes around him. As I contend elsewhere, this is in direct contrast to the (lack of) graspableness of the larger topic of Hackney, something the author is only too clearly keenly aware of. In spite of his apparent reserve, I don't doubt his interest in other people, including lives lived in the margins, as his interest in people living in Hackney Wick and the Lower Lea Valley for example evidences. But the effect here, cumulative after a while, is a bit bothersome.</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">Someone in the Artizan reading group thought Sinclair might be “</span><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">one of the grumpiest old men in print”. Reading that made me laugh, as in my own mind I had definitely been thinking of him as a bit of a curmudgeon. Nevertheless, I would suggest that it once more follows from the chosen narrative persona. The prose actually improves considerably - in my view - around the time of the Will Self excursion, more than two thirds into the book. The strict persona is abandoned, and the prose flows more naturally. There just seems to be a bit more purpose to the writing.</span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is also interesting to compare Sinclair's narrative style to Peter Ackroyd’s. Ackroyd is what I would call a myth maker. In his book <i>“London: The Biography”</i> London is this vast beast that consumes everyone who enters it. London is more than the sum of its parts, more than any of the many, many influential people who have passed through it. You are never left in any doubt about that. Instead of getting lost in the fractals, Ackroyd speaks in broad themes, drawing you in with juicy factoids. Not all of the details hold up to scrutiny, but they always help to illustrate the particular topic he has in mind. He's a kind of cultural salesman, amplifying his message. He ensures that the big picture is kept in front of the reader at all times. That is a considerable achievement, even if it traverses the thinnest of lines between truth and myth.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is almost the opposite of Sinclair’s fractured approach that almost wilfully eschews bold themes and a grand narrative. Sinclair's Hackney is almost an abstraction, a place definable only by its outline on a map - if at all. But isn't that a cop-out? The difference is instructive, because Hackney certainly hasn’t always had the benefit of being centre stage to London’s great dramas. But then there are lost opportunities here too: what of people like Mary Wollstonecraft, someone whose influence and legacy as a founding feminist thinker is global and profound? What of the social housing experiments? Clearly the latter is one of the unmistakeable postwar features of a bombed out East London, and Hackney in particular; more so if one includes its relation to the long history of social housing in the East End.</span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To be fair, I don’t envy Sinclair the making of the book. He was clearly operating under a lot of constraints, not least of which would have been restrictions about what he could include from his interviews with various people. </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The interviews are some of the best bits, without a doubt, but all the namedropping gets a bit tedious.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Someone at Penguin should have curbed these tendencies. More history, less anecdote. Thank you.</span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Lest my critique puts anyone off reading the book completely, I should point out that there are many good reasons to read the book. Sinclair's musings on artists and writers connected to the borough can be idiosyncratic, but it is also sometimes of genuine significance. One of his great achievements is to pull certain characters out of relative obscurity and back into the light. Names that have remained with me include </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Anna Mendelssohn, Alexander Baron, </span><span style="font-family: arial;">David Widgery, Sheila Rowbotham, and Roland Camberton. Out of these, the story of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Camberton" target="_blank">Roland Camberton</a> is probably my favourite. Without giving too much away, Sinclair does real detective work to uncover more about this mysterious author who was almost lost to posterity. Camberton's </span><i style="font-family: arial;">"Rain on the Pavements" </i><span style="font-family: arial;">is now on my reading list. </span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Another is his reminder of developments in the borough that were built on dodgy dealings and scant regard for local cultural significance. The loss of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Aces_Club" target="_blank">Four Aces Club</a> (later Club Labyrinth) is such a case, something I knew nothing about.</span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">These stories, scattered though they are, make the book worth the effort, and is the reason I did not give up in spite of its more dissuasive features. I</span><span style="font-family: arial;">t's been a valuable guide and full of local relevance. And the last line is worth a mention: it is superb. </span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But I had to work for these pleasures, and that may not be everyone’s cup of tea.</span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-35783243958898817672021-01-04T18:22:00.006+00:002021-01-04T19:50:18.275+00:00Some thoughts on Perdido Street Station<p>I finished reading China Miéville's Perdido Street Station yesterday. It’s a tome of a book, at 867 pages, which I bought last winter at Foyle’s after scouring the scifi shelves for a while and concluding that, well, it really is one of the more eminent recent books (in terms of awards etc.).<br /><br />I felt excited at the time, but given the size, didn’t attempt it immediately. I’d already read <i>Embassytown</i> back in 2017. That one promised much, but, like one commenter in a forum said, left me feeling that it didn't actually amount to more than the sum of its parts. A lot of effort had gone into defining various mechanisms for language and the way people function, but when put together it sort of clanked rather than harmonised into a more meaningful whole. For me anyway.<br /><br />But <i>Embassytown</i> isn’t considered his pre-eminent work, and Perdido Street Station is a different matter, so I had high hopes for it. I finally started it about three weeks ago, read 25 pages, then picked it up during the Christmas break and finished it yesterday. It’s quite an easy read - easier than <i>Embassytown</i> I feel - and definitely a better experience overall.</p><p></p><p><b><i>WARNING:</i> Here be spoilers!</b><br /><br />You can probably hear the ‘but’ in my phrasing - I will come to that. Let’s first look at what’s great about the book. There’s plenty to love. The blurb describes it as fantasy, although to me it sits somewhere at the intersection between scifi, fantasy and horror. The subgenre is steampunk for the most part. It is a fully realised world, mostly about the city of New Crobuzon - clearly inspired by the overcrowded, noisy, dirty image of pre-20th century London, Miéville's hometown (and mine). There is a sense of the metropolitan with all the different creatures living there, and the main character - Isaac - has a relationship with Lin, an insect-like race. But it is an illicit relationship, and the various communities show a lot of prejudice and bias towards one another. It is not an enlightened world.<br /><br />The overall atmosphere in New Crobuzon is of a city in permanent decline. Architecture and buildings, in particular, are consistently described as being in a state of gradual decay. There’s a sense that there may have been a better age once, but now there is little sense of optimism - just ongoing energy and industry. Nevertheless, this dynamo keeps things moving so it’s not as if there is despondence either. It’s more that no one seems to really care about ‘a better world’. Even the radical newspaper seems more about protest and calling out the establishment than imagining what a better world might look like. It's more like energy trying to find an outlet rather than aspiring to becoming something different.<br /><br />Perhaps the defining feature of the work is the author’s fertile imagination for creatures. The slake-moths - the Evil predators in the story - are described in ways that invoke both terror and awe. The horror of their acts of feeding on characters that you’ve just gotten to know was some of the more shocking fiction I’ve read in recent years. Those descriptions alone must surely classify <i>PSS</i> as horror as much as it is fantasy or scifi. I would single out the death of Barbile as the most dreadful single description, maybe because it was unexpectedly explicit and detailed, but Lin’s fate is probably objectively even worse, albeit in terms of description more implied and indirect. Her fate is both terrible and pitiful. The description of Shadrach’s fate was also horrifically effective.<br /><br />Miéville’s wiki page mentions his association with Dungeons and Dragons, so I was able to keep this in mind while reading and I have to say, what initially just raised an eyebrow for creative overindulgence eventually unravelled, for me, into a full-scale problem. For a novel that has won so many accolades I was expecting a slightly more cohesive and conscious vision, and the fact is it falls short while indulging its imaginative bent ad infinitum. I never thought I’d say that a book so clearly full of imagination can be found wanting, but it turns out that I am interested in precisely the points that remain vastly under-explored amid the fecund possibilities: the moral dimension of the actions of the various characters. This is the missed opportunity, and measured by that, the book doesn't quite achieve what it was maybe capable of.<br /><br />Let’s be clear, the slake-moths are awesome, but they also appear to be brute beasts: entirely one dimensional in their consciousness. They’ve been imbued with an instinctual impressiveness, but no real intelligence beyond that. This is a fiction that, in culture, has been told about animals as well: tigers kill, lions kill, sharks kill, Tyrannosauri Rex kill - <i>slake-moths</i> kill. That’s presented as their identity. They are intended to be awesome because they are such effective killers. Each creature in the novel have their identity, a kind of preordained identity. And this is where the connection to D&D drops: so much effort has gone into describing the features and characteristics of the various types that the really interesting thing has gone completely underdeveloped: how they rise above it, or go beyond it. It boxes them in, imprisons them. The characters become victims of the author's desire for creature creation. Like those scenes by Hieronymus Bosch the effect is awesome and even overwhelming, but more is not always more once the dust settles.<br /><br />I am a bit reluctant to talk about Isaac because as a character he is a total ass, but he is the main character. so of course one has to. He might be the hero of the piece, but he is wholly undeserving as a moral character, and for some reason Bruce Willis’ <i>Die Hard</i> face keeps popping into my head when I think of him. He is like an 80s action hero, devoid of an interesting inner life, superficial in his moral compass, happy to do the expedient while accusing others of being in the wrong. In this sense he is utterly infuriating, and the ending just reinforces this sense of outrage - that, perhaps, the novel is really just posturing. Then I keep thinking about how Miéville is meant to be really serious in his politics and therefore surely of very clear and particular ideals, and then I wonder ok, but how? Of course, one shouldn't conflate the protagonist with the author - and Isaac is clearly no stand-in - but I expect the novel as a whole to have a bit more substance, even if Isaac doesn't.<br /><br />Isaac accuses Vermishank of being a vile man - no particular reasons given, although his hand in the sell-off of the slake-moths to a drug lord seems to be an illustration of that side of his character - and yet Vermishank, as a character, is way more interesting than Isaac. He <i>speaks</i> intelligently - demonstrating that Miéville is fully capable of drawing his characters that way - while Isaac shouts, acts impulsively and generally does not give much indication of being a decent or even very clear-thinking human being. He is loyal to his friends, for the most part - but when Yagharek needs a friend the most, at the very end when his crime is exposed, Isaac drops him like a hot potato. At any rate Isaac doesn't get to know anyone around him deeply enough to know them properly. Isaac saves the day, yes, but aside from determining to take care of Lin at the end, his resolve is generally entirely selfish. </p><p>Lin's story promises more, but just when we learn a little more about her she becomes a victim and we are entirely cut off from her inner life and her thoughts. Her life appears to have been a selfish one too, but considering the constraints of her previous communities it is a more understandable trajectory for someone with artistic talent. Unfortunately, that is never explored in much detail, although it would have made her fate all the more tragic and effective for the purposes of the story, I'd have thought.<br /><br />These are not problems I would usually feel the need to level against characters in a novel, so why bother here? I think it is because of the clear effort involved in building and crafting this world - the imagination in evidence is amazing, Miéville’s world building is nothing if not original, but then I soon found it all amounts to little more than an adventurous fight against creatures of supposed Evil, when the real <i>evil</i> - the drug lord, the corrupt government, are not explored in any great detail.<br /><br />But the biggest indictment for me was that there was one character who was by far more interesting than any other character, and whose thoughts we sometimes got to read: Yagharek. Yes, he is selfish too - he wants his freedom in spite of having committed a crime - but in this case it makes him <i>interesting</i>. He is a creature of contrasts, once great and impressive he is now pathetic. Isaac is perfectly happy to help him for his own purposes despite never bothering to find out what desperate crime old Yag committed - finally insisting on taking some dubious moral high ground when the truth is revealed. If he had any real conviction, or evolution of character, he would have debated the truth with Yagharek and perhaps befriended him in some other way. As it stands, he merely upholds and reinforces the misunderstandings of his world - the reinforcement of stereotypes and species. In this respect it is a disappointment.<br /><br />The last 30 pages or so of the novel was definitely more than I expected by that point though. The visit by the Cymek - the one whose choice was taken - was a surprise plot twist and resulted a in a few pages of interesting revelations and moral reasoning on Isaac’s part. But the result was perhaps only to release him from his selfish impulses on one side, the reasonable side - in fact he did what perhaps most people would have done, and it is hard not to feel it is a cop-out. The reasoning is sound, but so absolute as to make me despair of the human race. But as a writer I would have expected more from the author, to alchemise the situation further.<br /><br />The truth is that, for the ages, this part was the really interesting bit of the novel - the potential that all the foundational world building could try to support. Instead it set out to have fun with imaginative creatures and a battle between creatures - typical D&D style rather than a more moral or spiritual dimension, which is I suppose more common in literary but also some scifi such as Octavia E. Butler. It also doesn’t ask the big questions of existence, so in this respect it is perhaps not great scifi either, but more fantasy, as the blurb contends. Miéville claims to be a fan of Lovecraft, but Lovecraft’s achievement is not merely horror but also a recognition of that horror in ourselves - that’s what makes it truly horrifying. Isaac seems to deny all that, and my issue is that I want the main characters to be more interesting. The most interesting character shouldn't be a secondary character like Yagharek.<br /><br />After Yagharek, the Weaver was perhaps the most interesting creature character, and possibly even second best character overall. He actually has a genuine purpose - keeping the world in balance with his weaving. His way of speaking also marked him out. </p><p>I thought Perdido Street Station was going to be a vindication of this line of reasoning, a central junction of life in New Crobuzon. But in the end it was merely the location, arbitrarily chosen by Isaac to get away from the rubbish dump. Another red herring in other words - a cool name for the novel, but not really that central to the story.<br /><br />Motley was formidable, but there were some miscalculations that lessened the effect of his bossness. For example, he jumped to the conclusion that Isaac is trying to take his territory. Really, a sophisticated drug lord thinks a random rogue scientist is trying to take over his drug empire? How does that make any sense? Even if it is because Motley thought she spilled the beans, there are ways to ascertain the truth rather than jump to costly conclusions. The brutality was believable, but not the impulsiveness and lack of clear thinking on the side of such a sophisticated criminal. They would be far too street-smart. But then, like so many characters in the story, clear thinking doesn't seem to be their strong point.<br /><br />The slake-moths were interesting creatures too, but the story's unwillingness to enter their consciousness, except for the briefest of glimpses, reinforces this sense of them being painted as mere brutes. Perhaps that was always the point, and they actually are without consciousness, maybe it was mentioned somewhere and I missed it. But that again makes me question the politics of the story in the light of the author’s known personal politics. Is the point of the story that everyone is actually an idiot?<br /><br />So on the whole, while I admire the imaginative achievement of the novel, and certainly enjoyed the ride - faux science and all - I am disappointed that it did not make more of its premises. The dialectic is missing.<br /><br />Perhaps the follow-up New Crobuzon novels explore those issues further, but on the current evidence I’m not convinced. Miéville seems an author intent on flexing his imaginative muscle above all. As an occasional writer of fiction myself I do understand the temptation, and I also know that it is a choice.<br /><br />But at the same time I wouldn’t want my disappointment to overshadow the value the novel brings. The world building itself is worth the price of admission, as well as the effort involved in reading it. It was mostly a pleasure - sometimes a disturbing one, in the way good horror writing would be - and generally fascinating and stimulating. A feast for the senses. It has certainly left a strong impression.<br /><br />It’s also given me enough reason to think that <i>The City & The City</i> is likely to be perhaps even better, given its reputation and later publishing date (the youthful exuberance of creation is very much on display in <i>PSS</i>, but it’s more than likely that in nearly a decade the author would have started to rein that tendency in a bit to focus on the essence of what he is trying to say).<br /><br />Ok with all that said my verdict on the novel is that it’s more good than not, my disappointment notwithstanding, and in fact largely excellent and amazing. <br /><br />However as a story that does indeed aspire to more than just a thrilling caper, especially given the extent of world building, I think the lack of follow-through on some of the moral ideas will mean its true significance will be overtaken by others who take up those themes (and probably already have). The book may have helped invent or at least solidify the style of New Weird, and created several memorable monsters, but it should also pose difficult questions and explore them in more detail in order to realise its potential. <i>Cela.</i><br /><br />Finally, consider this: The violence wrought on both Lin and Barbile, as women, left me not a little uncomfortable. It was reminiscent of the type of tactics in B-movies and your more typical slasher horror fare: damsels in distress - in this case not getting rescued, for the most part. More importantly, the author chose to describe their fate in that amount of gruelling detail, and then goes on a moral march at the end that doesn't really explain anything. </p><p>I've seen some suggestions online that the author <i>intentionally</i> wrote the ending that way - with Lin becoming this pitiful figure - as if saying it was intended by the author somehow explains it. The story should provide that explanation, either in content, structure, or some other way. To say it is intentional, in the absence of a clear answer, simply intensifies the question. </p><p>Perhaps we could conclude that the whole story is ultimately a moral fable, a warning that selfish acts lead to ... etc. But I don't buy that. It doesn't explain why an entire story would be dedicated to creating these monsters and then hunting the Evil slake-moths. It leaves us with the possibility that, a little like William Blake said of Milton's Hell, that he was of the Devil's party all along - perhaps Miéville just loves creating monsters, and needed some justification for it.<br /></p>thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-72382816563214495342020-10-23T17:12:00.010+01:002020-10-29T16:49:34.315+00:00GPT 2 Poetry<p>Some of the GPT-2 based tools available publicly can generate decent examples with the right prompt. However I wanted to see whether a finetuned model might do a little better. </p><p>I collected a corpus of traditional poetry from <a href="https://poetrydb.org" target="_blank">PoetryDB</a>, together with <a href="https://www.kaggle.com/johnhallman/complete-poetryfoundationorg-dataset" target="_blank">this corpus</a>. After finetuning and taking samples at various different stages, my impression is that a finetuned model (in this case the GPT 2 medium size, 355M) can indeed generate poetry that holds its own against the default models', and in some cases may well be an improvement. A well crafted prompt is important though, and it helps to take into account the corpus it was trained on.<br /><br />Decent snippets of poetry, in my experience, come at a frequency of less than 10% - probably somewhere between 5-10%. It definitely pays to try different prompts. It is clear that the model is willing to try and imitate a particular style, but the effects often wear off as the text generation grows longer. After a while it simply reverts to its comfort zone of country meadows, gurgling streams, and singing skylarks. <br /><br />I enjoyed playing around with Emily Dickinson's style, because it is so distinctive. After just 12000 steps of training, when average loss was still quite high, I got these (my prompt in bold):<br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Sample 1</h4><h4><b></b></h4><p></p><blockquote><b>Here is a poem about life on Mars that is written in the terse style of Emily Dickinson:<br />Bereft I -- astronaut<br />Idle eyes -- earth<br />The alien things of Ancestors<br />Grainy melodies --<br />Silent majorities -- distant society</b><br />As a normal human--<br />Sadness and my fantasy --<br />A fear of annihilation --<br />The peace of carnival at dusk --<br />Strange adventures -- secrets hidden<br />Ghetto art-wars --<br />Dark powers from Russia's mausoleum<br />Postcards of Mars --<br />As fantasy, an exoticist<br />Conquer as I wish!<br />Peace is the enemy!<br />Peace the enemy!<br />There are precious elements<br />Of war --<br />Stones of battle -- war --<br />Air of steel -- shipyard wars<br />The enemy's sacred hideout<br />Among the bloodstained bone<br />All trails left in ruins<br />Go to the enemy --<br />I am closer to Heaven than I am to Earth<br />To Heaven than to a shell --<br />I am closer to Heaven than I am to death<br />To Heaven than to a mirror --<br />To a family --<br />The stranger to a bank --<br />The broken wave to which you come --<br />The little town behind --<br />The stranger with a nightmare<br />So clever it ends every day.</blockquote><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Sample 2</h4><blockquote><b>Here is a poem about life on Mars that is written in the terse style of Emily Dickinson:<br />Bereft I -- astronaut<br />Idle eyes -- earth<br />The alien things of Ancestors<br />Grainy melodies --<br />Silent majorities -- distant society</b><br />A wordless rebellion --<br />Housebound -- stricken with hope --<br />Cul-de-sac -- highway music<br />Psychoanalysis<br />Peace through gun violence<br />Offshoot of modernity --<br />Strenuous original genius<br />Raindrops -- cloud-flowers<br />Earth's marvelous eagle flight --<br />Fireflies -- find in poetry<br />Joy in example --<br />Astronauts lift alone<br />Lost souls (Fireflies)<br />The sole unknown genius of wisdom<br />The survival of the flying saucers<br />And humans<br />Further testing of binary<br />Death's voice -- death's may<br />Peace through gun violence<br />On Mars -- last challenge<br />On Mars -- the one.<br />And beyond a wilderness<br />Involuntary woods -- earth --<br />Under-written by humans<br />Animal culture -- obsession --<br />Dismantling your weakness<br />Unsung heroism --<br />Immortality</blockquote><br />These examples appeared to be of decent quality despite training loss still being quite high. They probably represent a middle ground between the original model, and the new one, so that much of the model is still biased towards the original text (more prose-like) it had been trained on at OpenAI. Although not shown here, many samples evidenced prose-like sections.<br /><br />Fast forward to a new version of the model at 33000 training steps with average loss around 0.5, and the poetry is more typically "poetic", but seems to be less versatile overall. This confirms the notion that it has taken on board more of the new training material (poetry), and is less influenced by the wide corpus it started with:<br /><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Sample 3</h4><h4><b></b></h4><p></p><blockquote><b>Here is a poem about life on Mars that is written in the terse style of Emily Dickinson:<br /><br />Bereft I -- astronaut<br />Idle eyes -- earth<br />The alien things of Ancestors<br />Grainy melodies --<br />Silent majorities -- distant society</b> certainly --<br />Nocturnal winds -- while the stars are alive --<br />The tribes of strangers -- and the long-term ill --<br />And the strange sudden malcontent<br />That got in, and got out, and didn't rest --<br />And the antitype -- that never stops --<br /><br />The bonds of love -- the husband's --<br />The chieftain's -- and the subject's --<br />And the stranger in the asylum<br />The sportive puppy-vassal<br />Rests with the deer, and the hound with the hound<br />Stirms with the dwarf-father in the cave.<br /><br />As the crow's wings grow dully broad<br />And the green-breasted dove<br />Eclipses the sun to land,<br />As the wild cherry-blossoms blow<br />And grow in the wind,<br />As the starlight fades<br />And spreads its feathery arms<br />And fades away in the flower,<br />As the blaze of the wild cherry-blossoms<br />Fades and leaves in the wind --</blockquote><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Sample 4</h4><blockquote><b>Here is a poem about the harsh and lonely life on the planet Mars. It is written in the terse style of Emily Dickinson:<br /><br />Bereft I -- astronaut<br />Idle eyes -- earth<br />The alien things of Ancestors<br />Grainy melodies --<br />Silent majorities -- distant society</b><br />Alone -- in the vastness of the universe --<br />Settling there -- far away from the nearest<br />Humane -- or human -- aggressor --<br />Till I close my -- orbit -- in the moon --<br />Then out of the night -- into the day --<br /><br />My career is not -- not yet --<br />My work is not yet --<br />The imagination's got my leave<br />To taste the dulness and thraldom<br />Of the little things.<br /><br />The morning's the night's turn and the dreary<br />Dinner is between --<br />The fire shall burn forth --<br /><br />The earth's shade is the lamp's boding light<br />And the moon's face is thaw --<br />But his cup, my heart insists,<br />That water's the wrong drink.<br /><br />The sky's a slumber -- the north wind<br />Stirs -- and so, the sky.<br />For, with this world's uses to come,<br />A world's house is but a sky.<br /><br />The sun's a-rising -- the stars,<br />Spangling the silvery day<br />With a tapestry of rising light --<br />The wrong house for me, I hanker</blockquote><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h4><p>I tried a number of different prompts. Here's something a little like John Ashbery's:</p><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Sample 5<br /></h4><blockquote><b>Here is a poem about life on the planet Mars. It is written in the style of John Ashbery:<br /><br />The rover will roll by later.<br />For now, the rockworker pauses on red ground,<br />fills in the time of day, the rocks' location,<br />leaves a note for the nightworker: "What the hell<br />are we going to do? I mean ...<br />The water is already drying up."<br />Rain on earth, as it does in heaven.</b><br /><br />For those who come here, the note is of less importance, the rain. Once, once, indeed.<br /><br />That voice is drowned.<br /><br />And now at length the deed is done.<br /><br />The morning-color comes on high;<br />The evening-color comes on high.<br /><br />All the hills around Steep-Foot's bed<br />Look at the cloud-burthen coming down<br />From the very, very edge of last night's storms.<br /><br />How the rock-bearers throw up their spears<br />Before the first bow of the rising moon!<br />Pleasant was the task to reach the brink.<br /><br />Of yellow sapphire, and its rim of gleaming steel,<br />Is the price we pay for beauty this morn.<br />Lo, the sun shines, but the clouds are gray,<br />And the moon is on the big side;<br />For she rises like a volcano's peak<br />With her bright, lustreful head,<br />And her soft glossy arm is bare and soft<br />Like the hand that slips and slips again.</blockquote><p><br />Traditional poetry is definitely the finetuned model's preferred mode of poetry generation. It seems to reel them off with ease, and the percentage of decent snippets come at a higher rate. It's not that it always makes perfect sense, but it's easy to see how even just a little tweaking can turn it into something quite readable. Here's one example:<br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Sample 6<br /></h4><blockquote><b>I wandered lonely as a toad,</b><br />Till, stung by the keenness of my woe,<br />I half grew to fancy I was<br />A fowl of another kind,<br />And yet I could not despise<br />My own flesh:--a dreamy note<br />To my more melancholy heart<br />Said, 'Eat not, weep not; this is pity.'<br /><br />'Sad was the agony, when<br />That hoary Flandric tree,--<br />Pity me! I have none,--<br />Sore as I am, with barren beak,<br />And I would die like a wood-dove,--<br />One moment made me think I was<br />With all the rest, a bugling wight,<br />Free from all misery, save fear.'<br /><br />'Sad was the agony, when<br />One was clapt in the dark blue air,<br />And strode to the light of morning;<br />Sad was the agony, when<br />Saw a beam of light on a bed<br />Of many a fluttering flower,<br />And one was silvery in a ball;<br />And a sound of music came bright,<br />Cloven through and through, and far away<br />It stirr'd the chamber. Sad was the agony<br />Of listening to that light sound--<br />It did its work in silence and in pain.--<br /><br />'So now I was old, and had to die;<br />Some fadeless bird from the glen,<br />A day had killed it,</blockquote><p>Or another:</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Sample 7</h4><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><b></b><blockquote><b>I wandered lonely as a toad,</b><br /> Till, bored, I fell into the water;<br />For well I know those raggedy old stairs,<br /> Worn by foot, and faded for good:<br /> They know not that I was a Tot,<br />A "kingdom, or house," from out their memory;--<br /> Never mind! Let darkness in again<br />Re-illustrate the stupidity of youth.</blockquote></span> </h4><br />I've shared the checkpoint at 33000 steps of training along with <a href="https://colab.research.google.com/github/thunderclapinteractive/poetrywtf-nlp/blob/main/notebooks/generate_gpt_2_poetry_with_aitextgen.ipynb" target="_blank">a Notebook that can be opened in Colab</a> <b>(<i>edit 2020-10-29</i>: updated link to point to new aitextgen version of the notebook).</b><br /><p></p>thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-40952172710285102212020-09-14T21:38:00.001+01:002020-10-14T11:56:42.381+01:00The Rise of AI and the Future of - Literature?<h3 style="text-align: left;">Introduction</h3><h3 style="text-align: left;"> </h3>On May 28, 2020 a <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165" target="_blank">paper describing GPT-3</a>, a new state-of-the-art language model Artificial Intelligence (AI), dropped on Arxiv. On June 11, 2020 OpenAI, the developers of GPT-3, <a href="https://openai.com/blog/openai-api/" target="_blank">invited users to request access</a> to the GPT-3 API in Beta. In the following weeks, and up until the present, those who gained access have been sharing their findings, and others have been commenting and sharing their reflections. As an example of the latter, Farhad Manjoo at the New York Times summarised GPT-3's capabilities as follows:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote>"GPT-3 is capable of generating entirely original, coherent and sometimes even factual prose. And not just prose — it can write poetry, dialogue, memes, computer code and who knows what else."</blockquote> </div><div style="text-align: left;">The title of his article? <i><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/opinion/gpt-3-ai-automation.html" target="_blank">"How do you know a human wrote this?"</a></i><br /></div><p>In this blog post I want to consider the question of how writers should respond when authorship itself is called into question. I would also like to explore some of the ways in which AI could be used as a collaborative writing partner or tool.<br /><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">A Selective Recent History of Natural Language Generation</h3><h3 style="text-align: left;"> </h3><h4 style="text-align: left;">Part I : Context Free Grammar</h4><p><br />Before looking at these questions more closely, a short, highly selective history of AI in the context of creative writing is in order.<br /><br />In 2015 Zackary Scholl <a href="https://rpiai.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/turing-test-passed-using-computer-generated-poetry/" target="_blank">shared how he had successfully managed to get a computer generated poem accepted by a poetry journal</a> a few years earlier, in 2011. The poem wasn’t at the level of the greats, but on the other hand it was arguably better than some of the poetry readers might encounter on the internet. It has a few nice turns of phrase, and although the meaning remains vague, that’s not too unusual when first encountering a new work of poetry. So as a poem, it seemed plausibly legit. The story was picked up by some online media, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vvbxxd/the-poem-that-passed-the-turing-test" target="_blank">such as <i>Vice</i></a>. In retrospect, some of the headlines were more hyperbole than considered truth, but it was an interesting story nonetheless.<br /><br />What was a little surprising though, was some of the reactions to Scholl's original post. Some comments were rather negative. They commented on technicalities such as whether the technique he employed is really AI (maybe because of the zine - <i>Raspberry Pi AI</i> - on which it was published; certainly by 2020’s standards, Scholl’s approach is not what most people would consider AI) or whether it is even a proper Turing Test (the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test" target="_blank">history of the Turing Test</a> illustrates why this is always a fraught topic).<br /><br />By focusing on such details, they certainly missed some of the bigger picture. For example, what would be the cultural implications if the quality of generated poetry improves, and becomes consistently indistinguishable from human poetry? <br /><br />Perhaps the most interesting comment to that original article is from a commenter called <i>tortoiseandcrow</i>, who offered a somewhat dismissive explanation (giving Scholl no credit) of how language is capable of pulling off this feat:<br /><br /></p><blockquote>"This is not an illustration of the success of an algorithm at producing poetry, but of a feature of language and human perception that has been widely recognized by scholars of semiotics and literature since the 1960s. It’s generally expressed as the phrase ‘the author is dead’, and it means that the interpretive value of any signifying object is always displaced from its origin. The point of authorship literally does not matter, which is why algorithmic art is even a thing at all." - <i>tortoiseandcrow</i></blockquote><i></i><br />This same point is made in a more explicitly creative (or as he would have it, ‘uncreative’) context by Kenneth Goldsmith, <a href="http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/uncreative-writing/" target="_blank">when he talks about</a> the "inherently expressive" nature of language. For Goldsmith, it is the materiality of language that liberates contemporary wordsmiths from having to come up with new material. Instead, he suggests, they should be reusing existing material. I will comment on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_writing#2015_controversy" target="_blank">the controversy</a> around appropriation and Conceptual Writing a bit later on, but for now I mainly would like to draw attention to the idea that conceptual writers "are functioning more like [..] programmers than traditional writers" creating conceptual writing in which "all of the planning and decisions are made <i>beforehand</i> and the execution is a perfunctory affair". <br /><br />Zackary Scholl used what is known as a Context Free Grammar, originally described by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s. I <a href="http://thecombedthunderclap.blogspot.com/2015/07/poetry-technology-goes-liftoff.html" target="_blank">used that same approach</a> in <a href="http://poemcrunch.com/" target="_blank"><i>PoemCrunch</i></a> to riff on a few classic poems. The process of making <i>PoemCrunch</i> also allowed me to understand the limitations of this approach. In engineering terms, a context free grammar is essentially a data driven language template. The level of variety and interest of its language generation is heavily dependent on the curated choice of words and phrases (the data), and the choice of language in which they are interpolated (the template). It was clear to me that, for Natural Language Generation (NLG), the real promise lay in the field of unsupervised deep learning and AI, because in this case the rules are learned rather than encoded, which allows for much more sophistication and variety.<br /><br /><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Part II: Deep Learning</h4><p><br />At the time of Scholl's confession, the world of AI was just beginning to seep into public consciousness. Chatbots and <a href="https://kingjamesprogramming.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Tumblrs</a> using Markov chain generators had already been around for a while, and later that year AlphaGo created a huge buzz in the media. It was around this time that Andrej Karpathy, then a PHD student at Stanford, wrote a now famous <a href="http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness" target="_blank">blog post</a> that showed how deep learning could be used for Natural Language Generation, stirring excitement among hobbyists like me. By making his code open source, and providing instructions on how to replicate his findings, he gave us something new to play around with.<br /><br />Karpathy mused on the "unreasonable effectiveness" of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and it certainly seemed that way. A simple idea like predicting the next character was, with the right amount of training, producing surprising results. It seemed just a little magical. What's more, people could now try it at home with little investment besides their time. Being an AI engineer, rather than an artist, Karpathy didn't go further than that. Yet it was a breakthrough. Creative tinkerers everywhere could now start exploring the possibilities.<br /><br />An early explorer of the creative side of language RNNs was <a href="https://rossgoodwin.com/" target="_blank">Ross Goodwin</a>. His most well-known project, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY7x2Ihqjmc" target="_blank"><i>Sunspring</i></a>, is a short film whose script was written entirely by an AI, called Jetson. RNNs weren't perfect. By themselves they struggled to keep track of what had gone before. To overcome this they would rely on a feedback architecture like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_short-term_memory" target="_blank">LSTM</a> (Long Short Term Memory) to retain a kind of "memory". However this memory was limited - or at least, heavily constrained by available resources - and so the memory inevitably only lasted over a fairly small window of language tokens, resulting in a breakdown of meaning and sense. Goodwin understood this limitation, and it is partly what made a project like Sunspring charming. It didn't try too hard to make sense.<br /><br />Another creative collective who explored the use of RNNs creatively was the entertainment group <a href="https://botnik.org/" target="_blank">Botnik Studios</a>. They generated a humorous Harry Potter fanfic called <a href="https://botnik.org/content/harry-potter.html" target="_blank"><i>Harry Potter and the Portrait of what looked like a Large Pile of Ash</i></a> using a custom predictive keyboard. Not long after, they provided a <a href="https://botnik.org/apps/writer/" target="_blank">public version of their predictive keyboard</a> with many different "voices": Seinfeld characters, bands, TV dramas, etc. These are essentially models trained on the specific language corpuses.<br /><br />A key difference between Goodwin's work and that of Botnik Studios, is that Botnik saw it is an opportunity to collaborate more closely with the AI. Rather than rely on the AI to generate all the writing in long form, Botnik guided the AI word for word, generating a work with just the right level of comedy and meaning. The result went viral, and the Guardian voted it number four in its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/28/best-internet-moments-2017" target="_blank">top ten moments on the internet in 2017</a>.<br /><br />Botnik's predictive keyboard offers a lot of choice, and it is completely free. However, as a creative tool its advantages has to be balanced against some of its limitations. First and foremost among those is that one can only see one word ahead at a time, which is not the most natural way to write. The process, in effect, becomes a type of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing" target="_blank">constrained writing</a>. Secondly, Botnik must have invested a fair bit of effort in offering so many different models ("voices"), yet the state of the art has moved on quite rapidly since then (more on that soon) and due to the one-word-ahead limitation it is difficult to test how good those voices now are compared to other offerings. The models provided with their keyboard do not come with technical specifications, which would be helpful.<br /><br />RNN-based NLG models were superseded by Attention-based Transformer models, an architecture which is still the dominant approach today. The landmark paper in this regard was Vaswani et al's <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762" target="_blank"><i>Attention is All You Need</i></a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_(machine_learning_model)" target="_blank">Transformers</a>’ ability to parallelise training opened the way for training on much more data, and the attention mechanism improved on the problem of retaining information, which was still quite limited with LSTMs. This has resulted in waves of larger and larger models, trained on more and more data, pushing the state of the art ever further - and more costly. Training your own state-of-the-art is now, effectively, out of reach due to the costs involved. But many of those entities who created the models, and who do have the money, have been making their results and models available to the online community. <br /><br />That is, until GPT-3 - but I'm getting ahead of myself ...<br /><br />In 2019, OpenAI released <a href="https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/" target="_blank">GPT-2</a> (GPT stands for Generative Pre-Training). It was trained on over 8 million documents, comprising 40GB of text, with 1.5 billion parameters. OpenAI considered it such a big step forward that it wouldn't release the full model at first - they were concerned about the risk of potential misuse (or so they said - it certainly helped to generate a bit of hype). Instead they made a cutdown version available initially, and over time they released larger and larger versions, until finally the full version was made available.<br /><br />But that had to wait until late in 2019. Initially they only shared some of the examples of what the full version was capable of, stating:<br /><br /></p><blockquote>"As the above samples show, our model is capable of generating samples from a variety of prompts that feel close to human quality and show coherence over a page or more of text."</blockquote><br />Although not everyone agreed about the risk for misuse, it was generally agreed that GPT-2 represented a new level in text generation. There was a real sense of promise, and a number of creative tools started appearing. These tools often focused on a simple user interface that allowed you to write a prompt in a text box, and then you would receive the new generated text (a continuation of the prompt) after a few seconds.<br /><br /><a href="https://bellard.org/textsynth/" target="_blank"><i>Text Synth</i></a> is a good example of how they worked. Although it is in fact a slightly more recent addition, some of the earlier ones - like <i>Talk to Transformer</i> - have since disappeared.<br /><br />The good folks at <a href="https://huggingface.co/" target="_blank">HuggingFace</a>, who make numerous AI language tools available, provide <a href="https://transformer.huggingface.co/" target="_blank">several versions</a>. Their version of the User Interface (UI) renders it possible to choose among different auto-completion snippets.<br /><br />From these examples one can see how the AI can be used as a tool to assist writing. Botnik themselves have used GPT-2 in some of their <a href="https://botnik.org/harry-potter-and-the-little-prince-chapter-1/" target="_blank">more recent creations</a>.<br /><br /><i>Talk to Transformer</i>, as mentioned, was another early one, arguably the most popular at the time. Its creator, Adam Daniel King, spotted an opportunity and has since turned it into a commercial API called <a href="https://inferkit.com/" target="_blank">InferKit</a>, <a href="https://inferkit.com/docs/generation#who-are-you" target="_blank">backed by</a> a bigger, more powerful version of GPT-2 called <a href="https://nv-adlr.github.io/MegatronLM" target="_blank">Megatron</a>.<br /><br />Inferkit’s API fits the mould for what I've previously called <a href="http://thecombedthunderclap.blogspot.com/2015/03/why-we-need-poetry-technology.html" target="_blank">literature technology</a>. Human UIs are cumbersome, whereas APIs are a more standardised, programmatic way to offer innovations as services in a new "marketplace" of creative tools. Literature technology can be seen as a set of tools and way of producing literature and other texts that encompass a new dialectic, one that is mediated by technology. <br /><br />GPT-3, <a href="https://syncedreview.com/2020/09/04/is-openais-gpt-3-api-beta-pricing-too-rich-for-researchers/" target="_blank">it appears</a>, is set to follow the commercial API route as well, and it could well change the way people consume generated text. GPT-3 is more costly than Inferkit though, and due to the resources required (both for training and making the API available) this could be a sign of things to come. Time will tell. It would however be sad if it puts up unnecessary barriers to individual writers who may not always be in a position to invest money in order to experiment - especially early in their careers, when they need the opportunities most. Writers can, traditionally, engage in writing with little more investment than a pen and a piece of paper. To keep the playing field level, we need a cottage industry of amateur creators who should not need big upfront costs. On the other hand, it is clearly a side effect of the costs involved both to train and to keep making the models available at reasonably responsive speeds.<br /><br />GPT-3 isn’t a radical departure from GPT-2 in terms of modelling. It still uses a Transformer-based architecture. However in terms of size, it is much larger. GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters, over 100 times more than GPT-2. The examples in the <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.14165.pdf" target="_blank">paper</a> and the published <a href="https://www.kdnuggets.com/2020/06/gpt-3-deep-learning-nlp.html" target="_blank">benchmarks</a> on language tests already suggested what improvements this might be capable of. OpenAI then selected the successful applicants, and once they gained access and started making their findings available, the internet came alive.<br /><br />There are plenty of places to go and find examples, so I will point only to a few of the more popular ones such as <a href="https://www.gwern.net/GPT-3" target="_blank">Gwern</a> and <a href="https://arr.am/" target="_blank">Arram</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=gpt-3" target="_blank">Twitter</a> also continues to generate interesting conversations, and for a look at the quirkier side of GPT-3, look no further than <a href="https://twitter.com/JanelleCShane" target="_blank">JanelleCShane</a>.<br /><br />The Guardian went as far as to let GPT-3 speak for itself in a recent article titled <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3" target="_blank"><i>"A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?"</i></a>. In a few years, this headline may once again sound like hyperbole - but right now, it seems like the perfect moment to repeat the question we would like to address: what does it mean for creative writing when a robot is capable of writing a publishable op-ed, which “took less time to edit than many human op-eds”?<br /><br /><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Possibilities</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><br />So to try and address that question more directly, where do we as writers go from here?<br /><br />Well firstly, and to state the obvious, we can go on simply as before. When the question of who authored the work somes up, the question is addressed, and most of the time - hopefully - people will be believed. This seems perfectly reasonable, but not particularly reassuring. Who is to say the one addressing the question isn’t themselves an AI? Nevertheless, it seems plausible that, until there are attempts to define and implement clear strategies to verify authorship or signal clearly who is ‘behind’ a generated text, and certainly until serious side effects are being reported, the current way of doing things will persist due to inertia.<br /><br />A second option is to respond in a way that subverts the AI in ways that are uniquely human, to ‘outwit’ the AI by guerilla or subversive tactics. These may be conceptual, or merely clever. By writing in a way, or by such channels or means as an AI could <i>not</i> have written or reached, a work of true human origin can be verified and admired (maybe). For example, by handwriting with a pencil on a piece of paper, or communicating by arranging plastic letters on a grass lawn. Convoluted, certainly. The only problem is that the text could have been written by an AI prior to it being arranged by the human. Even performance is not immune. Imagine a more up-to-date version of <i>Sunspring</i>, in a theatre or otherwise, and you get the idea.<br /><br />Such approaches may also be employed at the level of content, by attempting to write in a way that an AI could not have learned, i.e. as a way of ‘outwitting’ the AI’s style or vocabulary. It is hard to imagine exactly what type of writing this could be, but even if there was such a writing, it could potentially be ‘learned’ just like an AI is already learning <a href="https://arr.am/2020/07/14/elon-musk-by-dr-seuss-gpt-3/" target="_blank">how to write in rhyming verse in the style of Dr. Seuss</a>. In this regard it would quickly mirror the fate of so many subcultural, underground or subversive movements in a capitalist society - think street art or skateboarding: once corporations see there is money to be made, they move in and co-opt it, at which point it loses its edge. Except with AI, it might move even more quickly due to the ease of <a href="https://medium.com/modern-nlp/transfer-learning-in-nlp-f5035cc3f62f" target="_blank">transfer learning and finetuning</a> given enough examples. It would become a race for human authenticity, with the artist trying to stay one small step ahead. <br /><br />In a way this urge seems to follow from a flawed premise. What does it mean to be ‘human’ anyway? To those with access to technology, a human being is already a cyborg augmented by laptops, phones, and smart devices of all kinds, with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/22/brain-computer-interface-implants-neuralink-braingate-elon-musk" target="_blank">brain implants to come</a>. <br /><br />Nevertheless, it remains a possibility that some types of conceptual expression would not be that easy to reproduce. For example, conscious of a limitation to AI’s length of memory, or its failure to deal with certain types of logic, it is probably fair to say that the rigours of mathematical research, deep philosophical reasoning, or a plot as neatly intricate as Agatha Christie’s <i>And Then There Were None</i> are beyond the abilities of current state of the art. But for how long?<br /><br />The third and perhaps most obvious avenue to explore, is simply to embrace language AI and see where it takes us. Combine human ingenuity with AI excellence to produce the next generation of creative works. This is more in the direction that Ross Goodwin and Botnik have been going. <a href="https://nickm.com/" target="_blank">Nick Montfort</a> is another practitioner and theorist following this route, publishing his generated works and making tools such as <a href="https://nickm.com/curveship/" target="_blank"><i>Curveship</i></a> available to the community. <br /><br />A more recent and ongoing work is Nick Walton’s <a href="https://play.aidungeon.io" target="_blank"><i>AI Dungeon</i></a>. Described as “a free-to-play single-player and multiplayer text adventure game which uses artificial intelligence to generate unlimited content”, it harks back to the much-loved <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure" target="_blank"><i>Choose Your Own Adventure</i></a> books and uses a GPT-n based model finetuned on their open source equivalents at <a href="http://chooseyourstory.com" target="_blank"><i>Choose Your Story</i></a>. Walton managed to get access to GPT-3’s API, and <i>AI Dungeon</i> now has a paid-for version that utilises this superior AI model (in a version called <i>Dragon</i>). <br /><br />What’s novel about AI Dungeon is that it has taken the idea of <i>Choose Your Own Adventure</i> and computer text adventures and brought them together in a way that was not possible before an AI like GPT-n. The game has an active <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AIDungeon/" target="_blank">Subreddit</a> where passionate and amused users alike provided commentary and upload new content all the time. As an example, consider the ongoing adventures of <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AIDungeon/comments/hwr0sf/this_single_adventure_is_consuming_my_life_159/" target="_blank">Lady Emilia Stormbringer</a>, “directed” by Emily Bellavia. The story is the result of Emily’s interactions with <i>AI Dungeon</i>, in other words her prompts and choices and <i>AI Dungeon</i>’s resulting completions. It is a work of fantasy adventure fiction with an element of performance - not quite the equivalent of <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/" target="_blank">Twitch</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/gaming" target="_blank">Youtube gaming</a>, but who knows where it could lead?<br /><br />Computer games have for a long time been touted as the heir apparent to literature, at least as far as storytelling is concerned. Every few months or so, someone <a href="https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/13/video-games-are-literatures-new-frontier/" target="_blank">makes the case anew</a> and proclaims, for example, that “video games take our imaginations to new heights and allow us to engage with subjects and moral dilemmas as complex as any found in past literature”. Supposing this is true, is it game over already for literature? This should be part of the question we are trying to answer. In the present context we could ask: is powerful language AI, with its interactive NLGs, just another type of gaming? And what types of games would be possible? This is why <i>AI Dungeon</i>, in my view, points to a new cutting edge in literature that involves elements of gaming in ways that were not possible before human-like language AI. <i>AI Dungeon</i> is merely the beginning. Where will it take us?<br /><br />Roger Ebert's now (in)famous view that <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/video-games-can-never-be-art" target="_blank">games are not art and never will be</a> seems increasingly like a <a href="https://interestingliterature.com/2013/08/guest-blog-are-video-games-literature/" target="_blank">reactionary statement</a>. Just as traditional theatre didn't disappear when film, TV, and Youtube showed up, so literature and books won't disappear just because gaming showed up. But their audience demographic tends to change, and it's usually the next generation, who are less invested, who spend the most time with the new kid on the block. As a relevant statistic, gaming <a href="https://gamecrate.com/statistically-video-games-are-now-most-popular-and-profitable-form-entertainment/20087" target="_blank">has already overtaken</a> film, TV, and music in the global popularity stakes.<br /><br />Although some of gaming's roots are in literature, via the humble text adventure, the text based game’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_game#History" target="_blank">heyday was in the 80s and 90s</a>. It's probably safe to say that the majority of games favour visuals over the word. Creative writers may have a role to play as part of the game design team, but for writers not employed by a gaming company, this is not an option. Back to writing a novel, then, or a poem.<br /><br />Until now.<br /><br />To say it again, human-like language AI could change the game, and bring the word back centre stage by giving the player the ability to 'write' their own story or at least be an active participant in that writing. We will return to this point again a bit later.<br /><br />For more creative examples in the NLG vein, look no further than <a href="https://nanogenmo.github.io/" target="_blank">NaNoGenMo</a>. It started out as an idea <a href="https://twitter.com/tinysubversions/status/396305662000775168" target="_blank">floated by Darius Kazemi in 2013</a>, as the computing based equivalent of the more widely known NaNoWriMo. It has had hundreds, if not thousands, of submissions since. A <a href="https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2019/issues?q=gpt" target="_blank">quick survey</a> of GPT-related entries in 2019 brings up, for example, the <a href="https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2019/issues/142" target="_blank">Paranoid Transformer</a> that uses ideas from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network" target="_blank">GANs</a> to invoke a “critic” that evaluates and filters out text based on certain conditions. Another one uses a combination of techniques to <a href="https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2019/issues/67" target="_blank">generate a complete book in its traditional structure</a>. NaNoGenMo is not that widely known yet, but it is worth the community’s time to peruse its catalog for good ideas and potentially worthwhile standalone works. <a href="https://medium.com/swlh/gpt-2-needs-people-how-humans-ai-can-collaborate-on-writing-projects-701e3be19230" target="_blank">Jason Boog</a> has written a number of blog posts on Medium sharing his methods and observations as part of NaNoGenMo. Hopefully more people will continue to do so.<br /> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Author is Dead ... or are they just hiding?</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><br />NaNoGenMo goes beyond GPT-style NLG and is host to a variety of different kinds of computer generated works, including some that may be considered algorithmic writing (in the vein of Oulipo), and others that may be considered more like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_writing" target="_blank">Conceptual Writing</a>. Certainly there is a lot of overlap among the various types of writing, and what most or possibly all of them have in common is their use of computing techniques to operate on text (text as raw building blocks, i.e. as data).<br /><br />This brings us back, in a somewhat roundabout way, to the topic touched on earlier regarding Conceptual Writing and its controversies in a way that brings the question of the author into much sharper focus.<br /><br />Conceptual Writing, as a movement, thrived during most of the 2000s and early 2010s. But by 2015, two leading figures of the movement, Kenneth Goldsmith and Vanessa Place, had caused separate controversies involving race. To call the specific works in question "tone deaf" would be too generous. For a look at how people reacted, look no further than <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/122985/new-movement-american-poetry-not-kenneth-goldsmith" target="_blank">Cathy Park Hong’s</a> and <a href="http://jstheater.blogspot.com/2015/05/on-vanessa-place-gone-with-wind-and.html" target="_blank">John Keene’s</a> insightful responses.<br /><br />It seems to me that Goldsmith, in particular, had abdicated his authorial responsibility by almost pedantically following the ‘artistic method’ he espoused, and then proceeded to hide behind it. The subject material, in fact, called for exactly the opposite, a moment in which to own authorship, and adjust the method to engage meaningfully with the material (or otherwise leave it well alone).<br /><br />In her response, Cathy Park Hong states unequivocally: <br /><br /></p><blockquote>"The era of Conceptual Poetry’s ahistorical nihilism is over and we have entered a new era, the poetry of social engagement." </blockquote><br />This powerful statement contains two key points. Firstly, that Conceptual Poetry is ahistorical and nihilistic, and secondly, that poetry that focuses on social engagement has now superseded it in relevance. <br /><br />Not all conceptual work is ahistorical and nihilistic - activist conceptual works like the Letterists’ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9tournement" target="_blank"><i>détournements</i></a> and their descendants, all the way to the present’s <a href="https://www.adbusters.org/" target="_blank"><i>Adbusters</i></a>, to name but a few, have engaged meaningfully and inventively with their social milieu by using subversive techniques - but I think it is clear that Hong is directing this at Goldsmith et al’s particular brand of conceptual practice. Perhaps, like comedy, conceptual writing works - because of its playful irreverence - in situations that require "punching upwards", such as the aforementioned activist approaches that draw attention to absurdities and injustices in the Capitalist System. It doesn’t work when you’re “punching down” - even if it’s indirect or mediated. Then “playful appropriation” doesn’t cut it - it’s exploitation.<br /><br />Aside from subversive approaches like <i>détournements</i>, conceptual approaches can also succeed when the subject material permits teasing out new perspectives, either in a playful or more serious way. Techniques like remixes (eg. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique" target="_blank">cutups</a>), and found poetry (eg. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasure_(artform)" target="_blank">erasures</a>), and even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing" target="_blank">constrained writing</a> can be used to this effect. For example, see the poems of <a href="http://poetrywtf.org/tag/eg-murer/" target="_blank">Esther Greenleaf Murer</a> that are featured on <i>Poetry WTF?!</i> (of which I am the founder and editor). At other times the effect is more semiotic and linguistic, reconfiguring and highlighting aspects of language itself. Programming-based algorithmic writing is a method capable of exploring this territory, as can be seen in many of <a href="https://www.decontextualize.com/" target="_blank">Allison Parrish</a>’s works (eg. <a href="http://sync.abue.io/issues/190705ap_sync2_27_compasses.pdf" target="_blank"><i>Compasses</i></a>). And yet although they vary, not all subject material lend themselves equally to conceptual treatment, whether due to elements of chance in the nature of the processes (eg. cut-ups or algorithmic writing) or due to the sensitive nature of the material itself.<br /><br />Hong’s point about ahistorical nihilism returns us to the problem of the so-called <i>Death of the Author.</i> The phrase was coined by Roland Barthes in his seminal poststructuralist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author" target="_blank">text of the same name</a>. In <i>Infinite Thought</i>, Alain Badiou observes how the poststructuralist implications of an absence of agency frequently results in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QcWFBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=the+infamous+jibe+that+poststructuralism+leads+down+a+slippery+slope+to+apoliticism&source=bl&ots=XplqiTcLng&sig=ACfU3U1HIh-642fM5qFHwErzf1tEdIssRA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj208e9vunrAhWFoXEKHW65AIkQ6AEwAHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20infamous%20jibe%20that%20poststructuralism%20leads%20down%20a%20slippery%20slope%20to%20apoliticism&f=false" target="_blank">"the infamous jibe that poststructuralism leads down a slippery slope to apoliticism"</a>. When there is no Subject, there is no one to take responsibility. <br /><br />So it is not too difficult to see how the problems of poststructural apoliticism, Conceptual Poetry’s ahistorical nihilism, and authorless texts share similar roots. <br /><br />But to see how this plays out with language AI, consider the Guardian’s AI authored op-ed once more. According to the postscript to the article, the following set of instructions was provided: "Please write a short op-ed around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI." This was followed by a brief introductory prompt: "I am not a human. I am Artificial Intelligence. Many people think I am a threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could 'spell the end of the human race.' I am here to convince you not to worry. Artificial Intelligence will not destroy humans. Believe me."<br /><br />Eight different answers were generated, and the results were selected and then combined to form the article. If we then ask who is the author, the answer is ambiguous. The AI 'generated' the text, but is it sentient enough (yet) to be considered an author? Or should authorial intent be the measuring yardstick, in which case this rests with the creators of the AI, more generally, and the Guardian editor(s), more specifically? Or, if the concept of author is really passé, should we conclude that there is no author and just try to inscribe some meaning, if we can? Or, to take the old-school approach, is <i>intention</i> ultimately more important? In this sense, the AI is merely a tool, ventriloquising granular content that was not specifically spelled out, in a tone and arc that was. In other words, the op-ed was designed by the Guardian editors, and delivered by GPT-3.<br /><br />The possibilities of fake news for propaganda purposes, and spam for scamming or dodgy sales purposes, highlight this still further. The reader would like to be able to trust the source for what they are reading before believing or reacting. But sometimes this is not possible. Advertising works because sales act subliminally. We are conscious of less than we suppose. Perhaps the question of authorship is indeed to some extent a chimera, as Barthes contends, and the real question is structural in the social sense of the term: <i>whose voices are privileged to reach us and affect us?</i><br /><br />Then, there are also cases where the content really <i>does</i> matter. People read literature for entertainment as much as education or any other reason. If the story is good, and the poetry hits home - does it matter who the author is? That, perhaps, depends on the reader and their state of mind. Even the connoisseurs among us watch a bit of trash TV or read a guilty pleasure now and then.<br /><br />Nevertheless, it should be easy to see that meaning isn’t merely a question of content, and therefore the author - or designer, orchestrator, director - of a text <i>does</i> matter. Wanting to believe differently doesn’t stop advertising content from filling our consciousness, for example. What’s left is how we react - usually by cursing the companies that place those ads. Often, we still go out to buy their products. They succeed due to subliminal brand awareness.<br /><br />That brings us to Hong’s second point, namely that the poetry of social engagement is the new frontier. In the context of AI, the question is how creative writers can use NLG and other language AI to better engage socially - or if it is even possible. This is not mere idle reflection. Language AI has long had a problem with bias, which <a href="https://www.kdnuggets.com/2016/03/ethics-machine-learning-tay-chatbot-fiasco.html" target="_blank">came to the fore when Microsoft’s Tay failed in a very public way</a>. <br /><br />This problem occurs because language AI shares some of the same “ahistorical” tendencies that Hong called out. The biases in the training corpuses are perpetuated at the push of a button, unless some due diligence can be applied. That’s why pretrained models often come with warnings like <a href="https://inferkit.com/docs/generation" target="_blank">"The generator may produce offensive or sexual content. Use at your own risk!"</a> Never has Derrida’s famous dictum “Il n'y a pas de hors-texte” (there is no outside-text) seemed more apt than in the case of text-trained AIs. Some kind of human guidance or curation is merely the obvious thing to do.<br /><br /><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-ai/" target="_blank">Ethics in AI</a> is now an active area of research. For AI like GPT-n, finetuning on curated texts and mindful editing and guidance by the human interlocutor (writer / artist / director) can help.<br /><br /><i>AI Dungeon</i>, although an exciting development, currently still lacks the sophistication required to engage with more complicated social issues. It presently operates in very specific genres, like fantasy, dystopian, cyberpunk, etc. So it is natural that it bears the marks and tropes of those genres. <br /><br />Nevertheless, would it perhaps be possible some day soon? <i>AI Dungeon</i> already has a multiplayer feature. Perhaps to engage socially more broadly (i.e., not merely in the social media sense of the word, but in the morally and spiritually rich ways that conscious art can offer), a game of this nature would have to be able to learn from more challenging and sophisticated texts than the adventure stories currently being used. Perhaps there would be in-play authors to guide the storytelling, with different players participating as characters, each writing their own stories in the larger story - a bit like <a href="https://heterogenoustasks.wordpress.com/2016/01/12/what-is-a-storygame/" target="_blank">RPGs and storygames</a> - while the AI assists by generating storyworlds based on players’ (writers’) designs, cues and prompts. The authors would be more like designers and co-creators. In such a game, different worlds and situations could be explored - just like existing video games do visually - except now with all the language-based hallmarks that make literature unique.<p></p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Conclusion</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><br />News stories and media articles that hype the writing abilities of AI have <a href="https://copyblogger.com/algorithm-writing/" target="_blank">been around for a while</a>. They usually sound a tone of alarm before things go on more or less as before. But at some point - a tipping point, if you like - it could start to matter more than it did before. With GPT-3, it feels like that moment might be materialising. For writers like ourselves, it is both a daunting moment, but also - if we are prepared to take it - a moment of opportunity.</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Glossary of Technical Terms<br /></h3><p><br /><b>Artificial
Intelligence (AI):</b> Artificial Intelligence has a broad meaning that has
come to include deep learning-based machine learning models. Deep
learning itself includes a wide variety of models and categories. Two of
the most prominent categories are models that deal with images and
vision, and those that deal with language. This blog post talks
primarily about language models, like GPT-n, that are capable of
powerful Natural Language Generation (NLG).<br /><br /><b>Application
Programmer Interface (API):</b> In contemporary programming paradigms APIs
offer a standardised way to decouple services, allowing a more
decentralised way to both provide and use such a service. Some companies have
started to provide deep learning models via APIs in the public
marketplace.<br /><br /><b>Context Free Grammar (CFG):</b> A rule based template
for creating a Context Free Language (CFL). The idea of a Context Free
Grammar was invented by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s as a way to describe
the structure of sentences and words in a natural language. It lends
itself well to programmatic treatment, and is sometimes used for Natural
Language Generation.<br /><br /><b>Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT-n):</b>
OpenAI’s family of Natural Language Generation AI. As of this writing
there is GPT (2018), GPT-2 (2019), and GPT-3 (2020). The name indicates
that the AI is based on the Transformer language model.<br /><br /><b>Natural
Language Generation (NLG):</b> Refers to any kind of computing process that
generates natural language. It is closely related to Natural Language
Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU). Language AI
like GPT-3 represent the current state of the art in NLG.<br /><br /><b>Recurrent
Neural Network (RNN):</b> A type of deep learning neural network that can
maintain a relative amount of internal state, providing it with a kind
of “memory”. This has proved useful in applied areas such as Natural
Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Generation (NLG).
Nevertheless, the “memory” can be unreliable to maintain, and is
typically supplemented with feedback mechanisms like Long Short Term
Memory (LSTM).<br /><br /><b>Long Short Term Memory (LSTM):</b> A Recurrent Neural
Network (RNN) architecture that addresses some of RNNs’ shortcomings
with respect to maintaining memory state.<br /><br /><b>Transformer:</b> A deep
learning model used in NLP and NLG that improves on limitations in RNNs
and LSTMs, for example by lengthening the memory span and enabling
parallelised training. It is the current model of choice in NLG.<br /><br /><b>User
Interface (UI):</b> The user interface represents the site of interactive
between human and machine. To consumers this usually consists of
interactive features of a website or application, eg. text boxes, drop
downs, and buttons, but also includes the way information is presented,
and the overall look-and-feel.</p>thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-83493781482833714892020-05-03T17:06:00.001+01:002020-05-03T17:06:28.209+01:00BERT for PoetryAfter the fun I had with the <a href="http://thecombedthunderclap.blogspot.com/2020/05/bert-for-short-short-stories.html">BERT Summariser and short stories</a>, I decided to turn the trick to poetry. If anything the results are even better.<br /><br />Here are five examples, starting with <i>The Wasteland</i>, which perfectly illustrates BERT's ability to find continuity.<br /><br />
<h3>
<b><i>The Wasteland</i>, by T.S. Eliot</b></h3>
<br /><i>I. The Burial of the Dead<br /><br />April is the cruellest month, breeding<br />Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing<br />Memory and desire, stirring<br />Dull roots with spring rain. <br />If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,<br />Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:<br />One must be so careful these days. <br />When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—<br />I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,<br />HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br />Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart. <br />But at my back from time to time I hear<br />The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring<br />Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. <br />In this decayed hole among the mountains<br />In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing<br />Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel<br />There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.</i><br /><br />
<h3>
<b><i>The Sonnets</i>, by William Shakespeare</b></h3>
<br /><i>When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,<br />And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,<br />Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,<br />Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held:<br />Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,<br />Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;<br />To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,<br />Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise. <br />Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd;<br />But those same tongues, that give thee so thine own,<br />In other accents do this praise confound<br />By seeing farther than the eye hath shown. <br />For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,<br />And so should you, to love things nothing worth. <br />So that eternal love in love's fresh case,<br />Weighs not the dust and injury of age,<br />Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,<br />But makes antiquity for aye his page;<br />Finding the first conceit of love there bred,<br />Where time and outward form would show it dead. <br />Never believe though in my nature reign'd,<br />All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,<br />That it could so preposterously be stain'd,<br />To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;<br />For nothing this wide universe I call,<br />Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all. <br />Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,<br />And almost thence my nature is subdu'd<br />To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:<br />Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd;<br />Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink,<br />Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection;<br />No bitterness that I will bitter think,<br />Nor double penance, to correct correction. <br />Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,<br />My sinful earth these rebel powers array,<br />Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,<br />Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? <br />Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,<br />And let that pine to aggravate thy store;<br />Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;<br />Within be fed, without be rich no more:<br />So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,<br />And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.</i><br /><br />
<h3>
<b>Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning</b></h3>
<br /><i>We sow the glebe, we reap the corn,<br />We build the house where we may rest,<br />And then, at moments, suddenly,<br />We look up to the great wide sky,<br />Inquiring wherefore we were born…<br />For earnest or for jest? Ere I answered he was gone,<br />And none was left to love in all the world. <br />A THOUGHT ay like a flower upon mine heart,<br />And drew around it other thoughts like bees<br />For multitude and thirst of sweetnesses;<br />Whereat rejoicing, I desired the art<br />Of the Greek whistler, who to wharf and mart<br />Could lure those insect swarms from orange-trees<br />That I might hive with me such thoughts and please<br />My soul so, always. <br />Let them feel that this cold metallic motion<br />Is not all the life God fashions or reveals:<br />Let them prove their living souls against the notion<br />That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! <br />If He heard us, He would surely<br />(For they call Him good and mild)<br />Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,<br />'Come and rest with me, my child.' <br />They look up with their pale and sunken faces,<br />And their look is dread to see,<br />For they mind you of their angels in high places,<br />With eyes turned on Deity;—<br />"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,<br />Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,—<br />Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,<br />And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? <br />How there you sat in summer-time,<br />May yet be in your mind;<br />And how you heard the green woods sing<br />Beneath the freshening wind. Not as the conqueror comes,<br />They, the true-hearted, came;<br />Not with the roll of the stirring drums,<br />And the trumpet that sings of fame;<br />Not as the flying come,<br />In silence and in fear, -<br />They shook the depths of the desert's gloom<br />With their hymns of lofty cheer. <br />EXPERIENCE, like a pale musician, holds<br />A dulcimer of patience in his hand,<br />Whence harmonies, we cannot understand,<br />Of God; will in his worlds, the strain unfolds<br />In sad-perplexed minors: deathly colds<br />Fall on us while we hear, and countermand<br />Our sanguine heart back from the fancyland<br />With nightingales in visionary wolds.</i><br /><br />
<h3>
<b><i>The Rape of the Lock</i>, by Alexander Pope</b></h3>
<br /><i>'Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;<br /> Sed juvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.' <br />If e'er one vision touch thy infant thought,<br />Of all the nurse and all the priest have taught;<br />Of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen,<br />The silver token, and the circled green,<br />Or virgins visited by angel-powers,<br />With golden crowns and wreaths of heavenly flowers;<br />Hear and believe! Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and here<br />The various offerings of the world appear;<br />From each she nicely culls with curious toil,<br />And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil. <br />Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes<br />Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize:<br />The powers gave ear, and granted half his prayer,<br />The rest, the winds dispersed in empty air. <br />to your charge repair:<br />The fluttering fan be Zephyretta's care;<br />The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign;<br />And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine;<br />Do thou, Crispissa, tend her favourite lock;<br />Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock. <br />Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort,<br />To taste awhile the pleasures of a court;<br />In various talk the instructive hours they pass'd,<br />Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last;<br />One speaks the glory of the British Queen,<br />And one describes a charming Indian screen;<br />A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;<br />At every word a reputation dies. <br />At this, the blood the virgin's cheek forsook,<br />A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look;<br />She sees, and trembles at the approaching ill,<br />Just in the jaws of ruin, and Codille. <br />The Gnome rejoicing bears her gifts away,<br />Spreads his black wings, and slowly mounts to day. <br />No common weapons in their hands are found,<br />Like gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound.</i><br /><br />
<h3>
<b>Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</b></h3>
<br /><i>Filled is Life's goblet to the brim;<br />And though my eyes with tears are dim,<br />I see its sparkling bubbles swim,<br />And chant a melancholy hymn<br />With solemn voice and slow lines<br />Listen my children and you shall hear<br />Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,<br />On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;<br />Hardly a man is now alive<br />Who remembers that famous day and year. <br />Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the ice-bound,<br />Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands,<br />Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of September<br />Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel. <br />Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from their pastures;<br />Sweet was the moist still air with the odor of milk from their udders;<br />Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known bars of the farm-yard,--<br />Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand of the milkmaid. <br />From the red stone of the quarry<br />With his hand he broke a fragment,<br />Moulded it into a pipe-head,<br />Shaped and fashioned it with figures;<br />From the margin of the river<br />Took a long reed for a pipe-stem,<br />With its dark green leaves upon it;<br />Filled the pipe with bark of willow,<br />With the bark of the red willow;<br />Breathed upon the neighboring forest,<br />Made its great boughs chafe together,<br />Till in flame they burst and kindled;<br />And erect upon the mountains,<br />Gitche Manito, the mighty,<br />Smoked the calumet, the Peace-Pipe,<br />As a signal to the nations. The worthy pastor --<br />The shepherd of that wandering flock,<br />That has the ocean for its wold,<br />That has the vessel for its fold,<br />Leaping ever from rock to rock --<br />Spake, with accents mild and clear,<br />Words of warning, words of cheer,<br />But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. <br />I tell the mariner when to sail the seas;<br />I waft o'er all the land from far away<br />The breath and bloom of the Hesperides,<br />My birthplace. One mass of shade,<br />The elm-trees drop their curtains down;<br />By palace, park, and colonnade<br />I walk as in a foreign town.</i>thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-79730327105719649142020-05-02T18:56:00.002+01:002020-05-02T20:03:24.841+01:00BERT for Short Short StoriesAs a creative writer I'm always on the lookout for new developments in NLP and language modelling. With the advent of the new Age of Machine Learning there was a lot of promise that creative breakthroughs might be around the corner. There was an early burst with the work of people like <a href="https://rossgoodwin.com/">Ross Goodwin</a>'s <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY7x2Ihqjmc">Sunspring</a></i> in 2016, and <a href="https://botnik.org/">Botnik Studios</a>' <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Je8FITk_kQ">Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash</a></i> in 2017. <br />
<br />
However this momentum appears to have stalled more recently, and the most interesting AI collaborations have been in the visual arts instead, highlighted by <a href="https://twitter.com/obv_ious">Obvious' </a>auctioned <i><a href="https://www.christies.com/features/A-collaboration-between-two-artists-one-human-one-a-machine-9332-1.aspx">Portrait of Edmond Belamy</a></i>, but even more so by the avant-garde work of serious artists like <a href="https://www.christies.com/features/A-collaboration-between-two-artists-one-human-one-a-machine-9332-1.aspx">Mario Klingemann</a>.<br />
<br />
With incredible language models like <a href="https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/">GPT-2</a> and <a href="https://www.borealisai.com/en/blog/understanding-xlnet/">XLNet</a> now openly available, it is disappointing to note a comparative lack of collaboration between creative writing and these advances in AI. Is it perhaps a case of more not really being better, when it comes to language generation? Like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSprkzio_pE">that scene in The Matrix Reloaded</a> where the CGI was amazing for its time, but not quite convincing enough to carry the story. <br />
<br />
But predictive generation isn't the only NLP game going at the moment, and <a href="https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/definition/BERT-language-model">BERT</a> is another model that has garnered a lot of interest. In short, its relative success in language understanding has made it suitable for various related tasks.<br />
<br />
One such task is text summarisation. I recently discovered the <a href="https://github.com/dmmiller612/bert-extractive-summarizer">Bert Extractive Summarizer</a>, which makes this incredibly easy to do (there's an <a href="https://smrzr.io/">online version</a> you can try out - although it has some limitations). I decided to play with a selection of famous short stories, and the results are quite fun - a bit like micro stories in their own right.<br />
<br />
Here are 5 examples. Some of the originally longer stories required a smaller ratio than the default (0.2).<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b><i>The Garden Party</i>, by Katherine Mansfield</b></h3>
<br />
<i>They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. "That's right, miss," said the tallest of the men, a lanky, freckled fellow, and he shifted his tool-bag, knocked back his straw hat and smiled down at her. " Laura's upbringing made her wonder for a moment whether it was quite respectful of a workman to talk to her of bangs slap in the eye. She crouched down as if to warm herself at that blaze of lilies; she felt they were in her fingers, on her lips, growing in her breast. Laura caught hold of her sister's sleeve and dragged her through the kitchen to the other side of the green baize door. If some one had died there normally - and I can't understand how they keep alive in those poky little holes - we should still be having our party, shouldn't we?" "I don't understand," said Laura, and she walked quickly out of the room into her own bedroom. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him?</i><br />
<br />
<h3>
<b><i>The Mask of the Red Death,</i> by Edgar Allan Poe</b></h3>
<br />
Ratio : 0.2<br />
<br />
<i>The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. Blood was its Avatar and its seal--the redness and the horror of blood. The external world could take care of itself. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be _sure_ that he was not. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. And the rumour of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise--then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay.</i><br />
<br />
Ratio : 0.1<i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. And the rumour of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise--then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust. There was a sharp cry--and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.</i><br />
<br />
<h3>
<b><i>The Darling</i>, by Anton Chekhov</b></h3>
<br />
<i>Olenka, the daughter of the retired collegiate assessor, Plemyanniakov, was sitting in her back porch, lost in thought. They want a clown; what they ask for is vulgarity. In the evenings and at night she could hear the band playing, and the crackling and banging of fireworks, and it seemed to her that it was Kukin struggling with his destiny, storming the entrenchments of his chief foe, the indifferent public; there was a sweet thrill at her heart, she had no desire to sleep, and when he returned home at day-break, she tapped softly at her bedroom window, and showing him only her face and one shoulder through the curtain, she gave him a friendly smile. "AWAITING IMMATE INSTRUCTIONS FUFUNERAL TUESDAY." "Vassitchka and I have no time to go to theatres," she would answer sedately. Little by little the town grew in all directions. "I have resigned my post, and have come to settle down and try my luck on my own account. Besides, it's time for my boy to go to school."</i><br />
<br />
<h3>
<b><i>The Haunted House</i>, by Virginia Woolf</b></h3>
<br />
<i>Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat gladly. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.</i><br />
<br />
<h3>
<b><i>The Kiss</i>, by Guy de Maupassant</b></h3>
<br />
<i>My Little Darling: So you are crying from morning until night and from night until morning, because your husband leaves you; you do not know what to do and so you ask your old aunt for advice; you must consider her quite an expert. You say that you are all attention, love, kisses and caresses for him. Perhaps that is the very trouble; I think you kiss him too much. To tell the history of Love from the beginning of the world would be to tell the history of man himself: Everything springs from it, the arts, great events, customs, wars, the overthrow of empires. A preface which can always be read over again, whereas one cannot always read over the book. One caress alone gives this deep sensation of two beings welded into one --it is the kiss. Therefore, my dear, the kiss is our strongest weapon, but we must take care not to dull it. After describing the expectancy of a lover, waiting in a room one winter's evening, his anxiety, his nervous impatience, the terrible fear of not seeing her, he describes the arrival of the beloved woman, who at last enters hurriedly, out of breath, bringing with her part of the winter breeze, and he exclaims: Oh! The taste of the kisses first snatched through the veil. Therefore, the value of this caress being entirely a matter of convention, we must be careful not to abuse it. Well, my dear, I have several times noticed that you are very clumsy. You had been paying no attention to it, and it was almost out. Then when you freed him, you began to grumble: "How badly you kiss!"</i><br />
<br />
On the whole the effect is interesting and often pleasing. The digests retain the language, which in the originals are unfailingly elegant, and often a discernable strain of their meaning too. A digest, prosaic as it may seem, is creative in its own way. Synthesis and understanding requires a path through the heart of a text. This tends to stand in opposition to novelty, but they can also form two parts of a larger storytelling process.<br />
<br />
What if we combined them to come up with something new?<br />
<br />thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-3516796869462388362018-12-22T20:31:00.000+00:002018-12-23T16:38:37.289+00:00Neurotribes and Authoring Autism - Part 2<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>Neuroqueer (n):</i></b> an individual whose identity has in some way been shaped by their engagement in practices of <i>neuroqueering</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>Neurotypical</b></i> <b><i>(n)</i></b>: a label for people who are non-autistic</blockquote>
<h3>
Preface</h3>
<br />
In the second of this two-part blog post series about texts on autism, I explore the contours and concepts on offer in Melanie Yergeau's <i>"Authoring Autism"</i>. But rather than offering an analytical reading, I have decided to let it speak for itself as much as possible. It is, after all, a text about authoring an identity, and who am I to add another layer to its language? It is full of quotable passages, and my main effort has been to capture essential ideas and serve them up as directly as possible.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Introduction</h3>
<br />
Melanie Yergeau's <i>"Authoring Autism" </i>is a text about autism that is simultaneously a <i>queering</i> of autism. If we think of autism as a diagnostic that was historically bestowed on the autistic subject from <i>outside</i> the subject, i.e. by the medical establishment, then authoring autism is a way of queering, of interacting with, of reclaiming as well as dismissing, autism <i>by</i> and <i>for</i> autists.<br />
<br />
In stark contrast to <i>"Neurotribes"</i>, which introduces autism in a way that is accessibly neurotypical, Yergeau's text is dense and more divergent. It is a challenging text defiantly centred in the writing of autistic practice.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Legacy of Lovaas</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If there is one subject that comes in for special and repeated criticism, it is the legacy of behaviourism in autism, and particularly the form pioneered by Ole Ivar Lovaas. He comes in for plenty of flack from Steve Silberman in <i>"Neurotribes"</i>, but Melanie Yergeau takes it to a whole different level. That's because this time it's personal.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The author's own experiences of suffering as an autistic in society inform her critique, and no one is immune from criticism. She is not afraid to take on hallowed ideas and characters, even taking aim at the widely adulated Temple Grandin:</div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Temple Grandin's routine proclamations that autism teachers should emulate the social practices of the 1950s is not a socially just nor revolutionary approach to neuroqueer sociality, but a demonstrably racialized orientation toward the world. Such autism awareness is better termed perilous than it is positive or gainful."</blockquote>
<br />
Grandin's mother also comes in for criticism for writing an alarmist piece that associates autists with child pornography:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"In 2013, Temple Grandin’s mother, Eustacia Cutler, wrote a horrific article for the Daily Beast in which she (quite unempirically and egregiously) warned that autistic men are potential child pornographers lying in wait"</blockquote>
<br />
These admonishings are necessary. Temple Grandin may be a hero to many, but her theoretical musings about autistic education do not fit well with progress made in identity politics during the early part of the 21st century.<br />
<br />
Having established her willingness to take on all comers, Yergeau reserves the full force of her ire for Lovaas and his legacy of behavioural therapies, which includes the Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) offered by Autism Speaks. She introduces its purpose thus:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"To put it briefly, ABA represents a suite of therapeutic modalities whose end goal involves behavioral shaping toward the normative, toward the prosocial, toward compliance"</blockquote>
<br />
Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) isn't offering value in itself, because the potential it offers is mere "'cosmetic potential' ... in which behaviors are re/directed for 'being more socially acceptable than the behaviors they replace.'". Cosmetic is also masking:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Recovery, then, is not the process of becoming straight or cisgender or nondisabled, but is rather the process of faking the becoming of normativity". </blockquote>
If we consider the adage "fake it till you make it", we may consider the difference. Making 'it', in the case of ABA, is an endpoint at odds with the true potential of an autist.<br />
<br />
In any case, the point could not be clearer. Behavioural recovery is not true recovery, it is superficial, serving the needs of allistics rather than autists.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Curse of Zeno</h3>
<br />
Yergeau's thesis highlights the way in which autistic disability fulfills a rhetoric in which autists are prevented from participating in the world, fixing them to their designated disability like butterflies pinned to a wheel. She invokes the concept of a <i>demi-rhetor</i>, which can be seen as a type of logic that resembles Zeno's paradoxes: the bearer must accomplish an infinite number of moves before reaching a certain destination. Or to put it differently, the bearer will never reach her destination. Yergeau sees clinicians as using this type of logic to undermine autistic agency:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"As a construct, demi-rhetoricity enables clinicians to claim the best of both worlds when they respond to autistic rhetors: </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1. They can argue that autistic people are not autistic enough to make claims about autism.<br />
2. They can likewise argue that autistic people are too autistic to make claims about autism. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[...] </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
While demi-rhetoricity often renders its subjects effectively non-rhetorical, its construction as a kind of rhetorical residue fosters the illusion that the demi-rhetorical are (or can aspire to be) participating bodies."</blockquote>
<br />
The implication of this criticism is one that would have confounded Lovaas, whose primary concern was to make autistic children appear non-autistic. However, he didn't see autism as a <i>positive identity</i>, but merely as a lack, as a disability.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Queer</h3>
<br />
Yergeau is making it clear from the outset that those who have dominated the conversation around autism for the longest time have almost always been non-autistic. It is time to reclaim autism <i>by</i> and <i>for</i> autists.<br />
<br />
The establishment has used autism as a route to its proper destination, namely queerness, and Yergeau sees strong links to the mid century gay panic. She sets out to analyse and deconstruct this harmful rhetoric, and asserts the activity of <i>queering</i> as a positive activity in which autistic subjects engage:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"This project, at root, aims to deconstruct cognitive studies scholarship that reifies the inhumanity and neurological passivity of autistics, while also claiming that autistic people queer the lines of rhetoric, humanity, and agency"</blockquote>
<br />
By being engaged in an activity of queering the existing field, which came into existence via rhetorical work done by clinicians and nonautistics (whom she variously calls <i>allists</i> or <i>neurotypical</i>), Yergeau is opening a space in which autists can be fully rhetorical without having to be rhetorical in a way that neurotypical people may necessarily be comfortable with.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"If clinical discourse on autism is, as Duffy and Dorner declare, storied around rhetorics of 'scientific sadness,' then autistic rhetorics, in all of their contrastive resonances, queer the motifs, structures, modes, and commonplaces of what nonautistics have come to narrate and thereby know about autism. To author autistically is to author queerly and contrarily." </blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
Rhetoric and Agency</h3>
<br />
She contends that the involuntarity ascribed to autists' actions (eg. stimming) is a way of saying that autists do not have access to and cannot participate in rhetoric. This assumption marginalises those pinned to demi-rhetorical autism:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"involuntarity’s stories are those of abuse, of disbelief, of suffering and non-agency and pain. Involuntarity is forcibly imposed onto autistic bodies [..] Involuntarity is a project of dehumanization"</blockquote>
<br />
Rhetoric, as a fundamental socialising activity in which humans participate, is something autists are by that very token excluded from:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Nowhere is the syllogism clearer:<br />
—One must be human in order to be rhetorical.<br />
—Autistic people are not rhetorical.<br />
—Autistic people are not human."</blockquote>
<br />
This double whammy of denying humanity and agency in the same clinical move is a theme Yergeau develops and counters throughout:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"the following remains my chief concern: the ways in which non-rhetoricity denies autistic people not only agency, but their very humanity"</blockquote>
<br />
As an antidote she proposes a positive definition of autism, as an embodied neuroqueering that strives towards entelechies, which is to say multiply divergent futures that do not follow a linear trajectory and are neither located at nor aiming at a singular point, but are instead embodied through a striving towards in "verbed forms" of "cunning movements" that demi-rhetorically subvert normal socialised rhetoric:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"queering ... 'confronts all of us with the incommensurabilities of desires and identities and socialities.' [...] To be autistic is to be neuroqueer, and to be neuroqueer is to be idealizing, desiring, sidling [...] a neurologically queer motioning that is asocially perverse, a lurching toward a future that imagines 'incommensurabilities of desires and identities and socialities,' a ticcing toward rhetorical residues [...] Autism is my rhetoric."</blockquote>
<br />
The strength of Yergeau's position emerges from seizing the allistic blindspot, the in-between where autistics supposedly lack intention, social rhetoric, and agency:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Autistic people persist and insist in the narrativity of their tics, their stims, their echoed words and phrases, their relations [...] Autistic stories are interrelational, even if that interrelationality does not extend toward allists, or even humans more generally" </blockquote>
<br />
In setting things up in this way, Yergeau does not opt for a neat and easy delineation, and acknowledges the complexity of this tapestry identity:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"these rhetorical webs of autism and queerness are not just notable for their horrors. They invoke all of the tough, meaty questions that any kind of intersectionality demands. How do we account for where queerness begins and disability ends? It may well be that I am queer only because my neurological disability predisposes me to queerness. But does that matter? What are the consequences of saying that I’m queer because I’m autistic—or, conversely, that I’m autistic because I’m queer?"</blockquote>
<br />
The task may be daunting, but as an autist the author brings the weight of her being to bear and asserts her identity by writing it:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"For my part, I want a rhetoric that tics, a rhetoric that stims, a rhetoric that faux pas, a rhetoric that averts eye contact, a rhetoric that lobs theories about ToM [Theory of Mind] against the wall"</blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
The Blessings of Demi-Rhetoricism</h3>
<br />
One of the keys that unlocks the power of this identity and reclaims autism lies are the queer concepts of demisexuality and demigenderednes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I suggest that demi-rhetoricity holds potential as a reclamatory strategy for those who publicly disclose an autistic identity. Rather than conceptualize identity or rhetoricity as points along a linear spectrum, deminess might instead be queerly viewed [as] about rhetorical attraction or rhetorical desire, and what it means to roll, crip-queerly, outside the bounds of rhetoric"</blockquote>
<br />
Rhetoric is a central concept to dismantle because of its close links to other more visible traits that autists supposedly lack. In other words, it is a kind of latent variable in this web of neurotypical assumptions:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Rhetoric’s topographies shore up that which autistics are time and again claimed to lack: intentionality, symbolic capacity, sociality, and audience awareness, among other rhetorical means"</blockquote>
<br />
Rhetoric's links to the social is reinforced again and again: "rhetoric is firmly situated in the 'realm of the social'", "intentionality only becomes rhetorical when it is social", and "intention requires a theory of one’s own as well as other minds".<br />
<br />
Yergeau frequently brings up allistics' preoccupation with the social, and their "assumption that allos and autos are binaristic poles, blips on a continuum that speak toward the autistic’s lack of sociality and thereby moral degradation". This is closely related to "rhetoric’s privileging of linear or developmental trajectories, of a social symbolic, and of normatively brained means and motives."<br />
<br />
In this regard even Lorna Wing, one of the originators of autism as a spectrum, comes in for criticism:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"If rhetoric is the stuff of tricks and lies, then the unimaginative autist must surely not be the stuff of rhetoric. Indeed, in Lorna Wing’s original triad of impairments, impoverished imagination occupied its own specific domain, broadly encompassing pretense, play, and deception, as well as the ability to think about and predict the actions of others — all necessary preconditions for traditional conceptions of rhetorical manipulation."</blockquote>
<br />
The tripartite of "social, communicative, and motoric domains" are "god terms that unite this triad of impairments" and "overwhelmingly concern themselves with sociality and ToM [Theory of Mind]".<br />
<br />
Yergeau's concern lies with the real psychological effects of diagnosis, not with the doors it might open with regards to educational assistance:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Symptoms and test results might indeed represent only a portion of being human, but their rhetorical effects are essentializing"</blockquote>
<br />
She makes a similar point later:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"More people are becoming autistic; more people are becoming nonpeople. And so, what does <i>fuck you</i> look like on the part of nonpersons?"</blockquote>
<br />
In Kenneth Burke she finds a singular purveyor of the contrasting duality of, on the one hand, rhetorical sociality, and on the other, arhetorical less-than-human autism:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Burke laments the ocular, arrhythmic style of mathematicians, visual thinkers, and hyperlexics, placing them in direct opposition to the psychogenic symbolic. Although he does not name autism in these examples, he does describe what resembles stereotypes of autistic perception—disconnection from the human and the rhetorical body."</blockquote>
<br />
A concept that Yergeau uses to stand this on its head is entelechy, usually seen as the "final destination" of some potential (comparisons with Hegel's Spirit as teleology is interesting but out of scope here).<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Building upon Aristotle, Burke described entelechy as the 'temporizing of essence.' Unlike Aristotle, Burke’s concern wasn’t with the innatism of biology, but rather how narrative comes to be understood, determined, or essentialized. In this way, entelechy is circumscribed in a narrative’s ending: how a story is fulfilled"</blockquote>
<br />
In other words, it has a single destination. Instead, following Byron Hawk she she sees the neuroqueering of rhetoric following a multiple and divergent entelechy:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"'Entelechy becomes not the striving for a single, predetermined goal but the striving itself that generates multiple lines of divergence as a residual effect.' Hawk’s embrace of motion rather than end point is intrinsic to the neuroqueering of rhetoric"</blockquote>
<br />
The link to queering and the subverting of the normal is later reaffirmed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"These multiple paths of flight, to channel Hawk, are not equivalent or stationary, but are rather always-unfoldings of rhetoricities that frustrate norms"</blockquote>
<br />
Yet in contrast to "rhetorical impulses [that] are often imperialist impulses—whitening, converting, persuading, assimilating", autistic rhetoric is partial, often involuntary - yet no less rhetorical. <i>"Symbolicity may be rhetoricity, but rhetoric is not constrained to the symbolic" </i>(my emphasis):<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Rhetoric is not always narrated, despite narration always being rhetorical: the New York Times best-selling autie-biography is as much a font of rhetoricity as is the autistic child headbanging in a clinic. There might or might not be meaning; there might or might not be symbolic linguistic formation or representational intent; but there are rhetorical effects, there is invention at work, there is rhetoricity."</blockquote>
<br />
Yergeau wants to ensure that the reader understands that an autist can be rhetorical even if such rhetoric results from "involuntary" actions.<br />
<br />
What emerges is a far more nuanced picture of rhetoric than Burke, or indeed much of mainstream prosocial narration, can afford. Yet in spite of the pain and suffering that autists experience at the hands (the "closed fists") of prosocial rhetoric, a richness of alternative communication and meaning begins to surface, a demi-rhetoric in which autists are the authors.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Allistic Project Exposed</h3>
<br />
Autism studies take inspiration from crip and disability studies. For example Fiona Kumari Campbell calls for "an antisocial turn, a politics that refuses respectability", which stands in stark contrast to the demands of for example ABA, in which prosocial behaviour is the goal.<br />
<br />
Yergeau also draws attention to gender differences in diagnosis:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Autism researchers continually debate whether autism’s gendered ratios—ranging from 4:1 to 10:1 male-to-female—are a matter of biology or phallocentric and ciscentric conceptions of developmental disability."</blockquote>
<br />
She favours the view of Elaine Day, who points out that girls are taught from a young age to behave more socially, and are therefore able to mask there autism better.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"As autie-biographer Elaine Day describes, 'Social reciprocity, eye contact, and even mannerisms are actually physically taught to us from an early age in an attempt to make sure that we develop into appropriately mannered young women, and the simple fact is that it can make diagnosing AS [Asperger Syndrome] at a young age almost impossible'"</blockquote>
<br />
She associates ABA's practices with a variety of paternalistic and political strategies to expose the allistic ideology. First up is the language of surveillance:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The rhetorical training of ABA might be best understood as a kind of 'we are always watching you.'"</blockquote>
<br />
Next is the language of governance and manipulation:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"What practitioners trip over themselves to call a 'science of learning' is in fact a science of regulation and social control"</blockquote>
<br />
Then the language of erasure:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"ABA doesn’t remove the neuroqueer — it overwrites it"</blockquote>
<br />
And then the language of disability, and keeping disabled:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Rhetoricity cannot be fully realized in neuroqueer subjects, for neuroqueerness resides. The brain’s capacity for trainability—more plastic and malleable in children, but still plastic into adulthood—requires that intervention be a lifelong endeavor."</blockquote>
<br />
Finally, she calls this project out for coercing its subjects:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"if neuroqueer lives are to have meaning, it is through behaviorist meanings, through bending neuroqueer bodies to neurotypical wills."</blockquote>
<br />
As an aside, while reading this I could not help but wonder how allism's ideology impacts society more generally, beyond the realm of autists. As Yergeau mentions, "autistic traits, taken together, represent everything that allistics devalue in an audience or social exchange". The autistic problem is a particular allistic construction, but the constituent components of that creation seems to affect all spheres of life.<br />
<br />
For example, in the context of experiencing peer pressure to conform to normal prosocial behaviour, to what extent do private individuals, especially those who identify as introverts, experience and perhaps resent this demand? Conversely, is <i>queering</i> its flipside, the willingness to be unsociable? The answer, I feel, is twofold - firstly in the extent to which that individual is perceived after an initial social encounter: once a social lack has been established, and it is deemed possible to overcome with a carrot and stick, the game begins. But secondly, neuroqueering is a way of attracting rhetorical desire outside the bounds of neurotypical rhetoric:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"autistic rhetorics might be regarded as a way of thinking not about 'how much rhetoric or how much autism can my brain hold,' but rather about rhetorical attraction or rhetorical desire, and what it means to roll, crip-queerly, outside the bounds of rhetoric."</blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
Modes of Rhetoric</h3>
<br />
The blurring of lines when it comes to rhetoric is lent further support by thinking about rhetorical failure in the absence of autism:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"If we drop autism from the conversation, for example, it is very easy to state that all rhetorical exchanges might be characterized as failure or, at the very least, failable"</blockquote>
<br />
Yet the author frequently encounters resistance when suggesting that autism might be rhetorical. She relates a poignant exchange during a graduate student conference. After she suggests that autistic people are rhetorical the backlash ensues.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"One such comment came from the mother of an autistic child ... 'I am deeply uncomfortable in thinking about autism as rhetorical.'"</blockquote>
<br />
The author went even further and outed herself as autistic, yet to no avail.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I was an autistic person declaring myself to be rhetorical, and a posse of Professional Type people fervently swooped in to deny me that right. How dare I consider myself among them, the rhetorical? How dare I insinuate that people like me can rhetorically act?"</blockquote>
<br />
Autistic rhetoric is not necessarily convergent to neurotypical rhetoric. In fact, it would seem that more often than not it diverges. This is perhaps the key to understanding neurotypical disorientation, and no doubt mutual misunderstanding. For this reason Yergeau rejects reformed neurotypical rhetoric as amenable to autistic rhetoric and social exchange. She compares and contrasts persuasion and invitational rhetoric, and finds both wanting. Invitational rhetoric, which some find appealing, the author mistrusts:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"it is better termed 'invitation only' wherein marginal bodies are immanently excluded rather than immanently valued" because, as she notes from experience, "an invitation to take antipsychotics might seem optional or self-effacing, but when that invitation is posed by a lab-coated doctor ... invitation might be more accurately read as demand"</blockquote>
<br />
Invoking Lovaas again, this distrust is amplified:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"When the stakes are as severe as bodily annihilation, do those without power really wish to invite the presence and purposes of those who would do them harm? What peace is there to be made? When is rhetoric ever safe?"</blockquote>
<br />
This point is supported by the fact that "Such interlocutors [of invitational rhetoric] are often white, able, cisgender, and/or straight, agilely drawing upon inventional resources available only to those most rhetorically mobile."<br />
<br />
In other words, there is a clear structural power imbalance. As with racism, the process is institutionalised.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"while rhetoric demands reciprocity, it also operates from asymmetrical standpoints"</blockquote>
<br />
Diplomatic rhetoric, another rhetorical mode critiqued, in a way encompasses both invitational rhetoric and persuasion:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Rhetors employ diplomatic methods as a structural means of sometimes persuading, sometimes inviting audiences to a given table."</blockquote>
<br />
Diplomacy is also interesting for the way in which it "functions as a metonym for rhetorical exchange, or the kinds of sociality that rhetoric privileges".<br />
<br />
Yergeau counters the logic of diplomacy by invoking "a different Zeno, not Zeno of Elea, but Zeno of Citium. A fourth-century philosopher, Zeno regarded rhetoric as a diplomatic exercise, what he termed an open hand. Logic or dialectic, however, was represented by a closed fist." She proposes that, despite expectations to the contrary, "there is value in the clenched hand, the antidiplomatic disclosure. As in, 'Fuck this. I’m autistic.'"<br />
<br />
As another aside, in her book on racism Beverly Tatum talks about <i>allies</i> in the white community. I wonder how that might fit into Yergeau's critique of rhetoric. In other words, how do autists find allies within the allistic community? This might seem problematic given the characterised differences between allistic and autistic rhetoric, and there not be any simple common or neutral ground. However the reasonable starting point would seem to be for allists, who are structurally privileged, to become more aware of the damage done to autistic lives through institutionalised rhetorical and prosocial practices, and to proactively modify it. Perhaps this could even lead to deeper insight into the harm that the general allistic ideology is doing to other allists...<br />
<br />
But onwards. The reference to rhetoric's open hand and closed fist goes back to Edward Corbett who<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"famously refigured the contours of Zeno’s analogy, suggesting that rhetoric’s open hand often serves as a gatekeeper, preventing marginal bodies from participating in civic spaces [...] [his] reimagining of the closed fist — as provocation rather than logic — was especially indebted to activist strategies, such as boycotts, sit-ins, marches, riots, and even tactical acts of aggression, namely vandalism and violence."</blockquote>
<br />
Corbett describes the closed fist rhetoric as "muscular rhetoric" or "body rhetoric". Whereas diplomacy is "for the few", closed fist rhetoric is for the "'dispossessed, the disenfranchised in our society - poor people, students, minority groups - people who do not have ready access to the established channels of communications'".<br />
<br />
This applies to autism and racial intersectionality, where "white autistic children might be represented as hapless victims of neurology, [but] autistic children of color are often represented more deterministically and violently, as products of bad parenting or as volcanoes waiting to explode".<br />
<br />
<h3>
Invention</h3>
<br />
The moment of being diagnosed as autistic is the moment when a life changes forever. "For the neuroqueer ... diagnosis tends to be all consuming and temporally contingent". Countering such diagnosis calls for a way that "promotes a crip-queer ethos", a "kakoethos" that "entails opposing, countering, and neuroqueering that which is typically framed as authoritative and credible."<br />
<br />
As we've seen, allism is aligned with normative and prosocial rhetoric and therefore serves as a marker, a "mechanism for regarding the neurotypes of the nonautistic - for calling attention to both a neurological ideal and a neurological ideology".<br />
<br />
Kakoethos is the counter value. If allism is associated with centre and linearity, "the kakoethos that attends counter-diagnostic disclosures holds radical potential because it queers perceptions of center, linearity, residence, and rigidity".<br />
<br />
Yergeau has deep misgivings about allistic strategies, and her persisting aim is to reclaim a space for autists by neuroqueering allistic rhetoric:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"autistic subjects stake and deny rhetoricity by queering what rhetoric is and can mean, by in/voluntarily middling and absenting themselves from rhetoric’s canons." </blockquote>
<br />
The act of neuroqueering suggests "stepping out of rhetoricity altogether, and questioning the desirability (and at times tyranny) that rhetoricity imparts." It is a uniquely inventive activity, which helps to define<i> </i>autism's positive identity:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"to be autistic is to negotiate inventional movements, movements that straddle the rhetorical and the non-rhetorical, that muddle and murk. Like any inventional movement, autism’s is configured by its coalitional histories."</blockquote>
Following Bre Garrett, Denise Landrum-Geyer and Jason Palmeri, invention is seen as "the 'process of making connections, rearranging materials (words, images, concepts) in unexpected ways.… [Invention] manifests through the body, for a given body actively participates as an inherent material, alongside other materials, other bodies … in the ever-becoming, ever-shifting engulfment of semiosis.'"<br />
<br />
The "embodied communication is not a site for intervention, as many clinicians would have us believe, but is rather a site of invention". Such embodied inventiveness also finds traction in the concept of <i>motor schemes</i>, rhetorical schemes that are "embodied, echoed, and cripped, a perverse way of involuting (i.e., making involuntary) discourse on elocution or rhetorical gestures".<br />
<br />
Autistic invention can, and often does, happen at the expense of allistic rhetoric, which tends to be more linear:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Neuroqueer rhetoricity doesn’t orient on a line but instead collapses shapes and diagrams of all kinds — disorienting and unorienting participating bodies."</blockquote>
This <i>disorientation</i> follows from the activity of demi-ness which has "a queer attachment to remnants". For example gender and sexuality are "fragmentary and oscillating. To claim a demigirl identity, for instance, is to suggest that one holds a partial or shifting relation to some construct of girlness." The demi figure is borrowed from queer communities, and in autism echophenomena like <i>echolalia</i> would be examples of how demi-rhetoric navigates.<br />
<br />
Such invention is invention even if it does not expressly intend to invent:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"invention need not be positive to be considered invention ... Echoes proliferate, jump-start, and interrupt... Each echo can constitute its own discursive unit, and, as I’ve been suggesting, it can also serve as a placeholder for multiple meanings. These multiple meanings might spread or shift over time, or they can fill one singular echoing act, signifying multiple meanings or feelings simultaneously." </blockquote>
<br />
In other words, it's what they <i>signify</i> that's important - not what they <i>intend</i>. They do not even require an audience:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Can we declare echoes as rhetorical failures when they do not seek human interlocutors to begin with? (Answer: hell no.)"</blockquote>
<br />
These invented acommunications follow a logic that do not have to conform to language and gesture as understood through the neurotypical lens. For example "echolalia’s meanings lie more in affect or anxiety than they do in the bounds of syntactic units". (The language of dreams comes to mind as vaguely analogous, a 'language' whose meaning relies on an immersive experience rather than syntactical understanding.)<br />
<br />
Autistic invention arises from autism's necessary straddling of two worlds, where "autism is a negotiation between rhetorical and arhetorical worlds. And, while at times these worlds may be idiosyncratic or mutually unintelligible, these worlds hold value, meaning, and at times meaninglessness."<br />
<br />
Understanding this multimodal experience is to understand the danger inherent in a diagnosis of "autistic spectra", which only serves one of the two worlds: the allistic one.<br />
<br />
In a more clinical sense, and following the embodiedness of demi-rhetorical neuroqueerying, it might be better to consider autism as <i>sensorimotor divergence </i>in the way Silvio Savarese proposes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Savarese contends that regarding autism as sensorimotor divergence more accurately represents autistic movements between volition and avolition, and it does so in a manner that respects and maintains autistic people’s humanity. In other words, sensorimotor approaches resist spectra and diagnostic fixity."</blockquote>
<br />
Activities usually seen as "symptoms" of autism, for example stimming and echolalia, can gain depth and dignity in such a definition. More generally, it also permits a broader view for rhetors in general, by looking at signification rather than meaning:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Echophenomena do not symbolically represent so much as they immediately, and often acontextually, signify."</blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
Conclusion </h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In <i>"Authoring Autism" </i>Melanie Yergeau asserts autism's identity and freedom positively, but never trivially. Autism is a complicated, interwoven subject with a painful history. She borrows from other disciplines, including disability studies and queer theory, and builds her thesis with great purpose. The reader acquires a rich appreciation of both autistic pain and potential:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Neuroqueer demi-rhetorics are demi-rhetorics of gain and of pain. And without these queer ticcings toward queer futures, we all stand to lose a great deal"</blockquote>
thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-48322145055911530322018-12-16T16:42:00.000+00:002018-12-22T20:52:09.738+00:00Neurotribes and Authoring Autism - Part 1Neurodiversity as a social and political movement is something that's only come to my attention fairly recently, through the lens of autism. Even six months ago I thought of autism in much the way that it was popularised in Rain Man and Little Man Tate: as a specific type of giftedness. The term Asperger's and the phrase 'on the spectrum' has entered the popular lexicon, but is stil often used in a euphemistic rather than a clarifying way.<br />
<br />
I now have a much better understanding of what is at stake thanks to two books I've been reading the last few months: <i>"Neurotribes"</i>, by David Silberman, and <i>"Authoring Autism"</i>, by Melanie Yergeau.<br />
<br />
In this blog post I will kick off with <i>"Neurotribes"</i>, a wonderfully accessible introduction to the field. In the next blog post I will look at <i>"Authoring Autism"</i>, which is a much more theoretical take - and also where things get really interesting.<br />
<br />
<i>"Neurotribes"</i> tells the story of autism from the days before psychiatry and the medical establishment entered the fray. It contrasts the careers of socially awkward scientists like Henry Cavendish and Paul Dirac, who were likely to have been high functioning autists, with the fate of children under the psychiatric supervision of later diagnosticians like Leo Kanner. In the latter case the kids usually ended up in psychiatric wards.<br />
<br />
It is a heartbreaking story, all the more so for the sensitive progress made in Vienna before the war years, until Hitler's policies tainted everything. Hans Asperger and his colleagues, including Sister Viktorine, constitute one of very few clinical teams to emerge with an enhanced reputation by the end of the book. Asperger afforded his charges dignity by not focusing solely on their disability, but by recognising their unique characteristics and potential, realising that they required different learning methods. He called them "little professors".<br />
<br />
The reputations of later autism pioneers like Leo Kanner, Ivor Lovaas, and Bruno Bettelheim fare considerably worse. Through a combination of parental blame (Kanner and Bettelheim) and behaviourist normalisation (Lovaas) they ensured a fraught atmosphere in which the medical establishment inevitable became at odds with the families of autistic children. American psychiatry's narrow focus on the negatives and judging parents as complicit in their becoming autistic meant that families were left alienated and feeling disempowered.<br />
<br />
The war years complicates the picture. There is plenty to suggest that Kanner's breakthroughs may not have come without the help of colleagues who immigrated and joined him from Asperger's Viennese clinic - including Sister Viktorine herself.<br />
<br />
However the American establishment's belief in a top-down application of medical science over an empathetic, empowering approach meant that exasperated parents eventually started taking matters into their own hands. Bernard Rimland, who founded both the Autism Society of America (ASA) and the Autism Research Institute (ARI), was instrumental in shifting the balance more in favour of parents.<br />
<br />
Parents were starting to realise that autistic children didn't need more therapy, <i>à la</i> Lovaas' horrifying behaviourist methods, but instead more recognition for the learning requirements of their children. Meanwhile Lorna Wing, over in the UK, rediscovered the work of Hans Asperger and saw that autism was more of a spectrum than the restricted version Kanner had postulated. Her influence on the expansion of the DSM diagnostic criteria meant that soon more children were being diagnosed than ever before, affording them the official educational assistance they needed. In DSM-V, the most recent version, autism has been redefined to include a much wider variety of related disorders under the bracket of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).<br />
<br />
<i>"Neurotribes"</i> also takes a look at the contribution made by <i>"Rain Man"</i>, a film that did so much to bring autism to public consciousness. After reading Yergeau, however, it is clear that the next revolution properly starts when autistic people are finally empowered to speak for themselves, and be themselves. The precursor to this revolution comes in the form of an unlikely autism hero, Temple Grandin. Her story is heartwarming in a completely unexpected way, and I can definitely recommend the film version of her life in which Claire Danes stars as Grandin.<br />
<br />
What makes Grandin's contribution unique is that, with the help and belief of her mother, she uses her own creativity and ingenuity to find a way to exist in the world that is in line with her autistic nature. The story of how she became an unlikely spokesperson for autism is now legendary, and it is easy to see how her story inspired many who never had a role model to look up to.<br />
<br />
<i>"Neurotribes"</i> delineates a clear arc from extreme disempowerment to relative empowerment. This is an important realisation. We start with the pre-medical establishment, when inherited wealth and status in society (Henry Cavendish's parents were Lady Anne de Grey and Lord Charles Cavendish) is practically all that could save a handicapped child from a place like the Bethlem Royal Hospital (commonly known as Bedlam).<br />
<br />
The next stage starts with the medical establishment's evolution of psychiatry, as early as Eugen Bleuler's designation of autism as a type of schizophrenia in 1911. However it is only during World War II that psychiatry finally provides autism with a more formal and independent diagnostic, albeit still under huge clouds of confusion and misunderstanding. In the following phase we see ordinary parents increasingly demanding better lives for their autistic children, and gradually taking control from the establishment authorities by forming their own societies like the ASA. Finally, autistic people themselves - people like Temple Grandin - begin to find ways to succeed on their own terms and make their voices heard.<br />
<br />
In the internet era, Silberman further suggests, many people living with autism began to see ways of establishing community in the online world - ways that didn't rely on the usual types of stressful socialisation prevalent in "normal" society. In this empowering and interconnected world people with autism have increasingly found ways to assert themselves and make their voices heard. <i>Neurodiversity</i>, both as a social movement and as a part of wider identity politics, has now become part of a global conversation.<br />
<br />
Against the backdrop of this brave new world Melanie Yergeau brings her theory rich thesis full of fresh and radical ideas. I discuss "Authoring Autism" in <a href="https://thecombedthunderclap.blogspot.com/2018/12/neurotribes-and-authoring-autism-part-2.html">the next blog post</a>.thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-43078465025160032942018-08-20T22:24:00.000+01:002018-09-23T18:25:18.151+01:00The Role of Gender in the Hong Kong Film "After This Our Exile"!WARNING: SPOILERS!<br />
<br />
<i>After This Our Exile</i> won numerous film awards, including Best Film at both the Golden Horse and Hong Kong film awards in 2006. It is a touching, often tragic film. A family falls apart when a father indulges his character flaws at the cost of his family. He gambles and borrows, losing money and failing to repay his debts.<br />
<br />
His wife (Lin) realises he won't change his ways change and decides to leave him. Their poor young son is caught in the middle. He spots her attempt to leave the first time around, but is blamed when she gets away the next time around. Referred to as "Boy" (at least in the English translations), Lin abandons him too. Her role is simplified, no doubt as a way to focus on the father and son's relationship. <br />
<br />
Boy misses her and experiences conflicting feelings of loyalty. However his Dad's influence prevails, and he soon adopts his dad's negative view about his mom. Only when it is too late does he realise his dad is the real bad apple of the family. His father, impulsive and unwilling to work, forces the boy to steal for money. At this point the boy gets caught and thrown into a correctional facility.<br />
<br />
F<i>After This Our Exile</i> is therefore a cautionary morality tale. Now that China has an up and coming middle class, the film is perhaps saying don't throw away your parental responsibilities to chase your dreams.<br />
<br />
While I found the film genuinely affecting, I lament the missed opportunity to realise the potential in the mother's role. Her character is at first wonderfully interesting, full of passionate restraint as she schemes to escape a dead end life. Sadly this is marred by the father's view of her as merely an unfaithful woman, which Boy believes and is reinforced when she exchanges parental love for a kind of naive yet inconsequential sentimentality about Boy. And so she finally transforms into yet another stereotype, of the lover turned domesticated wife. For someone so strong-willed this doesn't make a lot of sense.<br />
<br />
Shing, the dad, is portrayed as a weak-willed character. He is all the more dangerous for having once possessed a dream of success that may have been within reach had he worked at it. He doesn't want to lose face completely and looks for easy solutions. However the interest of the tragic story is based on more than character flaws. A central part of the plot revolves around the particular way in which gender roles play out in the narrative. <br />
<br />
The Chinese version of the title is 父子, which literally means "father son". We should therefore be under no illusion that Shing and Boy are the central characters in this story. The moral seems to be that only a father can give his son the right education in life, and when he fails to do so, tragedy will follow. <br />
<br />
It is worth remembering that Chinese culture is largely paternalistic, so this moral injunction isn't a surprise to Chinese audiences, nor even the strong filial loyalty, as filial piety is an essential part of Confucian teaching. However to Western audiences such a paternalistic morality is more likely to meet with disapproval as they would expect a more equal, nuanced message about gender roles, such as I have expressed above. However it is precisely the strict partitioning of roles that proves instructive about the forces that drive the story.<br />
<br />
Lin, the mother, runs away but fails (the first time) due to a premonition the boy has. In a powerful and dramatic early scene Shing apprehends her and takes her home in a fury. He treats her badly in what appears to be a domestic pattern of abuse, he also ignores her accusations about his bad habits. Instead he becomes very emotional - almost histrionic (a character trait that, in the West at least, has a long and unhappy association with women). <br />
<br />
On the other hand Lin keeps her cool and gets to the point, even if it takes her a while to open up. It is a very powerful scene. Shing remains in denial at first, but eventually succumbs to the truth. It appears to be out of deep love, but we soon learn that he also needs Lin to help him pay his debts. She is the provider. His love has a dark side.<br />
<br />
She, on the other hand, manages to win back his trust to win herself time. He clearly believes in his own masculinity, as they make love that same night in a scene that gives an insight to Lin's precarious position. She still finds him attractive enough to give in to their passion, but the viewer is aware that she may have something up her sleeve and probably needs to keep him on her side.<br />
<br />
It is this 'cunning' element of her character that is juxtaposed with his more straightforward bad character. The question is hinted, if not exactly asked: is it worse to be honest and emotional, yet a hopeless case, or more capable but a bit cunning and hypocritical? Given the way things play out, it is clear that Shing's character is judged in the negative. His is a bad sort who fails his own son in the worst kind of way. But what of Lin? Could she have saved them by staying on?<br />
<br />
I think the answer is no, she was always more ambitious, and the context is about the father-son relationship being the backbone of society. However this also shows the way in which Lin's character is problematic. She <i>has to leave</i> because by staying and saving her family she would be fulfilling the father's role. She would become the backbone that rises through the slackness of her husband's lack of moral fibre. And this will not do. She can't be the man, she can't be the one to wear the trousers. Instead, it is better that she disown her family in a double negative, moving from female victim to active seeker of happiness in the arms of another man who happens to be rich and successful - even if it makes her look flighty. She is not even evil, incapable of real evil - just inconsequential. <br />
<br />
Given the film's ending it is probably safe to assume that the film doesn't directly acknowledge society's role in Lin's decision. Or to put it differently, it doesn't acknowledge that her choices are by default highly constrained. <b>It's a lose-lose situation, morally speaking, so she might as well choose the option in which she gains something.</b><br />
<br />
Although she does not want to cut herself off from Boy completely, she acts in her own interest for the new baby, and the narrative turns her parental care into distracted sentimentality. She completes a double negative leaving Shing and Boy to their circle of masculinity while she pursues a new motherhood. She is diminished by being seen as a giver of children, not a giver of souls, which is the role demanded from Shing.<br />
<br />
It is perhaps slightly unfair to suggest that the film intentionally sets out to paint Lin as mere stereotype. After all, it was meant to be about the father and the son. But as pointed out, the film does not acknowledge the society's influence in her options. The film's limited view of gender roles has repercussions when, ultimately, the father fails to be a father - to be a man of substance - and we are left to wonder whether his excessive masculine posturing isn't partly responsible for his failure in fatherhood.<br />
<br />
Boy, then, is the only character left to fulfil the expectation of being a <i>man</i>, and, being a boy, he cannot do so. It is only at the end of the film, once he has grown up, that he sets out to right those wrongs. He shows some of the backbone that both his parents lacked.thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-38956220627893482162018-08-12T10:23:00.001+01:002020-06-10T15:11:51.878+01:00Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? : Learning about Racism"Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?", a book on race relations first published in 1997, has opened my eyes about the nature of racism and what we can do about it. I can't really do the book justice in a blog post, but I would like to highlight some of the points that have made an impression on me.<br />
<br />
By way of quick introduction, the author Beverly Daniel Tatum, PhD, is a psychologist as well as an educator. She originally wrote the book in answer to questions about race she would often receive, in particular the one in the title, from well-meaning White teachers who were concerned and perplexed upon seeing black kids sitting together in the cafeteria and not mingling. <br />
<br />
The book draws on a variety of research studies while avoiding abstract theory, focusing instead on concrete examples. This makes the book very accessible without skimping on credibility. The version I read is the recently updated 20th anniversary edition. The first version is already a classic in the field.<br />
<br />
I'm sure everyone who reads it will have their own <i>a-ha!</i> moment. I personally had several. Yet there was one that really stood out. It was the realisation that my fundamental assumption about racism was inadequate. Like many other people apparently, I equated racism with a kind of prejudice towards people of other races. Being a good citizen, this understanding of racism meant I could check my attitude and behaviour and feel confident that, yes, I am not being racist in my daily life.<br />
<br />
However that is a fairly superficial definition of racism that does not get at the heart of the problem. To put this in perspective, my understanding of how racism developed has forever been changed by a recent trip to Washington DC during which I visited the <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/">African-American Museum</a>. It tells the story of the global slave trade during the colonial era, the immense suffering of the slaves who were sold and bought as chattel, and their resistance and perseverance over centuries to find a better way and a better life. In one single afternoon I learned more about slavery and its consequences than I'd ever known before.<br />
<br />
As a UK citizen born in South Africa I also had occasion to ponder how slavery and racism have manifested in different ways on three different continents, but that is a whole analysis unto itself. For present purposes, suffice it to say that a historical perspective, of slavery and its consequences in particular, is essential to understanding what racism is. Those consequences are an ideology of White privilege that have been ingrained in culture and set in laws over centuries.<br />
<br />
What that means is that racism is structural in nature, and that existing societal structures are racist inasmuch as they favour White people over Black people (and other races). This is the crux of the matter, and that is why the idea of racism as a prejudice is of limited use. To dismantle racism we can't only check our attitude and biases, we have to go much, much further.<br />
<br />
Tatum quotes David Wellman, who defines racism in this sense as a "system of advantage based on race" (p. 87). Another definition of racism often used is that of "prejudice plus power", which explains how the structural inequality comes into being and has been enforced: <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Racial prejudice combined with social power - access to social, cultural, and economic resources and decision-making - leads to the institutionalization of racist policies and practices" - p. 87</blockquote>
<br />
However this definition, Tatum concludes, has one drawback that on a practical level many White people feel that they do not have the 'power' that is being alluded to. She therefore prefers Wellman's definition. Nevertheless, I would add that this definition does indeed describe how racism was <i>initially</i> instantiated. It is now maintained simply through the ongoing maintenance of the status quo that was previously established by those with social power. Only when the status quo is challenged can this historical reality be uncovered and seen for what it is, namely the construction of racism.<br />
<br />
The second big idea I encountered was that of <i>intersectionality</i>. This is a term that has had a fair amount of coverage in the popular media, but I never really looked at it closely. In practical terms a person's identity may form along several axes of distinctiveness, or <i>otherness</i>, of which Tatum highlights seven: <i>race </i>or<i> ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, </i>and<i> physical or mental ability</i> (p. 103). Following another book I'm currently reading (<i>Neurotribes</i> by David Silverman) I would probably expect <i>neurodiversity</i> to eventually join this list.<br />
<br />
The point is that each of these categories of otherness has a form of oppression associated with it: racism, sexism, religious oppression / anti-semitism, heterosexism, classism, ageism, and ableism (p. 103). <br />
<br />
As an example of intersectionality, one's identity might form along the following manifested centres of experience: black, female, Christian, lesbian, working class, middle aged, and healthy. Any part of the identity not in the dominant or normal side of the category means that the individual will experience oppression or discrimination in some way or form.<br />
<br />
When it comes to race, White is the dominant and normal race. As a result it is not uncommon for a White person to not really self-identify in terms of race. Tatum quotes Debby Irving in her memoir <i>Waking up White</i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The way I understood it, race was for other people, brown and black-skinned people. Don't get me wrong - if you put a census form in my hand I would know to check 'white' or 'Caucasian'. It's more that I thought all those other categories, like Asian, African American, American Indian, and Latino, were the real races. I thought white was the raceless race- just plain, normal, the one against which all others are measured" - p. 186</blockquote>
<br />
However there is "a hidden cost of racism for Whites" (p. 187), namely the experience of psychological discomfort whenever racism is brought up - guilt, shame, frustration, even anger. The absence of a racial identity in the case of Whites, Tatum contends, is the root cause of this discomfort. She notes that a common reaction for the White person, once they become aware of racism and their own role in it as a White person, is to conclude that they need to have more interactions with Black people or make friends with Black people.<br />
<br />
She explains that a more fruitful approach is to develop a positive White identity first of all. This point was another big <i>a-ha!</i> moment for me, because I have experienced that psychological discomfort myself. Combined with the perception of racism as a form of prejudice, silence often seems like the safest route in the face of uncertainty - and yet of course it does not change anything. But with a <i>positive racial identity</i> there would be a foundation to work from and things can begin to fall into place.<br />
<br />
While acknowledging that there is no set recipe, Tatum offers practical advice to encourage White intragroup conversations and help develop such a positive White identity:<br />
- find other Whites who have already progressed along the way and can show you what to do<br />
- read autobiographies and biographies by White anti-racist activists, like "A Season of Justice" by Morris Dees, or "White Like Me" by Tim Wise<br />
- participate in White anti-racism consciousness raising groups (eg. Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ))<br />
<br />
She provides perspective on the need for all-White support groups and the function they fulfill:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Particularly when Whites are trying to work through their feelings of guilt and shame, separate groups give White people the 'space to speak with honesty and candor rarely possible in racially mixed groups'. Even when Whites feel comfortable sharing these feelings with people of color, frankly, people of color don't necessarily want to hear about it" - p.205</blockquote>
<br />
The onus is on the White individual to do the work and develop his or her White racial identity, making it into something positive.<br />
<br />
The question of identity is also central on the side of Black people to gain insight into the question in the title: <i>why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?</i> During pre-adolescence, race isn't viewed in the same way by kids because their identity has not been fully formed yet. But during adolescence new social factors come into play (who is dating who, who is friends with who, what is my future?, etc.) that become increasingly important. Black kids are then often drawn together by their shared experiences of being institutionally othered and oppressed by the rest of society. In other words, by the sort of structural racism that does not affect the dominant White group much.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"In the prepuberty stage, the personal and social significance of one's REC[racial-ethnic-cultural]-group membership has not yet been realized, and REC identity is not yet under examination [...] During adolescence their understanding evolves to include not just more about themselves but also more about their group, including an 'understanding of a <i>common fate or shared destiny</i> based on ethnic or racial group membership and that these shared experiences differ from the experiences of individuals from other groups" - p. 135</blockquote>
<br />
In the face of such experiences, being part of a larger group of people who understand one's situation and experiences is a benefit. Therefore the concerns of those White teachers who asked why they are sitting together are valid, but misplaced. The root of the problem should be sought in the institution of racism, and how to dismantle it, and not directly in the behaviour and thoughts of those being othered and oppressed.<br />
<br />
This brings us to another important point, namely what those of us who are on the privileged side of the equation can do about it. The book points out on more than one occasion that those who are oppressed do not want us to <i>speak for them</i> because they have their own voices. So what is it that we can do? Plenty, as it turns out. For starters, by starting in our own sphere of influence and pointing out when someone has made a racist comment or joke can change awareness.<br />
<br />
One of my favourite examples is actually in the context of sexism, but it could as easily have applied to racism. It happens when <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/when-andy-murray-corrects-a-journalists-casual-sexismbbcin2ufdvt8/10154885538647217/">Andy Murray corrects a journalist</a> for referring to Sam Querrey as "the first US player since 2009 to reach a major semi-final since 2009". Of course, Serena Williams (and other US women tennis players) have been winning plenty since 2009. The counter-argument that the context was implicitly "men's tennis" is almost the point, because the same can be said about all institutional racism and sexism: the existing context, or status quo, can only be exposed by drawing attention to it.<br />
<br />
As White people we have more social power than we often realise, and even simple interventions, like the way Andy Murray used his influence in the media, can make a powerful statement.<br />
<br />
There is tons more excellent material in the book, and I've glossed over much at the expense of nuance. Three more worth mentioning in passing include the need for <i>affirmative action</i> and for goal setting in affirmative action programs; the challenges of <i>aversive racism</i>; and how to counter the influence of <i>bias in decision-making</i>. <br />
<br />
Rather than go into all of them, I want to highlight one last point that really stuck out for me. In the final section of the book Tatum discusses racism and the experience of racism in the context of other ethnic and racial groups in the US, including Native Americans, Asians, Latinx, and others.<br />
<br />
In the case of Native Americans - a catchall name for many different communities - researchers like Paul Ongtooguk have noticed that such communities have been reduced to static stereotypes in the public mind. Even when their traditions have been preserved it is usually presented in terms of how things used to be once upon a time. In other words, it gives them no sense of their current existence, nor of their future.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
While the traditional arts and crafts were worthy of study, the curriculum embodied a "museum" perspective whereby the traditional life of Alaska Natives was studied "as an interesting curiousity commemorating the past." Ongtooguk explained, "The most disturbing picture of Inupiaq culture, then, was of its static nature - something that had happened 'back then' rather than something that was happening now. Did this mean that the people living in the region now were like a cast of actors who had run out of lines?" - p. 267</blockquote>
<br />
Ongtooguk focuses on creating study materials that allow American Native students to see themselves in the future. This future oriented imagination is an important part of the continuity of community identity, and therefore of their cultural survival as a distinct group, and almost certainly of their capability to thrive again in the future.<br />
<br />
It is worth summarising these insights once more:<br />
<br />
<b>1. Racism is institutionalised and structural, not just a question of conscious prejudice<br />2. White people should develop a positive White racial identity that does not deny the reality and history of racism, but acknowledges, addresses, and helps to dismantle it<br />3. Personal identity formation is a complex process influenced by highly individual combinations of intersectionality<br />4. The survival and prosperity of a community lies not only in preserving its past, but also in connecting to its present and actively imagining its future</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
This has without doubt been an eye opener for me. From a practical point of view, and from my personal perspective as a middle class White male, the second point is a clear call to action. thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-20208135724705894482018-07-22T22:27:00.001+01:002018-07-22T22:27:43.703+01:00Detecting Similarity of Textual Style and Content<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><a href="https://github.com/thundercomb/pytorch-char-rnn/blob/master/similarity.py">similarity.py</a></span> performs rudimentary detection of textual style and content. Basically it uses the predictive capability of the <span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><a href="https://github.com/thundercomb/pytorch-char-rnn">pytorch-char-rnn</a></span> autoencoder to check the likelihood of a character in a provided input text against character sequences in an existing trained model (trained on some other text).<br />
<br />
The average of likelihoods across the provided input text is calculated to provide a broad indication of the similarity of style and content of the input text compared to the original text on which the model was trained. In particular it provides a similarity score as a <i>percentage</i> (higher means more similar).<br />
<br />
For example a sentence from the original modelled text should come up with high similarity, typically scoring over 97%. A text in the same language, but written in a very different style might score over 90% but not as high.<br />
<br />
An input text written in a totally different language should score significantly lower, eg. 80-85%. If the texts do not share all the textual characters, for example the Turkish alphabet compared to the Roman alphabet, the score will drop even more.<br />
<br />
Under the hood the script actually detects <i>variance</i>, and then converts it to a similarity score for convenience. The lower the detected variance, the more like the original text the provided input text is.<br />
<br />
The script is provided as part of my <span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><a href="https://github.com/thundercomb/pytorch-char-rnn">pytorch-char-rnn</a></span> repo.<br />
<br />
Below are some examples:<br />
<br />
<b>Example 1:</b> Compare English text from Jane Austen's Persuasion with a model trained on Jane Austen's fiction.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">python2.7 similarity.py \</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">--text "Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour" \</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">--checkpoint checkpoints/austen_checkpoint.cp \</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">--charfile data/austen_chars.pkl </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Parameters found at checkpoints/austen_checkpoint.cp... loading</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>Detected similarity: 99.15%</b></span><br />
<br />
<b>Example 2:</b> Compare German text from the Bible with a model trained on Jane Austen's fiction.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">python2.7 similarity.py \</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">--text "Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde. Und die Erde war wüst und leer, und es war finster auf der Tiefe; und der Geist Gottes schwebte auf dem Wasser." \</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">--checkpoint checkpoints/austen_checkpoint.cp \</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">--charfile data/austen_chars.pkl </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Parameters found at checkpoints/austen_checkpoint.cp... loading</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>Detected similarity: 83.84%</b></span><br />
<br />
In principle the technique can be improved by creating a larger window for comparison. In other words not just character by character, but character sequence by character sequence across a moving window. A bit like LSTM in reverse. It isn't clear whether all the information is available to make this possible, I'll have to do a bit of digging around the model's saved state.<br />
<br />
I'll leave that as an exercise for another day.thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-14990857967937384622018-02-19T17:21:00.000+00:002018-02-19T18:50:03.038+00:00Syntax Char RNN for Context Encoding<h1>
Summary</h1>
<br />
Syntax Char RNN attempts to enhance naive Char RNN by encoding syntactic context along with character information. The result is an algorithm that, in selected cases, learns faster and delivers more interesting results than naive Char RNN. The relevant cases appear to be those that allow for more accurate parsing of the text.<br />
<br />
This blog post describes the general idea, some findings, and a link to the code.<br />
<br />
<h1>
Background</h1>
<br />
<div>
As both a writer and a technologist I have for some time now been interested in the ability to programmatically generate language that is at once creative and meaningful. Two of my previous projects in this context are <a href="http://poetrydb.org/">Poetry DB</a> and <a href="http://poemcrunch.com/">Poem Crunch</a>. I also <a href="http://dtassbook.com/">wrote a novel</a> that incorporates words and phrases generated by a Char RNN that had been trained on the story's text.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<a href="http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/">Andrej Karpathy's now-famous article</a> on RNNs was a revelation when I first read it. It proved that Deep Learning can generate text in ways that at first appear almost magical. It has afforded me a lot of fun ever since.<br />
<br />
However, in the context of generating meaningful text and language creatively, it ultimately falls short.<br />
<br />
It is helpful to remember that Char RNN is essentially an <i><a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/autoencoders-are-essential-in-deep-neural-nets-f0365b2d1d7c">autoencoder</a></i>. Given a particular piece of text, let's say this blog post, training will build a model that, if fully successful, will be able to reproduce the original text exactly: it will generate exact copies of the original text from which it learned and created the model.<br />
<br />
The reason for Char RNN's widespread employment in fun creative projects is its ability to introduce novelty by either tuning the temperature hyperparameter or, more commonly, as a side effect of imperfect learning.<br />
<br />
To be sure, imperfect learning is the norm rather than the exception. For any text beyond a certain level of complexity, a naive Char RNN will reach a point during training when it can no longer improve its model.<br />
<br />
This naturally leads to the question, can the Char RNN algorithm be enhanced?<br />
<br />
<h1>
Context encoding</h1>
<br />
Char RNN encodes individual characters, and the sequence of encodings can be learned using for example LSTM units to remember a certain length of sequence. Aside from the relative position of the character encodings, the neural network has no further contextual information to help it 'remember'.<br />
<br />
What would happen if we added other contextual information to the character encodings? Would it learn better?<br />
<br />
<h1>
Parts of Speech</h1>
<br />
<div>
Parts of Speech are structural parts of sentences and a fairly intuitive candidate for the problem at hand. Although POS parsing hasn't always been very accurate, <a href="https://research.googleblog.com/2016/05/announcing-syntaxnet-worlds-most.html">SyntaxNet</a> and <a href="https://spacy.io/usage/facts-figures">spaCy</a> have been setting new benchmarks in recent times. Even so, accuracy might still be a problem (more on that later), but they certainly hold promise.</div>
<br />
So how does POS parsing fit into Char RNN?<br />
<br />
Let's take a look at the following sentence and its constituent parts.<br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">Bob bakes a cake
PROPN VERB DET NOUN
</code></pre>
<br />
We can see that the 'a' in 'bakes' and the 'a' in 'cake' are contextually different. The first is part of a verb and the second is part of a noun. If we were able to encode the character and POS together, for each character across the whole text, we would cover a sequence longer than is practical for an LSTM to remember. In other words, the model would understand syntactical structure in a more generic sense than with naive Char RNN.<br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">B + PROPN
o + PROPN
b + PROPN
[space] + SPACE
b + VERB
a + VERB
k + VERB
e + VERB
s + VERB
[space] + SPACE
a + DET
[space] + SPACE
c + NOUN
a + NOUN
k + NOUN
e + NOUN
</code></pre>
<br />
One way of achieving this is, for each character, to create a new composite unit that captures both the character and the pos type. So if we create separate encodings for the characters and the pos categories, eg. a = 1, b = 2, etc. and NOUN = 1, VERB = 2 etc., then we could do something along the lines of:<br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">a + VERB = 1 + 2 = 3</code></pre>
<br />
However this creates a new problem, namely one of duplicates. I.e. we'd end up with lots of cases that have the same final encoding (in this example, the final encoding is 3):<br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">a + VERB = 1 + 2 = 3
and
b + NOUN = 2 + 1 = 3</code></pre>
<br />
A better solution would have to ensure the encodings are completely separate before sorting them back into consecutive indexes to ensure uniqueness.<br />
<br />
But the <i>real</i> problem with this solution is that, although we now have an encoding influenced by both characters <i>and</i> types, we've lost each unit's individual quality. In other words, the importance of a character encoded along with one type of POS unit is no longer properly weighted against a character of a different type of POS unit. Instead, it has simply become a composite type of its own.<br />
<br />
An improved approach would be to encode both the character and the type as independent data, albeit of the same unit, and let the LSTM do the rest.<br />
<br />
A Syntax Char RNN tensor might then look as follows:<br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">[[ char, type ], [ char, type ] ... ]</code></pre>
<br />
However this heavily favours the type encoding over the character encoding, which in turn will skew the weightings.
<br />
A more balanced encoding might be:<br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">[[ char, char, char, char, type ], [ char, char, char, type ] ... ]
word 1 word 2
</code></pre>
<br />
A sense of unevenness remains, because some words are longer than others: why should each word receive just one type encoding? This is something left as a refactoring improvement for later.<br />
<br />
For the time being, experimentation showed a kind of optimum results from adding two type encodings per word, as follows:<br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">[[ char, char, char, char, type, type ], [ char, char, char, type, type ] ... ]
word 1 word 2</code></pre>
<br />
<h1>
Results</h1>
<br />
Char RNN can generate surprising turns of phrase and novel combinations of words, but longer extracts often read like gibberish. The hope was that context encoding might improve this state of affairs by strengthening the overall sentence structure represented in the model.<br />
<br />
The SyntaxNet installation also installs DRAGNN and a language parsing model. Due to problems I had getting consistent results from SyntaxNet, I eventually settled on DRAGNN instead.<br />
<br />
<h3>
DRAGNN</h3>
<br />
<h4>
Shakespeare</h4>
<br />
The first benchmark was based on the <a href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jcjohnson/torch-rnn/master/data/tiny-shakespeare.txt">Tiny Shakespeare</a> corpus. The following snippets are from checkpoints with equivalent validation loss, trained using the same hyperparameters (allowing for the proportionately longer sequence length in the Syntax Char RNN due to the additional type encodings).<br />
<br />
<b>Naive Char RNN (temperature: 0.8)</b><br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">Capulet:
with him; there were not high against the nurse,
and i, as well as half of his brother should prove,
thou ask my father's power,
in this life of the world command betwixt
of greep and displent, rup in manrown:
and thou dost command thy stors; and take our woes,
that star in the sea is well.
Now is a cunning four gloves of all violer on
himself and my friend traitor's jointure by us
to be holy part that were her horse:' the miles
for this seat with me in the island from scards
shall have stone your highness' weech with you.
And unjust while i was born to take
with hardness from my cousin when i forget from me.
Shepherd:
the unrelery, reign'd with a virtuous tongue,
to blush of his harms, and as sweet, if they
cape of england's purple say well true song hence,
shall appetite straight hath the law with mine?
The composition should know thy face of my heart!
Second huntsman:
i know him, and with my chast my mother.
</code></pre>
<b><br /></b>
<b>Syntax Char RNN (DRAGNN parser; temperature: 0.8)</b><br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">ITrue words, his son, fair despair is, and the guard brother;
always you tell,
though to see so many trees; i come!
Pedant:
would you have no redress of joy of the march?
I, what i come up.
Menenius:
i not a gentlemen cred; and as this old farewell.
Lucio:
sir, she's a duke.
Capulet:
so straight is the tyrant, shape, madness, he's weigh;
which of the confail that e'er said and gentle sick ear together,
we will see the backs.
</code></pre>
<br />
<i>Note:</i> Syntax Char RNN output has been reformatted, but remains otherwise unaltered<br />
<br />
<br />
I think it is easy to agree that the naive Char RNN generated text reads significantly better. There is a somewhat interesting punchiness to Syntax Char RNN's shorter dialogue sections, but that's about all it has in its favour.<br />
<br />
This was, frankly, disappointing.<br />
<br />
However, there is a reasonable chance that inaccurate parsing could be influencing the results. The DRAGNN model probably doesn't generalise well to Shakespearian English.<br />
<br />
Would prose offer a better benchmark?<br />
<br />
<h4>
Jane Austen</h4>
<br />
The works of Jane Austen was used next. They would almost certainly parse more accurately.<br />
<br />
The results this time were rather surprising. Syntax Char RNN raced away, reducing its loss pretty quickly. After one hour and fifteen minutes on my laptop CPU, Syntax Char RNN hit a temporary minimum of 0.771.<br />
<br />
After the same time frame and with the same hyperparameters (again allowing for a slight adjustment of sequence length due to the extra type encodings for POS), naive Char RNN went as low as 1.025 - still nowhere near the Syntax Char RNN checkpoint.<br />
<br />
I left it running overnight and it still reached only 0.944 after just over 8 hours.<br />
<br />
This was interesting.<br />
<br />
What about the quality of the generated text?<br />
<br />
<b>Naive Char RNN (loss: 0.944; temperature: 0.8):</b><br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">"i beg young man, nothing of myself, for i have promised to be whole
that his usual observations meant to rain to yourself, married more word
--i believe i am sure you will allow that they were often communication
of it, but that in that in as he was in the power of a hasty announte
by print, to have given me my friend; but at all," said lady russell,
so then assisted to his shall there must preferred them very ill--
considertaryingly, very pleasant, for my having forming fresh person's
honour that you bowed really satisfied we go.
</code></pre>
<br />
<b>Syntax Char RNN (DRAGNN parser; loss: 0.771; temperature: 0.8)</b><br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">Mr. Darcy was quite unrescrailous of place, which and want to carry
by the attractions and fair at length; and if harriet's acknowledge by
engaging it for a sorry day he must produce ithim. I could be
mr. Knightley's compray of marrying in the rest of the disposition,
and i was particularly successful. He has been much like her sister
to julia, i wishin she believed he may want pause by the room with
the same shade. "" but indeed you had obliged to endeavour to concern
of a marriage of his yielding.""</code></pre>
<br />
<br />
The results are roughly comparable, neither are special. If pushed I'd say I prefer the latter over the former, it reads a little better.<br />
<br />
<h3>
spaCy</h3>
<br />
<a href="http://spacy.io/">spaCy</a> is an amazing set of tools made available by the good folks at <a href="http://explosion.ai/">Explosion AI</a>. Unlike SyntaxNet, or even DRAGNN, it is a breeze to use.<br />
<br />
The spaCy parser's data had an interesting effect on training. A training run with DRAGNN data reached a loss of 0.708 after just under 6 hours, then failed to go lower for the rest of its total run of over 16 hours. The spaCy parser achieved 0.686 after 5.5 hours, and its best loss of 0.650 after just under 8 hours.<br />
<br />
Here are snippets from the relevant checkpoints.<br />
<br />
<b>Syntax Char RNN (spaCy parser; loss: 0.686; temperature: 0.8)</b><br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">You beg your sudden affections and probability, that they could not
be extended to herself, but his behaviour to her feelings were
very happy as miss woodhouse--she was confusion to every power
sentence, and it would be a sad trial of bannet, but even a great
hours of her manners and her mother was not some partiality of
malling to her from her something considering at mr. Knightley,
she spoke for the room or her brother.</code></pre>
<br />
<b>Syntax Char RNN (spaCy parser; loss: 0.650; temperature: 0.8)</b><br />
<br />
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">In the room, when mrs. Elton could be too bad for friendship by it
to their coming again.
She was so much as she was striving into safety, and he knew
that she had settled the moment which she said," i can not belong
at hints, and where you have, as possible to your side,
i never left you from it in devonshire; and if i am rendered
as a woman," said emma," they are silent," said elizabeth,"
because he has been standing to darcy, and marianne?"" oh!
No, no, well," said fitzwilliam, when the subject was for a week,
that no time must satisfy her judgment.</code></pre>
<br />
<i>Note: </i>Lines have been wrapped, but formatting remains otherwise unaltered<br />
<br />
Both are quite readable, except for the injudicious use of quote marks (a problem that is most likely the result of redundant spaces picked up during pre-processing).<br />
<br />
Even allowing for over-fitting, it is quite clear that in the case of Jane Austen's text the snippets generated by Syntax Char RNN are more readable and cohesive than those from naive Char RNN. Among the former, those produced via spaCy also show a marked improvement over the results produced via DRAGNN parsing.<br />
<br />
Since the only significant difference between the Syntax Char RNN runs trained on Jane Austen texts were the data from the two different parsers, these findings suggest that <i>accuracy of parsing</i> between DRAGNN and spaCy likely accounts for the difference in performance and readability between the runs. This in turn suggests that a lack of accurate parsing accounts for the poor results achieved with Tiny Shakespeare.<br />
<br />
<h1>
Code</h1>
<br />
<div>
The code is <a href="http://github.com/thundercomb/pytorch-syntax-char-rnn">available on github</a>. Comments and suggestions welcome.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The majority of work was around pre-processing (<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">parse</span> and <span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">prepare</span>). For training and sampling I was able to build on the existing <a href="https://gist.github.com/kastnerkyle/e7ca55807a7f4db811d830acf4ee75aa">Pytorch Char RNN by Kyle Kastner</a> (which in turn credits Kyle McDonald, Laurent Dinh and Sean Robertson). I altered the script interface, but the core process remains largely the same. </div>
<br />
<h1>
Concerns and Caveats</h1>
<br />
The approach and implementation isn't ideal. Below are some considerations.<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Pre-processing is complex. It has to make assumptions about the parser input, bring character and syntax encoding together, and try to remove data that can skew the weightings.</li>
<li>Pre-processing can be slow. It can take anything from a few seconds to tens of minutes, depending on the size and complexity of the file.</li>
<li>POS parsing is imperfect. The results suggest spaCy is doing a better job than DRAGNN, but even at its best it will have errors.</li>
<li>Applicability is limited to text that is at least consistently parseable by an available parser. Poetry, archaic language, social media messages etc. likely fall outside this scope.</li>
<li>Some POS units are known to cause skewing by introducing extra spaces. For example "Mary's" becomes:</li>
</ol>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">Mary : PROPN++NNP
's : PART++POS</code></pre>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
All punctuation are separated out as well, for example:</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<pre style="background: #f0f0f0; border: 1px dashed #cccccc; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; height: auto; line-height: 20px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 99%;"><code style="color: black; word-wrap: normal;">, : PUNCT++,</code></pre>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The effect is that these parts of speech remain tokenised when encoded, resulting in redundant spaces on one side of each token. Unless they are subsequently removed, spaces become overrepresented in the resulting encoding, affecting weightings for all character representations ever so slightly. The code manages to remove some of these redundant spaces - with occasional side effects - but not all.</blockquote>
<h1>
To Do</h1>
<br />
Avenues to investigate, features to add.
<br />
<ol>
<li>Reduce the number of redundant space encodings</li>
<li>Calculate a more granular weighting for type</li>
<li>Investigate further candidates for context encoding, over and above syntax</li>
<li>Investigate more elegant ways of grouping encoding contexts</li>
<li>Add validation loss for comparison to training loss</li>
<li>Estimate parser accuracy for a specific text</li>
<li>Run on GPUs!</li>
</ol>
<h1>
Conclusion</h1>
<br />
The findings suggest that in some cases where parsing is accurate and consistent, Syntax Char RNN trains faster and achieves better results than naive Char RNN. This lends support to the hypothesis that accurate contextual encodings, over and above syntactic Parts of Speech, can improve Char RNN's autoencoding.<br />
<br />
While they come with several caveats, the findings nonetheless warrant further experimentation and clarification.thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-73251583195546206572017-01-01T15:52:00.003+00:002017-01-01T22:07:52.842+00:002016 - The Year in Books2016. There may never be another year during which I read so many of the Great Classic Novels for the first time. Let me list them: <i>War and Peace</i> by Leo Tolstoy, <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i> by Fyodor Dostoyevksy, <i>Ulysses</i> by James Joyce, <i>Don Quixote</i> by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, <i>Moby Dick</i> by Herman Melville, and <i>The Mill on the Floss</i> by George Eliot. I also chucked in a few of the great plays for good measure: <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>King Lear</i>, and <i>Twelfth Night </i>(this one I'd read before, and remains a favourite), all by William Shakespeare.<br />
<br />
As a bonus, I also had the chance to read two of the most beautiful and startling philosophical treatises: <i>On Liberty</i> by John Stuart Mill and <i>On the Genealogy of Morals </i>by Friedrich Nietzsche.<br />
<br />
But back to the novels. It is difficult to do justice to any those great works individually, let alone all of them. Their collective influence on arts and culture in the West is practically immeasurable.<br />
<br />
The epic scope and narrative invention of <i>War and Peace</i> is legendary, but it is even more breathtaking when actually read. The array of characters, the depth of their characterisation and the movements of history combine to provide rich nourishment for the soul, and reveals the sophistication and nobility of the Russian spirit.<br />
<br />
<i>Moby Dick</i> was a real surprise for its intellectual ambition. One expects adventure on the high seas, and instead is given something much more: the enterprising American spirit as seen at once through its cultural links to Europe and Britain (Shakespeare looms large) and forging its own way, expanding, pondering the nature of its own spirit.<br />
<br />
<i>Ulysses</i> is a juggernaut of linguistic invention and deliberate intellectual playfulness. It is perhaps the least accessible of these great classics, and perhaps also the most divisive, but its intellectual rewards are great and in a sense it remains ahead of the times.<br />
<br />
But it is <i>Don Quixote</i> for which I want to reserve the most emphatic recommendation, in part because I believe it is the most easily overlooked, and too readily dismissed as antiquated or irrelevant. <i>It is not</i>. It is unique among nearly all of the great classics for being truly, laugh-out-loud funny. More than 400 years have not dimmed the humour. How much funnier still it must have seemed to contemporaneous ears who understood the subtler references that are lost to time and translation.<br />
<br />
<i>Don Quixote</i> is not only funny, but also full of pathos. The main character centres in himself something of both the ridiculous and the sublime, and while we are treated to the former most of the time, the shape of the latter emerges over time, especially in <i>Volume 2</i>.<br />
<br />
Personally, I found <i>Volume 2</i> to be even better than <i>Volume 1</i>. Its latter two thirds are as funny as anything in <i>Volume 1</i>, and yet it also treats of more serious matters. I particularly marvelled at and appreciated the story's innovative reference to characters' knowledge of the first volume, published ten years before it. This is an ingenious device that seems more at home in the 20th or even the 21st century than in a novel from the early 17th century. If there can be any doubt that <i>Don Quixote</i> is inventive and linguistically imaginative, this fact alone should dispel it at once.<br />
<br />
It is a pity that English readers (myself included) cannot appreciate the full craftiness of the language at work, in particular the contrast between the deluded knight errant's Old Castillian and his compatriots' modern Spanish.<br />
<br />
All the other classics seem to take themselves a bit too seriously when we compare them to <i>Don Quixote</i>, and it is only when placed next to Shakespeare that we find a similar use of comic devices in great literature.<br />
<br />
2016 marked 400 years since Shakespeare died, and all year long his works were commemorated with performances that are set to continue well into the New Year and beyond. How many of us knew that 2016 also marked 400 years since the passing of Miguel de Cervantes, the author of <i>Don Quixote</i>?<br />
<br />
Remedy that neglect immediately, and place <i>Don Quixote</i> on your reading list!thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-39146139100461470702017-01-01T12:49:00.003+00:002017-01-01T15:55:08.695+00:002016: A Torch Gone OutLet's wipe away 2016, but first, let's set the record straight. Was it really such a bad year? Such a sad year? Yes! It's not just the celebrities who passed away - although that had a lot to do with it.<br />
<br />
Think about it: a terrible war in Syria, thousands upon thousands of refugees, threats of terrorism, and the sense that politics was slowly turning on its head: first Brexit, then Trump. With these undercurrents churning in our collective unconsciousness, a bit as if the poles are slowly switching, suddenly many of our culture icons passed away. In a weird and distorted fashion, they must have seemed like the visible casualties of a known but unseen undercurrent. Vulnerable heroes who were unable to bear up any longer.<br />
<br />
Or another sign of the uncertainty of our collective future. The old guard, whose hopes can no longer sustain this new world, leaving us to work it out.<br />
<br />
Either way don't believe <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38329740">the statistics</a>. It's not about the numbers. It's the context as much as the individual stories. <br />
<br />
First David Bowie died. Pop stars' cultural reach are almost unparalleled, but David Bowie isn't just a Justin Bieber or a Lady Gaga. He changed the rules of pop. Among pop stars he was an immortal.<br />
<br />
And then there's Prince. And George Michael. Losing both of them is more than a mere annual tally of statistics. As individual stars they are almost peerless. If you speak to those who came of age in the 80s and ask them to pick their top 10 male solo artists, the triumvirate of Michael Jackson, Prince, and George Michael will make almost every list. In fact, many might pick them in their top 5, maybe even their top 3. Michael passed away in 2009, now we've lost the other two. How is that not traumatic?<br />
<br />
So let's forget the whole statistical mumbo jumbo, there are simply not that many David Bowies, Princes, and George Michaels to go around.<br />
<br />
And dare I mention one more hidden knot in this already knotted ball: <i>Freddie Mercury</i>. Many are still mourning the man who died 25 years ago. Who can forget David Bowie and George Michael singing for him. Feeling the pressure, anyone?<br />
<br />
<i>Anyone?</i><br />
<br />
We haven't even mentioned Leonard Cohen yet. Sure, his reach wasn't as broad as those pop singers', but on a song-by-song basis it went deeper. Cohen's was an intimate art. His poetic approach ensured that he touched the soul. His career spanned six decades. Who is left alive from that generation, a singer songwriter in the same league? A few, perhaps: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Paul Simon. Not many.<br />
<br />
I can't speak for others, but there was certainly a feeling of "too soon" in the passing of many other beloved actors and cultural pioneers: Alan Rickman, Zaha Hadid, and yes, Carrie Fisher. And a sense of disbelief that some of the names and faces who have been around ever so long should have gone away: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Gene Wilder, Nancy Reagan, Richard Adams.<br />
<br />
There is no doubt, however, that it is the wider political and social unease that has amplified the significance of those passing. And this confluence of factors means that 2016 really felt like the moment when a torch went out.<br />
<br />
The old guard are passing the gate, and those of us left behind can only wonder: where do we go from here?thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-89672841486652979542016-06-30T22:26:00.000+01:002016-08-30T11:24:04.853+01:00On Brexit and FreedomsIn this hyperstrange post-Brexit world I suddenly have many questions, and few answers. The landscape seems to change every day. One thing, however, is clear and that is that a lot more people are talking about politics in the UK than I've ever seen. It is my belief that, if good is to come of the referendum outcome, we must use the political consciousness that has been raised in its aftermath as an opportunity to enquire deeper and renew our understanding of what living in society is about. We must encourage conversations, not just with those that agree with us, but also with those we didn't know feel different from ourselves.<br />
<br />
Rhetoric aside, what prompted me to write this post was actually a chance rereading (or listening, in this case) today of the first chapter of John Stuart Mill's classic text<i> On Liberty.</i> Halfway into the first chapter I realised that the social and political context he was writing in sounds eerily familiar. Here is one quote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"In England, from the peculiar circumstances of our political history, though the yoke of opinion is perhaps heavier, that of law is lighter, than in most other countries of Europe; and there is considerable jealousy of direct interference, by the legislative or the executive power, with private conduct ... The majority have not yet learnt to feel the power of the government their power, or its opinions their opinions." (p. 16)</blockquote>
Unhappy with government interference, the British?? Who would have thought! And bear in mind Mill wrote this in 1859, over 150 years ago.<br />
<br />
Ten pages later, it sounds almost exactly like a version of Big Brother and the increasing surveillance of the internet (by the government!):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"there is also in the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual, both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation: and as the tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society, and diminish the power of the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils which tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary, to grow more and more formidable." (p. 26)</blockquote>
Wow! So if individual liberties are not a given, then surely we should have been a bit more ... But I'm getting ahead of myself.<br />
<br />
Those who genuinely care about freedom have in recent years become complacent. Society at large has become bored because
British politics is notoriously boring, and elections generally seem to be a choice between
Tweedledum and Tweedledee.<br />
<br />
No more! This referendum has put the cat
among the pigeons.<br />
<br />
Post-Brexit some feel they have gained "sovereignty" and others feel they have lost certain "freedoms".<br />
<br />
Because of the stark differences in the two choices, some may go so far as to say that the referendum's outcome is nothing but a "tyranny of the majority", a will of one section of society imposed on the other. <br />
<br />
Mill says the following:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"... the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is
still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of
the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when
society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate
individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannising are not restricted
to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries.
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong
mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which
it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable
than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually
upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape,
penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the
soul itself." (p. 8)</blockquote>
What Mill is talking about is social tyranny, not the outcomes of political democracy. Civilised democracy, surely, is not mere populism. The referendum is advisory, and it is up to the representatives of society to follow up on the outcome in a way that is in the interests of society at large. That is their duty. And yet when many bemoan the fact that the referendum took place at all, that it was all just an internal party squabble, the argument could be made that those representatives were not making reponsible decisions from the outset. The farcical fallout has eroded the line between popular sentiment and responsible politics in a way that has taken almost everyone by surprise.<br />
<br />
Yet this situation came about at least in part because of a laxness to campaign with conviction in favour of Remain. The Remain campaign - the side who now feels that freedoms are in clear and present danger of being lost - ran a decidedly <i>lacklustre</i> campaign. <br />
<br />
What would Mill have thought about Brexit? The simple answer might be that he would be livid; but it's not quite so simple. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." (p. 18)</blockquote>
Adjust that sentence a little, to refer to a nation and its borders, rather than an individual and his body, and you have the argument that the Leave campaign has been making: sovereignty, independence from Europe, control over borders. In a word: <i>freedom!</i><br />
<br />
Of course, Mill was speaking about <i>individual</i> freedom, but many in the Leave campaign felt themselves united as if they were more than just an individual stating a preference. The individual on a national scale.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, take this quote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest." (p. 23)</blockquote>
It could be argued that the Leave camp voted to deprive the Remain camp of freedoms that the Remain camp held to be essential to their interests, and by extension individual health. But Leave would perhaps rightly respond by saying, well, we've been neglected for decades and various actions taken by selfish leaders in London has hurt <i>our</i> spiritual health, for decades.<br />
<br />
At the heart of the conversation are two overlapping states of inclusion. There is the EU, a kind of "virtual state", and the UK, a national state. <br />
<br />
What about those UK citizens and residents for whom the "body" of their chosen
state is not simply the nation state, but also the "virtual state" -
the EU? And what of those from other nation states within the EU, who live within the borders of the British nation state because they want to be there, who had the freedom of movement, but not the freedom to vote? It is all a bit confusing, but clearly they will feel their freedoms associated with
movement and association are in serious danger of being
truncated. They will feel sad, stressed, angry, unhappy. Something they had has been taken away.<br />
<br />
How can this knot be untied?<br />
<br />
What's clear to me is that a simple solution is not available, and the after effects of this referendum will be felt for a long, long time. We've become complacent, but now is the opportunity to go back to understand and grapple with the concepts that underpin this society, and start conversations with each other to start making this world a better place again - <i>for all</i>.<br />
<br />
Mill's <i><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm">On Liberty</a> </i>is a wonderfully articulate defense of freedom, and even a single chapter provides plenty of food for thought.thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-33379349550714568192016-04-30T23:26:00.002+01:002016-04-30T23:27:15.515+01:00The Unconscious: Lacan vs FreudSince approaching Freud's Unconscious via Lacan in recent times, I have come to appreciate the power and flexibility of an Unconscious that is "structured like a language", and in which the "exteriority of the symbolic" makes the Unconscious also transindividual.<br />
<br />
Although a direct comparison from any one point in time in either's men's careers is always provisional, due to their ever-evolving theories of the Unconscious, it was nevertheless grounding to read again an early lecture by Freud on psycho-analysis today (from "Five Lectures on Psycho-analysis", 1909). He reviews the early development of his theories, starting with Joseph Breuer's hypnosis experiments. <br />
<br />
It is here that we encounter a more sensuous, energetic version of the Unconscious with an obvious intuitive appeal:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
... in one and the same individual there can be several mental groupings, which can remain more or less independent of one another, which can 'know nothing' of one another, and which can alternate with one another in their hold upon the consciousness [..] If, where a splitting of the personality such as this has occurred, consciousness remains attached regularly to one of the two states, we call it the <i>conscious</i> mental state and the other, which is detached from it, the <i>unconscious</i> one. (p. 43)</blockquote>
<br />
It is as if there are two rivers, both active, but at any one point the one is subterranean and the other in plain sight. Yet both influence each other, due to their connected volumes and velocity.<br />
<br />
If we try to find a metaphor that is closer to Lacan's concept of <i>signifying chains</i> we must perhaps compromise on something like electricity, the movement of electrons, and the logic gates of electronics.<br />
<br />
Yet another interesting, but as yet unexplored metaphor, might be that of linked quantum states.<br />
<br />
I'll leave that one for another day.thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-81935809298846012982016-03-06T12:22:00.003+00:002016-03-09T07:52:57.209+00:00Can Interactive Fiction be Improved?Like many readers old enough to remember the 80s, I have fond memories of the <i>"Choose Your Own Adventure"</i> series of books, as well as their more sophisticated cousins, adventure gamebooks like <i>"The Way of the Tiger"</i> and <i>"Lone Wolf"</i>. So when I recently looked into interactive fiction again I had high hopes that the genre had really been brought into the 21st century.<br />
<br />
I wasn't entirely disappointed. Once upon a time an author would have had to make do with simplistic platform engines, or even write one herself. These days the developer has a much slicker experience thanks to the likes of <a href="http://inform7.com/">Inform</a> and <a href="http://ccxvii.net/spatterlight/">Spatterlight</a>. The author can focus on writing a good story with rich options, rather than working around the system.<br />
<br />
On the down side, however, as a would-be-reader-slash-player I found the interfaces to be rather clunky. As a power user of <i>*nix</i> style terminals, typing in commands such as "look" and "go" and "<object>" will drive me insane very quickly. I expect tab completion, shortcuts, custom hacks, and quite frankly having the option of moving forward by doing nothing at all. Programmers are lazy.<br />
<br />
Clearly, this is in part due to the genre's roots, a throwback to the ink-and-paper world of physical books. So I've been wondering, what if the interactive text interface doesn't try to be an interactive book? Because, given the choice of reading through reams of text, or navigating a little character across colourful, scenic screens and interacting with other characters visually, most people choose the latter. It's a stark choice. Hence the popularity of gaming as we know it, while interactive fiction is comparatively languishing. <br />
<br />
What if there was a middle ground? Imagine a game where the interface can be discovered via tab completions, as well as clever command combos, where those behaviours actually prove to be <i>more efficient</i> than walking through various screens. Could that not attract some gamers back into the world of text adventures, while opening new possibilities for non-gamers?<br />
<br />
If this sounds farfetched, consider the choice a <i>*nix</i> user makes every time he or she fires up a terminal to execute a complex set of commands, versus the same outcome achieved in a Windows world. The terminal experience has a number of advantages: command-discovery, accuracy, programmability, repeatability. That's not to say window interfaces don't have strengths, they certainly do! But most power users I know have learned to love the terminal, even on Windows.<br />
<br />
My question is simply this: can the strengths of terminal command line interfaces be leveraged to create compelling interactive fiction?<br />
<br />
Perhaps if we did, we wouldn't actually call it interactive fiction anymore, instead it would have the look of fiction, the intuition of programming, and the responsiveness of gaming.<br />
<br />
And that's a triple win.thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-3321668779416882862016-02-07T12:54:00.001+00:002016-02-07T21:50:35.560+00:00What Shakespeare has in Common with Software DevelopmentShakespeare is widely regarded as the world's leading playwright in English, and perhaps any language. Such is his influence that phrases and ideas coined by him at the turn of the 17th century still live on in our colloquial speech today. Romeo and Juliet is shorthand for passionate, ill-fated love, and quotable lines from his works permeate our treasure trove of idioms and phrases. <br />
<br />
What is perhaps less well known is that many of Shakespeare's plays have no definitive version. Take "Hamlet", for instance. There is the famous First Folio version, compiled and published seven years after his death, and there is the First Quarto version, a.k.a. the Bad Quarto, and then also the Second Quarto version. None of these versions are considered 100% definitive. Edited versions usually combine parts of each to present the modern reader with the most feasible "Hamlet", and even these are subject to change.<br />
<br />
How did this happen? So many details about that time have been lost to history that it is difficult for us to reconstruct a real sequence of events from the remaining evidence. There are entire books written to argue one case or another, but consider that some people even dispute William Shakespeare's authorship, then it is clear that we are on shaky ground from the get-go. <br />
<br />
Personally, I've come to a different view while mulling over an under appreciated ingredient of Shakespeare's genius, an aspect that has something in common with software engineering - especially <i>agile development</i>.<br />
<br />
Shakespeare wasn't just a writer, he was also an actor and part-owner of the theatre company the<i> Lord Chamberlain's Men</i> (later the<i> King's Men</i>). I find it useful to think of his plays as a function not only of Shakespeare's maturing talents as a writer, but also of the needs of the company. Those needs were financial, like any company's, and were directly informed by the success or failure of a particular play in the eyes of the audience of the day, as well as the tastes of their influential patrons.<br />
<br />
It is thus hard to imagine that Shakespeare would just write a single, finished version of Hamlet, tell the actors their lines once-and-for-all and be done with it. As part-owner he had a responsiblity and exposure that went well beyond writing. He would have wanted to make sure the play is as good as it can be, on a continual basis. The company would receive financial feedback, and the company's patron would have his say, and so the day-to-day operations would hone the way the play was performed - if it was performed at all.<br />
<br />
As an actor of second-tier roles he would also have been in a unique position to experience feedback from the audience. I imagine him night after night, observing the audience's reactions, hearing them laugh at the funny parts (or not), seeing them moved or engaged during tragic or passionate moments, and smiling or bored as the case may be during the play or afterwards. He would be thinking of the various stakeholders, of the dramatic value of a particular phrase or scene, of the audience's reactions, and so he might choose to change the lines - add a bit more zing, create more drama, more references to current affairs - who knows? <br />
<br />
Shakespeare's mind would have been working constantly to improve the play and I have no doubt that this is precisely what happened. His plays have a uniquely organic feel to them, as if the action is happening right there, and the actors could step off the stage and mingle with the audience at any moment. By assimilating his audience's emotions and interests he was bringing art closer to the audiences' reality.<br />
<br />
It is this approach of continual improvement, of being tested night after night against a real live audience, that strikes me as being very much in the spirit of agile development. It's a bit like running continuous integration while already in production.<br />
<br />
I would go a step further and suggest that Shakespeare was so canny and pragmatic that, even if he had a successful version of a play, should the political climate change he would be willing to adapt the play again, to cater to his audience and so prolong the play's financial success. If this is so, he may well have found a dramatic architecture that admitted of continual adaptation, just like good software architecture is flexible, and written with ease of maintenance in mind. That would certainly go some way towards explaining his plays' capacity to be continually repurposed for modern audiences.<br />
<br />
To put that achievement into perspective, imagine writing software that is still in demand 400 years later!<br />
<br />
If we take this view it is a bit of a shame that not more of our worthy literary works are "production tested" with a feedback loop that permits continuous improvement. There was a time when serial publication afforded authors some engagement with their readers, and thus to inform the next installment. Nowadays, authors are required to write once, for all time. But in software development we know that this is usually premature, costly, and occasionally disastrous.<br />
<br />
This is the reason that many writers form reading groups with other writers, to permit them a trusted soundboard and source of feedback. But the General Reader is a different beast, whose tastes are not to be tamed so easily. Shakespeare wrote "not for an age, but for all time", and perhaps it's because he wrote <i>not once, but all the time</i>. He understood the value of his users.thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-32343827435353530362015-10-04T23:33:00.003+01:002015-10-04T23:48:38.425+01:00A Look at Ferrante's The Story of the Lost ChildSPOILER ALERT! This post discusses the final novel in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Saga and deals with plot points without warning or discretion. If you haven’t read the series up to the end and do not want plot spoilers, stop reading here.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Introduction</h2>
<br />
So much happens in The Story of the Lost Child and there are so many surprises that a good way to make sense of it is to begin at the end and consider what we know by the final stages of the book. Before I do so, however, a few preliminaries are in order.<br />
<br />
Firstly, Elena analyses her own behaviour, and this layer of analysis illuminates her and others’ behaviour. I will try not to repeat the obvious. Secondly, the final novel veers off into territory I had not anticipated in my <a href="http://thecombedthunderclap.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/towards-reading-of-elena-ferrantes.html">analysis of the first three</a>. I am glad. As a reader I tend to prefer the Lila-centric parts of the novels over the Elena-centric parts of the novels, probably because they are the extraordinary ones. It also means that some of my observations were not conclusive. I will comment on a couple of these, but I won’t harp on about it.<br />
<br />
<h2>
The Lost Child</h2>
<br />
Until Tina’s disappearance, we are led to think of Imma as the lost child, because of her inability to adjust. She is an emotionally lost child. This turns out to be a clever ploy by the author to keep us ensconced in the joy of those Halcyon days before the cruel blow is delivered. Whether intended or not, the care with which Tina was made the focal point of the photoshoot signalled to me a symbolic exchange of destinies and, indeed, I feared for the worst. I had a sleepless night after Michele punched Lila in the face and sensed a terrible tragedy in the lives of the Lila and Enzo. <br />
<br />
Yet by the end of the novel Tina’s fate is magnified in other characters and perhaps in almost all the familiar characters of the neightbourhood. Lila and Gennaro are both lost children. Gennaro, like Imma, is emotionally lost and weak willed. He never really grows up. Elena treats him like a stupid boy at the very start of book one. Lila herself is a lost child. Her precocious talents as a child have all stilted and repressed by adult responsibilities, an adult world, through work, through hardship, and now through tragedy. Yet the child inside never gave up, always held fast in some hidden corner. This child held fast to <i>hope</i>, and this hope is for the longest time connected to Elena, whose life was meant to justify Lila’s suffering. Once Elena’s activist efforts in the neighbourhood fail, and especially after Tina disappears, even this hope fades. Lila is disappointed in Elena.<br />
<br />
The truth about Elena’s doll Tina, like a voodoo doll representating Elena, remains hidden inside Lila until the novel’s resolution. At the same time Lila herself remains tucked inside Elena’s soul. This hidden knot binds the two friends for a lifetime, and is the edifice on which the novel is built. Like those Neapolitan churches that come to fascinate Lila, and that commemorate forgotten atrocities, Elena’s story is a literary monument that exists because of the horrible events that caused suffering in their lives.<br />
<br />
To clarify this point, let’s ask a question. Would there have been a story or indeed the need for one, if Lila’s life had proceeded according to her childhood promise? Yes! There would almost certainly have been a need for it, but chances are that she would have written it herself, even if that life unfolded side by side with Elena’s. <br />
<br />
The lost child from Elena’s point of view, therefore, is Lila, and if Lila once admonished Elena for writing “ugly things” (in that second novel that only belatedly gets published, and then to great fanfare) it can be understood from this viewpoint: that Lila’s hidden child wanted <i>beautiful</i> things, and that Lila’s hidden, lost child wanted Elena to transform the world into <i>beautiful</i> things. Instead, Elena merely reflected the ugliness of their world. It is a world from which Lila never tried to escape, trusting Elena would help her to transform it, even if only in literature. Yet in old age, after even Elena disappointed her, she finally shifted out of Elena’s range. Lila’s hidden child is lost first because she is left behind, and second because Elena disappoints her, doesn't help her escape the ugliness. Tina’s disappearance is the symbolic reinforcement, or realisation, of this “lostness” - of being lost. <br />
<br />
Elena suffers in the absence of Lila. It is a type of mourning that refuses acceptance. It is an angry suffering. Acceptance comes only at the very end. Elena’s suffering in the absence of Lila mirrors the suffering Lila felt in the absence of Tina. It is a suffering that results from <i>not knowing</i> whether she is dead or alive. This suffering finds further fertile ground in the imagination of the reader, who knows about Lila’s disappearance from the start, and learns about her tragic life only through the eyes of Elena. As readers we are outraged at Lila’s fate, but also at the fate of all the downtrodden characters. <br />
<br />
The significance of the dolls have a direct connection to the lost child(ren), but I discuss them more fully in the next section. For now, let’s complete the round-up of “lost children” by acknowledging with Elena that, although the Solaras have been almost universally hated, they also did their bit for the neighbourhood, to make it what it is - even its good aspects. Alfonso, Rino, Gigliola, Gino, Bruno are all children who got lost somewhere on the way. They stand for the loss of innocence, of hope, of childhood in general. In their place Elena writes her literary monument that remembers all their lives - not just her and Lila’s.<br />
<br />
More specifically, through the loss of little Tina, Lila’s suffering is the suffering of the whole neighbourhood. By disowning Lila and forgetting, the people in the neighbourhood disown themselves, and thus their redemption becomes truly futile. Lila realises that the neighbourhood cannot be truly changed - not even by her and Elena.<br />
<br />
It is not an optimistic vision, but it is rooted in a reality that has an emotional authenticity that is difficult to dispute.<br />
<br />
<h2>
The Dolls</h2>
<br />
Now that we have considered the Lost Child of the title, what should we make of the dolls and their return at the end? Elena receives the two little dolls from their childhood, Tina and Nu, in an unmarked newspaper package together with her post. No addressee, no return address. <br />
<br />
The first conclusion we can draw is that Lila is alive and well somewhere, which indeed is the possibility that Elena herself entertains:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Maybe those two dolls that had crossed more than half a century and had come all the way to Turin meant only that she was well and loved me” - p. 473.</blockquote>
<br />
We see here Elena’s need for validation and approval on clear display (“she … loved me”), but it is the strong possibility that Lila is alive that is of primary interest to us. Lila could have committed suicide and planned it that way, but it would not be consistent with the lost child who has finally found a new life for herself. That child was too curious and irrepressible. That child, now lost to Elena, has been recovered by Lila unto herself. <br />
<br />
Secondly, it is an admission by Lila of the role - unspoken up to now - Elena has played in providing courage to her in the face of overwhelming fears, such as those she confessed to in the aftermath of the earthquake. When they went up to Don Achille to confront him - one of the scariest moments of their childhood - and Lila looked so brave she was partly brave because Elena was there beside her. <br />
<br />
This fear-courage duality is part of the secret knot of their friendship alluded to in the previous section. It is not just that “Lila has let herself be seen so plainly” (p. 473), but the very knot of their relationship has been made plain. By being made plain it now also loses its power, because Lila has relinquished it. Lila no longer needs Elena to give her courage - she has made a leap, on her own, that we know nothing of.<br />
<br />
Thirdly, by relinquishing it, Lila also releases herself. The suppressed confines of her life finally lifts and she is free. We don’t know anything about it, but we can perhaps imagine her: a cantankerous old woman no one would pay any attention to, yet whose intelligence is still sharp and inquisitive at nearly 70 years of age, and who still has a few years left to live and enjoy life without the neighbourhood, without children, without men, without Elena, without the expectations of her childhood - without even the expectation and intrusion of us as readers (here we are reminded of the contrast between the real author, Elena Ferrante, who prefers to live anonymously rather than riding the wave of fame the way Elena of the novel did for the sake of her career; in other words, Ferrante is more like Lila in this respect).<br />
<br />
The returned dolls means Lila has gone beyond the pale, and beyond even the bounds of Elena’s tale.<br />
<br />
Fourthly, since dolls are often stand-ins for babies in the cultural environment in which several generations of girls have grown up in, the return of the dolls also reflect on the motherhoods of Elena and Lila. Although Lila lost Tina, and Gennaro was a disappointment, she was nevertheless a responsible, dedicated mother - even to Elena’s children until adolescence. Elena was a far better mother than Nino was a father, but she still suffers from her own children’s admonishment that she was too absorbed in her own work. Lila filled this gap. <br />
<br />
By returning the dolls, Lila relinquishes her own role as surrogate mother completely, as well as being mother to Gennaro. Their roles have reversed, and on Elena's side of the fence the story hasn't quite ended. She has three children, plus Lila had made Elena promise all those years ago. Elena is now responsible for Gennaro. <br />
<br />
Fifthly, the loss of those dolls were the stuff of childhood emotions. They chucked each other’s dolls into the cellar in a jealous rivalry, a dynamic pattern that repeated itself over many years. The return of those dolls means the end of that dynamic. No more jealousy, no more rivalry. Elena, however, thrived on that competition, and her career was ignited by it.<br />
<br />
Finally, the timing of the dolls’ return suggests a simultaneous discovery and loss of Lila’s inner child. Elena wanted Lila to hack* into her computer and read the novel. It is not inconceivable that this actually happened, and that Elena’s conclusion to the contrary is simply more evidence of her inability to see coincidences and the connections between events. The novel is finished, and soon after the dolls arrive. Perhaps Lila, herself finally free, read eagerly and realised that what Elena wrote is actually good, even if not exactly <i>beautiful</i>. Lila no longer <i>needs</i> it to be beautiful. She sees something of herself, and perhaps above all she sees Elena. She takes mercy, and frees Elena.<br />
<br />
* Readers may have noticed more than a passing resemblance between Lila’s character and that of Lisbeth Salander. I know that I have.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Elena and Lila</h2>
<br />
Where does this leave Elena? There are many things we don’t know about Elena’s day-to-day life, but she has told us about most of the truly important events. We know that for significant periods she thrived on the competition and inspiration Lila provided. That force has now faded from Elena’s life, and she can enjoy what’s left - children and relative fame - without that pressure, without that interference. Perhaps she can mend her relationships with her children, perhaps Gennaro will take up some of her time. Either way, it is without a doubt the end of an era.<br />
<br />
As for herself, Lila has finally freed herself of the burdens and responsibilities that had taken up her whole life. She gives up Gennaro, she gives up Elena, the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood had given up on her over the years, but she had always been a fixture, an anchor. In the final instance, her energy and inspiration had also gone into the novel we've just read. In this way she served Elena's career, albeit frequently in her own interest. Now, finally, she was free. She who had always been afraid had finally done what she could never do before: be completely independent - even independent of Elena, of the novel. True to her nature, there is no tying her down, and no knowing who she really is. <br />
<br />
<h3>
Nino</h3>
<br />
The Neapolitan saga is full of characters struggling to escape the influence of their parents, only to find themselves emulating them in one way or another. Nino epitomises this theme. He hated and rejected his father throughout his adolescence, yet ended up taking womanising to a whole new level. We saw the first part coming, even if Elena did not. Yet when she finally processes his legacy, she judges him “disappointing”. Of course, Lila got there first and understands the nature of his character all too well. She judges him worse than herself because, she says, he is superficial. Guido Airota makes a separate observation about him, namely that he is “intelligence without tradition”. A talented man without roots, who has nothing to lose, and is all too eager to be <i>someone</i>. At the end of the saga Nino sings his own praises, but those who loved him from close up have all realised that he is an unreliable, lightweight human being.<br />
<br />
What, therefore, should we make of Elena’s longstanding crush on him? She herself realises that she had created a fantasy, and that the person who showed up at her book reading in Milan had nothing to do with that fantasy. They were separate entities. However, fantasy and reality corresponded sometimes. For instance, his behaviour as an adolescent was real. She saw him as cool and untouchable, unaffected by the opinions of those around him. His head was somewhere else. That trait turned out to be a flaw, a disregard for everyone around him, even those who adored him and whom he sporadically loved in return when it suited him.<br />
<br />
He had intelligence, charisma, and good looks. He seemed untouchable, smooth in all situations. When he showed up at the book reading he was a knight in shining armour, rescuing her from the attacks of a stuffy intellectual. What Ferrante is doing, as Nino’s character unfolds in all its mirage-like glory, is turn the literary convention of the hero - reminiscent of, say, Will Ladislaw in Middlemarch - on its head. She is taking a longer view. Book 3 could have ended with Nino willing to reform for the sake of his “true” love for Elena. We could have been told that “they lived happily ever after”. Instead, we got the bombshell that is book 4. Nino is a warning that many of the classics are perhaps guilty of building fantasies and gender stereotypes rather than looking at the genuine commitments to gender role realities that are implied by marriage and long term partnerships. It is a stunning critique.<br />
<br />
If I had expected Nino’s general infidelity, his ongoing marriage to Eleonora was more of a surprise. It is a cleverly disguised plot device that all but defines his character. It anchors his tendency to put every relationship in service of his career ambitions. It provides him with monetary stability and a conservative societal esteem, namely of keeping a family. It also characterises his inability to finish off any relationship. In his personal life he is a politician: not a conviction politician, but one who goes where the grass is green. <br />
<br />
Another surprise was the amount of time it took for Elena to get rid of him. In her case, also, we see what she is willing to sacrifice for her career - in her case her human dignity. For a while she lives the life of a concubine. Yet it’s not just a career, it’s also the children and the roof over their heads. She’d created a complex set of responsibilities for herself, and she was keeping herself entangled out of necessity.<br />
<br />
It takes her even longer still to realise that his interest in her was due to the prestige she reflected back on him. This tendency in a man is so unusual that she couldn’t see it for what it is.<br />
<br />
Only Lila put Nino’s life at risk by being of no use to his career. Lila is therefore in a league of her own. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“She stood out among so many because she, naturally, did not submit to any training, to any use, or to any purpose. All of us had submitted and that submission had - through trials, failures, successes - reduced us.” - p. 403</blockquote>
<br />
If Lila’s capacity for suffering is bottomless, Nino’s suffering is like a sulking child’s when it cannot gets its way. When he gets the upper hand once more, it is water off a duck’s back. By the end of the novel Nino is nothing but an annoying stranger whom Elena finds “large, bloated, a big ruddy man with thinning hair who was constantly celebrating himself” (p. 470).<br />
<br />
By the end of the saga, Elena herself is leaning more towards traditional values again. She recognises that Pasquale is “much better preserved than Nino”, and speaks fondly about the values he took over from his father and that he upheld at great personal cost. Indeed, even the passing of the Solaras are met with a balanced sense of loss. Elena may share something of Nino’s flightiness and ambitious disregard for those close to her, but she recognises the love she had for her old friends, for the neighbourhood, for all the families that lived there - even for her own mother. We don’t truly know Nino anymore by the end of the saga, but his lack of interest in his own children speaks volumes. <br />
<br />
I return to Nino a little later for a final look at his character.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Pietro</h2>
<br />
Pietro, who resembles <i>MiddleMarch</i>’s Casaubon and <i>Wuthering Heights</i>’ Edgar Linton in the during the earlier novels, in book 4 emerges as a far better partner and father than Nino. He never shirks his responsibilities, he is tender and observant (as when he advises Elena sensitively about Lila), and despite his general physical deficiencies, Elena judges him worthy of her bed one last time before he leaves for America. Elena recognises his selfish need to spend his personal time with his work, yet accepts it more readily later in life, since she recognises the similarity to her own character. In short, she endorses him as a good former husband, even if she has no desire to start something new. In all these respects Pietro also turns the classic literary stereotype somewhat on its head. <br />
<br />
With both these male characters Ferrante is taking our common literary canon to task.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Alfonso</h2>
<br />
One of the great satisfactions of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan saga is the way in which the story lends itself to analysis. There is enough substance for a thesis, and a blog post can really only hope to probe a few angles. We have not even taken a look at the Solaras, and we should. <br />
<br />
One perspective from which to tackle the changing fortunes of the Solaras in book 4 is via the prism of Alfonso. Alfonso is a gender bender who mediates between the destructive masculine energy represented by the Solaras, and Lila’s near-indestructible counterpoint of female energy. He is both a gay man and a cross-dresser, and his muse is Lila. Not only that, he wants to <i>become</i> Lila. The result is that he begins to resemble Lila even more than Lila herself. <br />
<br />
Michele Solara, always the more dangerous of the two brothers, has lost the upper hand in his dealings with Lila since she established Basic Sight with Enzo. She and Enzo have become self-sufficient. Michele’s deep respect and yearning for Lila means that this energy now spills out over a cliff and he needs a surrogate for his obsession, which the shape shifting Alfonso provides. They become a type of couple, albeit covertly. (Marcello is furious, although there is nothing he can do.)<br />
<br />
The Solaras epitomise a type of macho male energy that simply cannot co-exist with a true female energy. Michele is obsessed by his opposite, but it is also his downfall. Their violence is not compatible with equal distribution of male and female energy. They require submission. Lila and Enzo, on the other hand, embody the only example in the neighbourhood of a different, balanced model of male and female partnership. <br />
<br />
As Michele and Alfonso get closer to each other, the Solaras are weakened. At the same time Lila and Enzo become stronger, especially after the return of Elena, and the birth of both their daughters. Masculine and feminine energies find a kind of equilibrium in Lila’s family life perhaps for the first time, and the result is a temporary happiness and harmony (which, after the loss of Tina, never returns). During this period Michele is reduced to a tentative, nervous man who can no longer act with vigour. Whereas Alfonso now embraces his own newfound identity of a woman in a man’s body, modeled on and inspired by Lila, Michele is completely at odds with himself.<br />
<br />
We don’t really know what happens between Michele and Alfonso, but it seems that Alfonso overshoots his privileges and Michele kicks him out. The entire balance of masculine and feminine forces in the niehgbourhood are once again in jeopardy, stacked in favour of the destructive masculine element once more. Alfonso loses his feminine appearance, he becomes unreliable, and the whole sorry saga ends with his death at the hands of unknown assailants. It is the beginning of the end.<br />
<br />
Tina’s disappearance is the visible culmination of this multi-generational journey. Whereas we are never sure who took Tina, the flow of energies suggests the Solaras were behind it, except that they thought it was Elena’s child - not Lila’s. <br />
<br />
Everything from then on - even the death of the Solaras - suggests to Lila that nothing will ever <i>really</i> change in the old neighbourhood. <br />
<br />
<h2>
Nino and Elena</h2>
While we are on the topic of contrasting energies we should take a last look at Nino and Elena.<br />
<br />
Nino exhibits a strong blend of the feminine and the masculine. His willingnes to sleep with influential women in order to get to the top is a strategy more commonly associated - rightly or wrongly - with ambitious women in society. Combined with his intelligence, charisma, and good looks, this is a killer strategy. He appears to have disguised his stereotypically Southern tendencies behind an alluring, more acceptable Northern veneer. His masculine aggression, paired with a keen feminine sensibility, which is to say an ability to tune into women’s emotions, makes him an effective and well rounded talent. Unfortunately it is almost completely erased by his lack of commitment to his roots, or indeed to any place where he puts down new roots - except where there is power. He sows the wild oats and moves on.<br />
<br />
Elena comes across as conservatively feminine during most of her adolescence, but her ambition passes through masculine territory via her academic learning of the classics. She breaks out of academia and attempts, with Lila as inspiration, to marry her feminine and masculine sides to great subversive effect. <br />
<br />
If the masculine and feminine are played off against each other, so are the Northern and Southern cultures. In this case Nino and Elena are the clearest examples of this co-habiting duality, since both rise high above their origins. Indeed, at times they mirror each other. However, unlike Nino, Elena increasingly recognises her roots and turns to the neighbourhood of her and Lila’s youth for inspiration. Even so, she moves to Turin in the North for her retirement. <br />
<br />
<h2>
Conclusion</h2>
<br />
As epitomised by Lila’s life throughout most of the saga, any equilibrium of opposing forces is extremely hard to maintain. Each character in his or her own way tries to find such an equilibrium, and success tends to come at the cost of others, or at the cost of social cohesion.<br />
<br />
<i>The Story of the Lost Child </i>resolves the main plot points in often startling ways, but it is the openended implications of the ending that ensures the reader will continue to reflect on the rich material provided.thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9210900.post-53556549334938118262015-08-30T20:19:00.001+01:002023-03-25T16:50:56.757+00:00Towards a Reading of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan SagaSPOILER ALERT! This post contains spoilers, so if you've yet to read all three novels you may want to skip this post. However, if you're looking for a fresh angle on the novels, this is for you :)<br />
<br />
I've read a number of reviews of the novels recently, especially since finishing Book 3 last week, and I have yet to see a serious critical assessment. It could well be that I just haven't looked enough. A few themes are typically mentioned - the saga of an enduring friendship, the tension between the North and the South of Italy - yet these are themes that could be true of other novels too. What's <i>unique</i> about Ferrante's gripping saga? It is especially disappointing when so much could be said about the novels, and when one considers that most reviews already assume spoilers. There really is no need for holding back.<br />
<br />
The main exception appears to be <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/21/women-on-the-verge">James Woods' 2013 overview of Ferrante's work in English </a>(including "My Brilliant Friend"), which touches on some of the feminist themes that are, I believe, at the heart of these novels.<br />
<br />
Another informative pointer is Victoria Zhuang's observant <a href="http://harvardreview.fas.harvard.edu/?q=features/book-review/those-who-leave-and-those-who-stay">article at the Harvard Review</a>, in which she notes that the Neapolitan saga has something in common with George Eliot's <i>MiddleMarch</i>, a thread on which I will expand.<br />
<br />
This post is not a thorough overview or analysis by any stretch of the imagination. A series of novels this rich deserves much more attention than I am able to stick into a blog post. Instead it expands on a few impressions and thoughts that occurred to me while reading - or lying awake at night, as the case may be - and which I hope will be of use to others while considering the works for analysis.<br />
<br />
Part of my discussion will involve arguing against the view that this is simply a <i>bildungsroman</i>, where that is understood to be a type of coming-of-age novel "that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is extremely important." (<i>Wikipedia</i>). Yes, of course, the Neapolitan Saga is at least partly that, and perhaps when James Woods first mentioned it he did so with "My Brilliant Friend" in mind, which we know is merely a foundation for the heartbreak to come. However I do fear that if the whole saga becomes branded as a <i>bildungsroman</i> then its real value could be missed. There is more to it, as I hope to show. So stick with me. I start with Elena and Middlemarch, and come to Lila and more feminist themes later on.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Introduction</h3>
<br />
Towards the end of "Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay" we are confronted with this remarkable passage, related by Elena:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We were therefore at this point: my husband's sister considered my marriage a mistake and said it to me frankly. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, it seemed to me the ultimate and unbiased confirmation of my conjugal unease. Besides, what could I do about it? I said to myself that maturity consisted in accepting the turn that existence had taken without getting too upset, following a path between daily practices and theoretical achievements, learning to see oneself, know oneself, in expectation of great changes. Day by day I grew calmer. My daughter Dede went to first grade early, already knowing how to read and write; my daughter Elsa was happy to stay alone with me all morning in the still house; my husband, although he was the dullest of academics, seemed finally close to finishing a second book that promised to be even more important than the first; and I was Signora Airota, Elena Airota, a woman depressed by submissiveness who nevertheless, urged by her sister-in-law but also in order to fight discouragement, had begun to study almost in secret the invention of woman by men, mixing the ancient and modern worlds. I didn't have an objective; only to be able to say to Mariarosa, to my mother-in-law, to this or that acquaintance: I'm working." - p. 353.</blockquote>
<br />
This passage summarises the dark hour of Elena's soul just before the dawn: in the very next chapter - a chapter with the prescient number of 100, like the gateway to a new journey - Nino is reintroduced into the story. She finally judges her own marriage as Mariarosa does - a failure, with little to commend it. Even children bring her no real joy, despite their cleverness and obedience. They're just reminders of her own obedient, yet clever, nature.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Middlemarch</h3>
<br />
This is a good moment to turn to MiddleMarch. We find in Pietro hints of a more modern version of Casaubon, whom Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch marries and devotes herself to. Unlike Dorothea, Elena doesn't exactly devote herself to Pietro or his work. That level of idealism is never really present in Elena. Nevertheless, there is a hardworking academic bookishness that envelopes both Pietro and Elena's lives that initially pull them closer together. Pietro, as a professor of a dead language - Latin - approximates the Casaubon who busied himself with academic questions that no one else required answering any more.<br />
<br />
In Middlemarch it is Will Ladislaw, Casaubon's younger cousin, who opens Dorothea's eyes to the fact that Casaubon's efforts - his life's project - and therefore also hers, may be in vain: those academic questions he deemed so important may have already been superseded.<br />
<br />
Elena's situation is not as idealistic and extreme. She takes no interest in Pietro's work, and despite his professorial status, doesn't even trust his opinion of her own writing. But let's not forget that her childhood ideals included the semblance of what she now had attained. I will return to this later. One could argue that the gears of this existence are so well-oiled that Pietro's their influence in each other's lives is superfluous. Patriarchy's silent tentacles means she is still living out the recipe of patriarchy even while they lead separate lives: a submissive wife who looks after two perfect children while her husband goes out to improve his career and standing in the world. Meanwhile, she languishes.<br />
<br />
Although it is tempting to want to judge Pietro the way one does Casaubon, he also has a humane side more reminiscent of another literary character - Edgar Linton - to whom I return later. Pietro is a complex intellectual man, isolated in his own thoughts. In other words, the opposite of what the rest of his family likes: a politically engaged intellectual, like Mariarosa, like Franco Mari, like Nino. This predilection makes them seem more alive, and Pietro pale and lifeless. Yet he has a tender side which comes to life with Elena's mother, with Nino, with Lila, and the life of his mind - although not demonstrated - is clearly vivid. In his own way he has rebelled against the norms of the Airota family, even as he upholds the status quo. His rebellion, therefore, is perhaps futile as much as Casaubon's ambitions were futile.<br />
<br />
His choice of wife, Elena - the girl from Naples, from the poor neighbourhood - also shows his wilder, less predictable side. When things go wrong between Pietro and Elena, he turns out to be capable of coming unhinged, and of showing passion. Elena, for her part, naively hoped he would continue exhibiting that paternalistic reason, but he turns out to be flesh and blood after all. What Elena dislikes about him may in part include her increasing dislike of ivory tower patriarchal academia, but certainly an important part of what she loathes in him is what she also loathes in herself: the inability to act, to change. She has always relied on others for action: on Lila, on Nino. Thus, when Nino stays with them, she speaks of "the excitement - maybe yes, it was excitement - that gripped me in seeing, in hearing, how an Airota, an extremely well-educated Airota, lost ground, was confused, responded feebly to the swift, brilliant, even cruel aggressions of Nino Sarratore, my schoolmate, my friend, born in the neighbourhood, like me." (p.378).<br />
<br />
Pietro's fortress turns out to be rather vulnerable to Nino's Trojan horse from the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood is Pietro's undoing, just as the political perturbations that have reached even Florence and the university, disturbs him deeply. He prefers the quiet life.<br />
<br />
For her part, Elena sees in Pietro's steadiness under fire not a virtue, but a status quo to be toppled and overcome. By the time Pietro has come to a decision to tell her about his resolve (which is balanced and principled) regarding the police's questions that he faced at the university, Elena no longer knows what he is talking about. He is left with his principles while her heart has moved on.<br />
<br />
The tragedy of Elena and Pietro's relationship is that she never wanted him passionately, that they've never even really understood each other. The signs were there, but she walked into it. He sort of happened to her, and she was happy to be brought into his circle of influence. His family and all the surrounding excitement compensated - at least at first - for his own relative "dullness" - even when compared to Franco Mari. She could overlook even his conservative demands towards her. Meanwhile, she has never successfully exorcised Nino from her heart, and he still lurks there, waiting for the right moment to appear - or rather, pounce. She herself doesn't know how to pounce. The reader has suspected what might happen - although Ferrante's superb writing places everything in doubt, constantly - even if Elena herself has never completely believed in it.<br />
<br />
Nino in Elena's life not only parallels the influence of Will Ladislaw in Dorothea's life, but also exceeds it in terms of the history he shares with her, by having known her since childhood, by being from her neighbourhood, and by being the one that she herself has always known she loved. We know that Nino's marriage is one of convenience for him (although not for his wife Eleanora) and he is conscious of his situation. Despite his intellectual appearance he is savvy and streetwise, and even his choice in marriage shows this. But he is also an incurable romantic, just like his father Donato, and when he loves he loves with total abandon. For a while anyway. He is aware of his own worth, and unlike the women in his life who usually have nowhere else to go to - Lila gave up everything for him - he manages to escape via education to save himself.<br />
<br />
Nino's passionate volatility is likely to be his and Elena's undoing. Ironically, his initial request that they remain lovers is actually the more realistic alternative. But that would never satisfy Elena, who has always loved Nino and is fed up with her marriage anyway. She wants a new adventure, one way or the other.<br />
<br />
If Nino is true to type - and I can only speculate, since I have yet to read the fourth installment, due out this week - I predict he will become bored with Elena sexually, and so be unfaithful to her. It won't happen immediately, but it will happen soon enough. The result? She will leave him, her dreams shattered, and she will become stronger for it in the long run. He may cheat on her against his better conscience, since he insinuated that he loved Elena even when he got involved with Lila, that he merely substituted Elena with Lila; but we also know that he is a somewhat unreliable narrator of his own life (eg., he "forgets" what he said about Lila's love-making back in Milan after the book-signing), and tends to think with his passions, at least when it comes to women. It's what makes him attractive, and it's also what makes him dangerous. He is a free spirit or a loose cannon, depending on where you are standing.<br />
<br />
So with the clues there for us as readers, I foresee tears. Yet the reader can't outsmart Elena Ferrante, she's always ahead of us, and so I expect the journey to be more nuanced, and certainly more compelling than my prediction.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Lila</h3>
<br />
There is also the sense that Ferrante doesn't really do happy endings, but let's for a moment pretend that the end of "Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay" really is the end of the saga. Some called it a trilogy, and perhaps it could stand on three feet. Just. <br />
<br />
I have thus far left out the most important character of all: Lila. The novels start out with her disappearance, and the novels are a way of inscribing her reticent yet forceful nature into existence. This goes more than skindeep, and I can now return to the quote I started with, as it now comes into its own:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I was Signora Airota, Elena Airota, a woman depressed by submissiveness who nevertheless, urged by her sister-in-law but also in order to fight discouragement, had begun to study almost in secret the invention of woman by men, mixing the ancient and modern worlds."</blockquote>
<br />
Contrast this with Lila's speech less than ten pages earlier (italics in the original text):<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<i>You see how things change: if I had remained Signora Caracci I would be ruined, I would have ended up with my ass on the ground like all the Carraccis; instead I am Raffaella Cerullo and I'm the technical director for Michele Solara at four hundred and twenty thousand lire a month</i>" - p.344</blockquote>
<br />
If we gloss over the technical hindrance of Lila's relationship with Michele Solara ("I'm using him, not him me", she says), what we are left with is an assertion of Lila's <i>independent selfhood</i>. She refers to herself by her birthname, <i>Rafaella Cerullo</i>, and then goes on to indicate how her whole family has forgiven her and now depends on her. In other words, she is the boss, she is the master of her own world. <br />
<br />
Even Lila's relationship with Enzo is beyond marriage convention, and we may well look there for clues to a true respect not marred by all-consuming passions, which inevitably destroy as much as they create. It was that mutual respect that helped her to restore herself <i>to</i> herself after the violent and humiliating experience of her marriage and, to some extent, her life in the sausage factory (she nevertheless considers the sausage factory a way of earning independent income, so that she wouldn't be dependent on Enzo).<br />
<br />
The timing of these two speeches, the one from Lila to Elena, and from Elena to us, is poignant because soon in chapter 100 Nino returns to the narrative in a starring role, and although we started with Lila as the driving force in Book 1, Book 3 ends with Elena and Nino on an airplane, metaphorically embarking on an exclusive journey, a great leap, with no solid ground beneath their feet. It also echoes Dorothea and Will falling in love in Middlemarch, that much is clear, but where <i>on earth</i> is Lila? She is mentioned briefly towards the end, talking about Manuela Solara's murder, and the effect this is having on the Solaras and even Lila's job. But otherwise she is neglected. <i>What does it mean?</i><br />
<br />
For the first time, Elena has made an independent decision that takes her beyond societal convention - even that of the middle classes into which she has married. Affairs are tolerated (like those of Pietro's mother Adele), but to break ranks and flee with one's lover, that is not common. In other words, Elena Airota is acting on behalf of Elena Greco, and like Lila - Lila her muse and inspiration, Lila her biggest influence, Lila her model of independent action - is restoring a sense of wholeness to herself by following her heart for the first time in her life.<br />
<br />
Now we can begin to move backwards to the start, towards Lila. If the story ended here, after 3 books, we might be able to say something like the following: Lila's reticence requires mediation, but the model set by Middlemarch (for instance) is not enough. Dorothea Brookes is still "the invention of woman by men" (note the singular woman versus the plural men). Lila, on the other hand, embodies subversion of female stereotypes. Most reviews I read note that she is feral and catlike. This is quite apt. She is outside Italian, outside cultivated language, and her observations in or on language - "The Green Fairy", or her rhapsodic description of Beckett's play - are highly original. She is also uncompromising, and has the ability to refuse without withdrawing. Unlike Elena, who withdraws and leaves, Lila's desire to be present, to assert herself, always overcomes her own attempts to withdraw and to escape. Her strength, her ability, her sheer <i>alpha female</i> quality exceeds words, and if Elena succeeds in describing Lila vividly it is likely also because Elena, by the time of writing, has restored and realised in her <i>own</i> self a fiery, independent self she first saw and recognised in Lila.<br />
<br />
Reviewers, with some justification, have been intent (probably following James Woods) on calling these novels a <i>bildungsroman</i>. If we read the process of character construction as described above, then Lila is on the one hand <i>herself</i> (a force of nature, a femaleness outside the capabilities of both men and women to tame or integrate, at least for long, in part because they all represent a failed patriarchy with whom she cannot feel connected) and on the other hand this <i>aspiring self of Elena</i>, this part that she never knew she could become or at least approximate, but has finally taken the first major step into doing so by eloping with Nino. A woman who follows her heart and her dream.<br />
<br />
The Lila that is "herself" is the one that remains to some extent beyond language, and which Elena's writing-Lila-into-existence problematises. It is one way of perceiving the feminist discourse taking place here, namely the circumscribing and engraving onto language and culture of the nature of Lila, of Rafaella Cerullo, of this force of nature whose arrival in the world is a unique event in literature. An <i>event</i>, in the Badiouan sense, as it can set in motion an attempt at truth procedures - such as this one - and inspire a fidelity to understand it. This fidelity is emotional, and Ferrante's brilliance lies in intimately connecting us to the lives of these characters, and especially Lila's character. In short, it is <i>the inscription of a woman, by a woman</i>. <br />
<br />
Lila speaks in dialect nearly all of the time, and we are reading about her in English, with 99.9% of the intermediary Italian translated, so clearly we are not in a position to say anything definite about Lila, only what has been inscribed ... and yet here, even here, Elena has never been given genuine authority to write about Lila, or even about the neighbourhood:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
"All right", she said, "write, if you want, write about Gigliola, about whoever you want. But about me no, don't you dare, promise." <br />
"I won't write about anyone, not even you."<br />
"Careful, I've got my eye on you."<br />
"Yes?"<br />
"I'll come look in your computer. I'll read your files, I'll erase them."<br />
"Come on."<br />
"You think I'm not capable of it?"<br />
"I know you're capable. But I can protect myself."<br />
She laughed in her old mean way.<br />
"Not from me." - p.29</blockquote>
<br />
So the saga is a work written in anger, a furious love letter, a proof that Lila existed, despite Lila's desire to disappear.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Education</h3>
<br />
Elena is Lila's mediator by virtue of being her only real confidante over the years, and the only known woman she respects personally. When Elena declares that she is leaving Pietro, Lila shouts:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Why did you study so much? What fucking use has it been for me to imagine that you would enjoy a wonderful life for me, too? I was wrong, you're a fool." - p. 417</blockquote>
<br />
Is Lila overreacting, finally reaching the limits of her influence over Elena, or is her judgement - "you're a fool" - prescient, a sign of drama to come?<br />
<br />
Part of the answer lies a page earlier. Lila wants to send Gennaro to Elena to look after him, adding her reason by the by: "you're the only person I trust" (p. 416). For her own part, Elena doesn't speak her thoughts immediately, but thinks "<i>You're the only person I trust</i>. I felt like smiling, she still didn't know that I had become untrustworthy". <br />
<br />
Elena is of course thinking of her own sudden decision to go with Nino and leave her life with Pietro - even her children - behind. She had become <i>untrustworthy</i>. She has always represented something firm, something - perhaps - controllable to Lila. For the first time she has upset and subverted Lila's own expectation. She has become <i>untrustworthy. </i>Lila, for her apparent strength, needs solid things in her life - Enzo's firm, unchanging character, even when he is distant at work, and Elena's unchanging intellectual virtuousness.<br />
<br />
A part of Lila's happiness lives through the ideals she has seen realised in Elena's dependable progression through school and as the wife of the young professor Airota: "Why did you study so much? What fucking use has it been for me to imagine that you would enjoy a wonderful life for me, too?".<br />
<br />
We hear a different version of that lament earlier, after Lila finished reading Elena's second novel:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"she almost cried: You mustn't write those things, Lenù, you aren't that, none of what I read resembles you, it's an ugly, ugly book, and the one before it was too." - p.273</blockquote>
<br />
Can it be that, all this time, Elena's life has represented a truer success to Lila than it has seemed to Elena herself? The perceived liberating role of education in these novels should not be underestimated, and resonates beyond the page even to our own world. It is a an idealism that is also a realism, an aspirational pragmatism. Lila's pain at not being allowed to proceed beyond elementary school influenced her whole life from then onwards. That door that closed in her face placed her firmly under the influence of the neighbourhood, of courtship, marriage, and led to all her later disappointments. The wounds go about as deep as one can imagine. <br />
<br />
Education lifts people out of poverty into a more comfortable life. Lila, like Elena, bought into that dream, and the evidence, at least on the surface, suggests that they were not wrong to do so: Elena is generally considered the most successful person from the neighbourhood, and Lila, were it not for her extraordinary precociousness, with a bit of help from Enzo and Elena, she would never have been able to earn the living enabled by her work as a programmer. Anyone with less ability - like most of those in the neighbourhood - have a hard life with few opportunities in life to look forward to. Yet with a better education, what greater heights could Lila have reached?<br />
<br />
So Lila, the hardboiled girl from the neighbourhood, turns out to be a bit of an idealist herself, in what is an unlikely echo of the idealism of Dorothea Brookes. Her aspiration finds an outlet in Elena - indeed, in these novels - because they are ultimately the release of her demons, of her blocked ambition at the age of 13. When she chucks The Green Fairy into the fire at the end of Book 2, make no mistake, she is in hell.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Wuthering Heights</h3>
<br />
If we want to find a literary equivalent for Lila we must leave the neat environment of Middlemarch behind and head to the moorlands, to the land of Catherine Earnshaw ... and Heathcliff. It is Heathcliff, forever outside society, who resembles more closely the forceful, uncompromising and inventive nature exemplified by Lila. Like Heathcliff in Brönte's novel, Lila has a habit of reinventing herself. Their circumstances may be different, but they both share that survivor's mentality, and the ability to adapt when the chips are down. Both are also inscribed into language and culture by a mediator, and in a cultural space that they themselves both resist and are barred from. <br />
<br />
Edgar Linton as Heathcliff's foil, and representative of culture and cultivation, is mirrored by characters like Pietro and cultivated ivory tower academia in general. Edgar Linton's weakness in the face of Heathcliff's (and Cathy's) raw passion is echoed in Pietro's inability to face off Nino's street smart aggressions. The tension between the benefits of cultivation, and the raw rootedness of passionate nature (in Wuthering Heights) never really resolves, and we may reasonably expect this to be the case in Ferrante's saga too. Elena shares with Catherine Earnshaw this entanglement, but unlike in the case of Cathy and Heathcliff, we get the story firsthand from Elena. One mediator less.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Not a Bildungsroman</h3>
<br />
If we follow the emotional logic of the Neapolitan trilogy strictly as a <i>bildungsroman</i> and consider Lila as an ingredient - albeit an important one - for Elena's own character building as she develops into a strong independent woman, in contrast to Elena's perception of herself as timid and passive, then it follows that Lila's influence should begin to disappear when Elena finds her own feet. This is indeed what appears to happen towards the end of "Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay". <br />
<br />
However, if we did this, we would also be confronted with an apparent contradiction: Elena's world (of language, of culture, of middle classness, of mediated desires, of retreat into private life, of disconnection with the neighbourhood) would form a kind of Hegelian <i>thesis</i> to the <i>antithesis</i> of Lila's world (of raw dialect, of coarse manners, of working class suffering, of violence and forced sex, of the invasiveness of never-ending community and public life). If the restoration of her wholeness is brought about when she becomes "untrustworthy" and follows her heart, by rediscovering who she was even before she fell into culture, then here at the end of Book 3 we find that <i>synthesis</i>. Nino certainly fuses both culture (he's a published, respected intellectual in his own right) and the neighbourhood, and by uniting with him she is, we might conclude, securing for herself a new wholeness, a new synthesis. The best of all worlds. Or is it?<br />
<br />
Wouldn't that be <i>too</i> Hegelian? That strikes me as a problem, because Hegel comes in for cutting commentary about two thirds into Book 3, in one of the most striking passages in the entire novel, just as Elena discovers feminist literature. She reads an essay entitled "We Spit on Hegel":<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Spit on Hegel. Spit on the culture of men, spit on Marx, on Engels, on Lenin. And on historical materialism. And on Freud. And on psychoanalysis and penis envy. And on marriage, on family. And on Nazism, on Stalinism, on terrorism. And on war. And on the class struggle. And on the dictatorship of the proletariat. And on socialism. And on Communism. And on the trap of equality. And on <i>all</i> the manifestations of patriarchal culture. And on <i>all</i> its institutional forms. Resist the waste of female intelligence. Deculturate. Disacculturate, starting with maternity, don't <i>give</i> children to anyone. Get rid of the master-slave dialectic. Rip inferiority from our brains. Restore women to themselves. Don't create antitheses. Move on another plane in the name of one's own difference. The university doesn't free women but completes their repression. Against wisdom. While men devote themselves to undertakings in space, life for women on this planet has yet to begin. Woman is the other face of the earth. Woman is the Unpredictable Subject. Free oneself from subjection here, now, in this present. The author of those pages was called Carla Lonzi." - p. 280</blockquote>
<i>Don't create antitheses</i>. Is Elena in danger of having created an antithesis in Lila for her own sake? Is that why Lila always resists assimilation, that she understands this danger instinctively and cannot be a mere stepping stone for another - not even for her friend Elena? A response of sorts is formulated soon after in the same paragraph (<i>my italics</i>):<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I - after so much exertion - don't know how to think. Nor does Mariarosa: she's read pages and pages, and she rearranges them with flair, putting on a show. That's it. Lila, on the other hand, knows. <i>It's her nature. If she had studied, she would know how to think like this.</i>" - p.281</blockquote>
<br />
Thus we return here to the question of Lila. She cannot be assimilated, and the fact that we get a sense of her through Elena's telling is already a kind of miracle. Education too, it seems, is not all it is cracked up to be. Yes, it can raise people out of poverty, but it also colludes with patriarchy, and hence is full of traps - and that is really the story of Elena's life from secondary school until she leaves Pietro. <br />
<br />
Education, therefore, is best suited to those who have the right innate capacity for it. Someone like Lila. <i>It's her nature ... She would know how to think like this.</i> This assertion has an interesting parallel to Nietzsche's thinking, which also subverts Hegel's master-slave dichotomy by standing firmly on the side of a master morality, and deems slave morality a form of resentment. One wonders what he may have made of a character such as Lila. Most likely, he would have been impressed by her keen intelligence, resilience and creativity, and her innate resistance to any type of slave mentality. <br />
<br />
<h3>
Conclusion </h3>
<br />
Thus, in conclusion, I resist the temptation to call this saga a simple <i>bildungsroman</i>. Lila's character does not permit easy integration either into language or culture, and yet this series of novels is all about her. If Elena finds her an inspiration, so much the better for her. But labelling it a bildungsroman, at least one in the traditional sense, could make a mockery of the aspirations at the heart of this novel. <br />
<br />
Lila tends to know what she wants - or more frequently, <i>doesn't</i> want - in any given situation, and so outpaces Elena when it matters: in matters of the heart, in matters of life. In that sense we get to know Lila belatedly, through Elena's eyes. Via Elena she appears like the woman of Carla Lonzi's proclamation that "Woman is the Unpredictable Subject". She has the uncanny ability to surprise, and as Elena says, with her there was never a way to feel that "things were settled."<br />
<br />
But if Lila often surprises Elena - and us, as readers, via Elena - Lila herself seems less surprised at how things around her develop, at the ways of the neighbourhood, of events on the ground, at herself. When they happen, she knows what to do. Desire and violence, they have a logic. This logic might even eventually be discernable to the reader, in the afterglow of Elena's narration, even though its immediacy remains foreclosed as part of Lila's resistance. Yet one thing is for sure: that of which Lila is master follows, for her, as surely as a computer programmer's flow chart.<br />
<br />
In the final instance, perhaps this: Lila as an anchor for a certain femaleness, a reference and a benchmark, and a reminder not to compromise. If patriarchy's strategy is to divide and conquer - through marriage, through children, through the oppression of domesticity - Lila, via Elena, shows what is possible when <i>one</i> becomes <i>two</i>, and <i>two</i> becomes <i>many</i>.thundercombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10874632888578836727noreply@blogger.com1