What's American Literature? What Is Art?

 I did not know the Pulitzer Prize was limited to citizens until I read Dear Pulitzer Prizes: It’s Time to Recognize Literature by Noncitizens. I have not been as impressed by winners of the Pulitzer as I have been by National Book Awards and Booker winners. Maybe here is another reason for my being unimpressed.

Counter Craft always has articles that are well-written and thought provoking, you might want to subscribe to it. What Algorithms Can't Tell You about Art: On Prosecraft and why data analysis of fiction rarely says anything at all is a good example:

Surely there are useful ways to use data to analyze literature. But I think these projects doom themselves from the start by trying to “solve” art. To find the right percentage of nouns or prove the # of plots.

Of course, it’s hard not to think about this in the context of the current tech hype around “A.I.” writing programs. Indeed, Shaxpir frames their work as “A.I.” although even as an A.I. skeptic I’m not sure counting up the number of adverbs in a text = artificial intelligence.

But one of the reasons I remain skeptical about the abilities of A.I. programs to create art is that the real work of fiction is in the details. Its in creating those tiny connections between words, in minor adjustments of pacing and scene, etc. It’s in all the things that these algorithms and data analyses can’t compute.

The last few weeks I’ve been working on short stories and logging my hours for my accountability. Doing so reminded me that the majority of time I spend on a story is not getting a first draft down, the part that an A.I. program is most equipped to help with. The time is in the revision. The refinement. For each hour I spend getting 90% of a story down, I’m going to spend spend many times that revising that last 10%. Reading it over and over making adjustments both to the lines, paragraphs, and scenes. Weaving through connections and meaning.

sch 8/10