The Week in Review
Murder the books or save the books?
It's not often you see the hemispheres square off like Bob Probert and Troy Crowder at Joe Louis Arena. It happened this week.
The arena?
Books.
The act of reading engages both hemispheres. The skill of abstraction fostered by reading is a left-hemispheric thing, but the calm detachment required for reflective reading is a right-hemispheric thing. Maybe I'm a romantic, but I think that's what makes reading beautiful: the left hemisphere forms abstractions for the right hemisphere to reflect upon, and the R.H. then feeds its reflections back to the L.H. for more work, and on and on.
But a rogue left hemisphere doesn't like to play nicely. For the L.H., reading is a tool and a weapon. It makes a person better, which allows him to succeed in life. The more books he can devour, the better his chances at success, unless maybe it's poetry, which is only good for quoting to chicks so he can get laid.
So what do you get when you combine books with AI, that ultimate left-hemispheric machine?
Book shredding.
Autumn Spredemann
AI giants are buying millions of books, ripping off the spines, scanning them, then discarding the remains. But don't worry, they aren't destroying old or collector editions. They're just ravishing young maidens and then returning them to us in a more broken-in, usable, medium.
And they aren't ravishing babies. They want 'em at least five years old, born before 2022, because that's when AI started pissing in the literary water by cranking out AI prose. AI doesn't want to drink that nasty stuff. It wants pristine writing.
Sam Kriss
It's frustrating because no one can explain why it matters. The article this morning that told us what's happening couldn't identify the problem. It just said the practice of destroying millions of books is "non-ethical," triggers something "visceral" in people, treats art as an expendable commodity, hits a "nerve," and "strikes at the heart of something sentimental in most people."
Amen to all that. I'd also add that there's something "tactile" about reading that makes shredding books an act of violence against the sacramental reality of our existence.
But all those nickel reasons won't buy you an $8 coffee at Starbucks.
So I'll explain why it's wrong.
There are some things you just don't do. You don't pull the mask off the Lone Ranger, bed your step-daughter no matter how mature or hot, or tear stuff apart for no good reason or, in AI's case, for sacrificing to Moloch. Such things land you in Hell, as Giacomo da Saint'Andrea found out after Dante shoved him into the Seventh Circle.
Guerrilla Resistance from the Right Hemisphere
While the left hemisphere is riding AI to raze western civilization, right-hemispheric guerrilla operations are springing up and hunkering down to offer a measure of resistance. They're tiny efforts, inconsequential really, but quixotic in all the best ways and filled with hope.
Will Bardenwerper
Steubenville is awful. I've been to nicer dump sites. I was stunned to read that, as recently as the 1970s, its downtown was thriving with multiple furniture stores and movie theaters. I would've thought the decay that is downtown Steubenville took at least 500 years to achieve.
But through the smoke and the dust of this left-hemisphere-made hell, Big John has arrived. John Kuhner: Princeton grad, eccentric, husband of a trad wife (I'm guessing), devout Catholic, and owner of BookMarx.
He's working with corpses (books) in a graveyard (Steubenville) and trying to revive both.
Don Quixote beams and the left hemisphere scoffs, but this essay makes it clear: Big John is doing something illogical, and that's what makes the effort great.
There are many such bookstores sprouting up or reviving. I stumbled into one last June, and it was the highlight of my summer. Catholic ones have popped up. Link and Link. If you come across one, I beg you: patronize it. It doesn't take much. Big John says that, if every person in Steubenville's dwindled population spent just $5 downtown annually, every business owner could make a comfortable living.
I have one quibble with that essay, though: It doesn't mention Franciscan University. That's like marveling at Indiana football's stunning rise and not mentioning Curt Cignetti. Most of the folks who are buying tickets to the annual Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice Regency Ball, attending author events, and joining hobbit circle dances at BookMarx aren't coming from Steubenville's housing projects. They're coming from Franciscan University and its satellites.
It's those glorious nerds who might, just might, save us from this left-hemispheric swamp that AI wants to drown us in.