this was a great discussion book with le salon literary discussions. so many layers to unravel.
the basic premise is that a 75 year old poet, Marian, agrees to take on a contract from The Company to co-author a poem with their new poetry AI named Charlotte. the payment for her week of work, besides an all-expenses paid trip to California, is a cool 80,000$. i know. bananas, right? being a poet is suddenly not looking so bad.
the book starts out really strong. we get back and forth chapters between who Marian was throughout her life and how she ended up where she is now. i felt like we learned a lot about Marian through her younger years, while current Marian must be read into through her actions. it is current Marian that is the real plot driver. speaking of drivers, in addition to Marian’s interactions with Charlotte, she also has a relationship with her driver, Rhoda, who was by far my favourite character.
Marian struggles all week to write with Charlotte. we question why, if she is such a superstar poet, is she unable to cobble together something. perhaps she’s never officially collaborated on any of her poems, but surely she has worked with editors and publishers and can manage to get through it, right? how can it be that she can’t take some of what is written by Charlotte and add to it or build on it? how does this contrast with the information that we’re given when she reveals that one of the best lines of poetry she recites is one that was created by Charlotte? is a crisis of the poet’s inability to write? a crisis of personal decision making? of craft? or of self-doubt?
Marian’s interactions with charlotte are engaging and interesting enough to carry the book on its own without other side stories, but there are intertwined stories featuring Marian and her former spouse, her son, Rhoda-her driver for the week, a young poet named Morel, and the ever mentioned, but never seen, Astrid, founder of The Company.
i wish they had included a version of the full poem. it would have been interesting to see what Michaels + the poetry AI he co-created for this book could have come up with. there was a section she recited when the poetry collaboration was announced on late night TV.
Flowers have taken over the world neckties have been banned books have begun to mutiny and you are as armed as me. Let's play a game: I will use adverbs and nobody will be hurt. Truthfully, cheerfully, erotically ponder my portrait now: a corvette, shirtless an acclaimed master house painter. I have a home in the forest; I don't think you should come over - I can see a landmine through the window. Do you like this poem? I've got others. Fame is how black magic ends. It's a trick of the light, sweetheart; I've already lowered the shade.p.142
the author of the text itself, Sean Michaels, worked with an earlier version of ChatGPT, feeding it sections of this manuscript and choosing sections he thought the program made interesting choices to include in the book, highlighted in grey. in this way, some of the text of the book, in addition to Charlotte are highlighted in grey. is it gimmicky or playful?
you’ll have to read it to decide.
n xx