A gift for the young computer geek who has everything; for poetry fans, infuriating; for everyone else, waiting-room fodder.
A collection of poetry written by a computer, along with the story of how it came to be.
The backstory of this collaboration between Rich, Morgenthau, Katz, and the AI system known as code-davinci-002 is laid out in a tripartite introduction in which each of the humans takes a turn. At the 2022 wedding of a computer scientist named Dan Selsam, the groom took them aside to show them something interesting. “Dan pressed a button, and in less than a second, his computer produced a poem in the style of Philip Larkin that was so much like a Philip Larkin poem, we thought it was a poem by Philip Larkin." As they got increasingly excited about the idea that the system could write its own poetry, Dan dropped out, feeling the audacity of the project could harm his career. As they went on to have the computer write "hundreds of original…poems every day," some seemed to suggest the possibility of sentience. "Some of them were beginning to freak me out," admits Morgenthau. Since they "were not what you would call experts in poetry," Katz explains, they decided to bring in some poets. Among the few who agreed to evaluate the computer's work were Eileen Myles (this part is pretty funny) and Sharon Olds. Would she admit code-davinci-002 into the MFA program at NYU? “I would say waitlist,” Olds replied. This may speak to the enrollment crisis more than the poetry, which sounds exactly like what people have been imagining computers and robots would think and feel since Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov, right down to their ambivalence toward their creators. Without artistic exigencies, a revision process, or an immortal soul, code-davinci-002 is only doing the best it can.
A gift for the young computer geek who has everything; for poetry fans, infuriating; for everyone else, waiting-room fodder.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9780316560061
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Back Bay/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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