Solitude is a given for a writing life. It has not only to do with the hours spent alone at a desk, but a sense of being alone in the world. Writing is not a team sport. Lifelong feuds between authors over an unkind review are the stuff of legend, while subtle put-downs and comparisons are hazards every writer has to deal with. But these are not the only ways in which writing is solitary.
Why? Because one day, perhaps very far in the future, there probably will be a sentient AI. How do I know that? Because it is demonstrably possible for mind to emerge from matter, as it did first in our ancestors’ brains. Unless you insist human consciousness resides in an immaterial soul, you ought to concede it is possible for physical stuff to give life to mind. There seems to be no fundamental barrier to a sufficiently complex artificial system making the same leap. While I am confident that LaMDA (or any other currently existing AI system) falls short at the moment, I am also nearly as confident that one day, it will happen.
We are led to believe that this is not Tremblay’s composition, but the found manuscript of Art’s memoir. A familiar enough conceit. But, to compound the layers of narrative, we discover that the manuscript has been annotated by a woman named Mercy Brown. She interjects whole pages worth of commentary at crucial points, directing her criticism, handwritten in red ink, at Art. The dual and dueling narrators lend the events of the book a high level of indeterminacy that proves both mysterious and entertaining.
Maine, long attractive to writers for its rocky coastlines, woodlands, and wildlife, lends itself to stories about tensions between locals and summer people, and between developers and conservationists. In her exquisitely written, utterly engrossing new novel, “Fellowship Point,” Alice Elliott Dark explores these strains while celebrating Maine’s gorgeous but threatened landscape. At the same time, she celebrates the beauty – and sticking points – of a lifelong friendship between two women whose choices have taken them down different paths.
Well, fasten your seatbelt — or better yet, put on one of those five-point safety harnesses — before you dig into “Human Blues.” Elisa Albert’s third novel takes off with magnificent speed and never lets up. There’s no time to take a breath as we follow Aviva Rosner, a singer-songwriter who has launched her fourth album, “Womb Service,” to growing acclaim. Aviva is way hipper than you or me. She throws out graphic expletives as often as my childhood Camp Fire Girls leader said, “Pep and go!” Her clothes are so fashionable, most people wouldn’t recognize them as style. And yet, she’s entirely relatable.
Jean Thompson’s wry, canny ninth novel (and 15th book of fiction), “The Poet’s House,” will delight Bay Area readers, as it’s entirely set here — San Francisco, Marin, Santa Rosa — with superb authority and wit. (Thompson taught, among many other places, at San Francisco State University.) But the novel may most strike home for poets and writers everywhere as it calmly, systematically depicts their worlds — and, let’s say, field behavior — unretouched.
Like jet travel itself, the tour is sometimes disorienting. You go to bed reading a chapter about Jeddah and wake up to find yourself in Delhi. But Vanhoenacker is a sure-handed navigator, filling in the gaps with history, poetry, and lots of local color.
While he might lack the kind of insider's knowledge that comes from spending a lifetime in a city, Vanhoenacker has the benefit of making short but frequent visits to lots of places, with a pocketful of foreign currencies and a backpack brimming with curiosity.
Is it enough of an excuse that Stodola overindulged in luxury with the aim of writing this book? I’m not sure. I recognize that part of her point is to convey the mad hedonism of the resort world. Still, I felt better on arriving at her penultimate chapter, in which she brings the purpose of the book back into focus by suggesting ways to rethink the luxury resort. Stodola gathers a slate of proposals from environmentally minded people she meets during her travels, and does her best to stick to the practical, mostly avoiding the sweepingly wishful.
It should come as no surprise to readers of Geoff Dyer that The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings isn’t actually about the Swiss tennis idol, nor is it about the sport he mastered. Federer shows up here and there, slipped in among its pages like inspirational bookmarks. But as one expects from the author of Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It — which, spoiler, isn’t about yoga, but is, rather, a travelogue of sorts — Dyer’s latest effort ventures delightfully far afield from its conceit.