Irreplaceable

In Rafael Chirbes’s diaries, you can see the extraordinary amount of reading, thinking, struggling to write, editing, rewriting, self-doubt, pain, and desolation that went into each of the novels. Chirbes’s Crematorio and En la orilla are the last two novels published while he was alive. These are his masterpieces. The writer put a lifetime of reading and thinking about literature, about art, about language, about what makes a good novel into them. He would read for 10-15 hours a day and then write about what he read. For years, for decades, that’s how he lived.

When I think about that and the ease with which AI produces its “texts”, it’s kind of really funny. I don’t think we’re in great danger of being replaced, is what I’m saying.