I am sure that by now you’ve heard about the possibly, maybe, probably AI-generated story that was published by Granta in May. I skimmed the piece with a friend, and the two of us took turns reading aloud the worst lines in theatrical voices. These lines, and the story more generally, aim for a profundity that seems more appropriate to laugh at than be moved by. In trying so hard to be deep, intellectual, whatever, it just becomes tacky. Ew! AI-generated writing feels to me like a McMansion purchased by people who couldn’t actually afford it and thus have no furniture.
That some magazines are willing to publish this sort of work is disheartening, of course, but it would be defeatist to begin lamenting the death of literature now.
When someone creates “art” using AI (which is to say steals from pre-existing art, let’s be clear), they get a commodity that can’t be anything but. The story/poem/essay exists to be sold and/or shown off to the metaphorical neighbors. But what these people don’t realize is that it is during the long, lonely hours that the person typing away in the dark, hunched over the kitchen table, becomes the artist and, subsequently, when the art becomes meaningful on an individual level. To expect AI-generated “art” to be meaningful to anybody when it necessarily, as a result of its mode of production, can’t mean anything to the “writer” is embarrassingly self-important.
I have been working myopically on a novel since I started my MFA program, and it has changed me as a person. Writing a book about gender has forced me to reexamine my relationship to my femininity in a way that has made me more understanding, more empathetic, more capable of getting to the root of the anger that used to seem so insurmountable. I have become a better person because of it—not great, to be sure, but better. Of course, I have no idea if this book will ever be published. I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t—absolutely—but not for a moment will I believe that the years sunk on it will have been time wasted.
As my friend and I discussed the Granta story, it occurred to me that I am less pessimistic about AI as a fiction writer than I am as a human, college instructor, democracy enthusiast, etc. This optimism is dim, yes, but it is light enough to read by.
My hope is that, in order to differentiate our work from that which is AI-generated, more writers will turn to the avant-garde, the experimental, the revolutionary. I believe we could be on the precipice of a major shift in our understanding of what art can be. To be at the helm of a literary magazine now is incredibly exciting.
We would be honored to publish your most daring stories/poems/essays in Blue Mesa Review. Above all else, give us something new. Give us weird images and similies and line breaks. Give us unique characters. Give us a distinct voice. Give us the parts of yourself that you’d rather not look at because it is these parts that are the most real.
Please, give us something that AI never could.
Blue Mesa Review is not jumping from the human-written literature ship. We are buckling our life vests, and we will bail water by hand if we need to. Is this irrational? Maybe. But writing has never been a rational thing to do. And what is more human, more real than the impulse to survive, to watch as the choppy water gets ever closer and still believe that there is something worth fighting for? Grab a bucket. Send us your boundary-pushing best.
