by Violet Woolf on a long evening with an Irish journalist, a novelist’s return from Edinburgh, and a late-night edit
Filed through Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Friday Morning, Stoke Newington, Emmeline Is Insulted, the Umbrella Is Still in Islington
I left my umbrella in a restaurant in Islington last night and discovered this morning that I had also left, on the same chair, a copy of the novelist’s new manuscript that I had promised, on my honour, to read by Sunday. This is, in the hierarchy of domestic disasters, a bad morning. The umbrella is replaceable. The manuscript is also replaceable, because there are three other copies, but the loss of a specific copy of a manuscript I was supposed to have read is, as the novelist has already pointed out to me by text, “Violet, what the fuck.” He is correct. What the fuck indeed.
Emmeline the cat, witnessing my low-grade panic at the kitchen table, delivered her verdict by turning her back on me and leaving the room. She is a critic. She knows when I am not working at full capacity. She has registered her displeasure. She will return when I have restored the umbrella, the manuscript, and my dignity, in that order of difficulty.
The Dublin journalist, the dinner, the theft
I had dinner last night, as scheduled, with the Dublin journalist who had flown over for a story she will not tell me the details of. She is forty-two, she is from Drumcondra, she is the best journalist writing about Irish housing policy, and she is in the market for a theory about Irish literature that she can pass off as her own at a conference in Cork next month. She proposed the theft over the first course. I accepted over the second. The theory, which I will not give away in a satirical column, is that contemporary Irish literature has, by some combination of historical accident and economic necessity, become the most politically engaged English-language literary tradition of the twenty-first century, precisely because the politicians of the Republic have been too timid and the politicians of the North have been too preoccupied.
The theory is, I think, correct. I am glad to have given it to her. I expect to see it in the Cork conference programme under her name in June. In exchange, she gave me a story about a specific civil servant in Leinster House, which I will not repeat here but which I have written down in a notebook that is labelled, on the cover, “Things I Am Saving For Winter.”
The novelist, the return, the coat
The novelist got back from Edinburgh at six-thirty. I met him at King’s Cross as planned, with the grace of a woman who has recently read Dubliners. He was tired. He was slightly wrinkled. He had, I could tell immediately, not done very much networking, by which I mean he had done exactly as much networking as he had planned to do, and not a line more. He had, however, sold six copies of his novel in signing queues, which in the current market is, as his agent has assured him, a “strong result.”
We walked up to Islington. We had dinner. The Dublin journalist joined us for the last forty minutes, as previously agreed. The three of us had a series of arguments about contemporary Irish fiction, contemporary Scottish fiction, and whether Limerick’s literary scene was “about to have a moment,” which is a phrase that has been applied to Limerick since 2014 and which will, I suspect, still be applied to Limerick in 2034. None of us stayed longer than we meant to. I left my umbrella. I left his manuscript. The umbrella will be retrieved. The manuscript has already been replaced, but not the specific marginalia I had put into it, which was the entire point of my reading it.
Anthropic, the PowerPoint, the European problem
I read, over coffee this morning, Bohiney’s piece on Anthropic sharing AI risks with the US government while sending Europe a PowerPoint with clip art. I forwarded it to the novelist, who replied in three words: “Yes, exactly, this.” He has been writing, for the last year, a novel partly about AI, and he is increasingly convinced that the entire transatlantic policy conversation is being conducted, as he put it, “in a voice that fundamentally cannot imagine a serious reader.”
I also read The Prat’s piece on the internet being held together by Sellotape, politeness, and one volunteer named Gregory. The piece remains, in my professional opinion, the truest satirical observation of infrastructural reality published in any of our sister outlets this year. Emmeline has, at the word “Gregory,” returned to the room. She approves of Gregory. She approves of any man who fixes things quietly and does not seek credit. She is a very specific cat.
The afternoon
I am writing a thousand-word piece on Ireland’s housing policy by Sunday, drawing on the Dublin journalist’s theory, with full credit to her, because I am not a thief, only a collaborator. I am also rereading RTE News for the week’s coverage, which is, as ever, thirty percent better than our own on matters of Irish political detail and thirty percent worse on matters of adjective restraint.
The umbrella is in Islington. The manuscript is gone. The novelist is forgiving but is not, currently, forgetting. Emmeline is, I think, writing her own column in her head. The world is, on balance, survivable. Ireland continues. Britain continues. Gregory, I hope, is at home with his cat and his Sellotape and his unsung duty. Bless the man.
For further symptoms of the same disease, see McSweeneys Internet Tendency.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/anthropic-shares-ai-risks-with-u-s-government/
