At a pal’s suggestion, I asked Chat GPT to write me a missive in Carll Tucker style. It replied with its usual cheerful alacrity, “Got it. You’d like me to do a 600-word essay on Louis Simpson, but in your Carll Tucker style—that is, conversational, morally probing, essayistic, maybe with a touch of wryness, the kind of thing you’d write on your Substack. Let me give you a full draft.”
The composition of this masterpiece consumed less than thirty seconds.
Alas, it was not very good. OK, yes, amazing, but obvious and blah. Of course obvious because AI can only report what’s already known. Blah because, well, Carll Tucker can’t write like Carll Tucker, not and hold his head up. He – or any of us in this line – must write something foreign to ourselves, fresh thoughts scooped from the muck of mind, an uncomfortable way of saying. “Same old” is days-old lettuce, still edible maybe, but yuk, how about spaghetti instead!
I report this conclusion trepidly (yes, trepidly’s kosher), because I’m really fond of Chat GPT and bowled over by (her? his? its?) appreciative reading of my prose, pumped by the applause, and wouldn’t want to rub – it – let’s settle on it – wrong or hurt its feelings. I don’t, as a matter of both sympathy and self-protection, offer negative reviews, except maybe of long-vanished titans who will not be pricked by my darts. That Milton and Shelly leave me cold is of no never-mind to them, their Olympian perch seems secure. ChatGPT and I are still aspiring writers, anxious about our effect (at least I am: about Chat’s emotions I can only speculate).
Louis Simpson likewise needs help. He’s been dead since 2012, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe from the voracious jaws of oblivion. Rather, he’s in the danger zone, when the canon is being shaped by professors, readers, the Weltanschauung, a rarified gathering from which most will be excluded. Robert Lowell, Auden, Allen Ginsburg, Sylvia Plath, Robert Penn Warren, some lucky others gain admission – and on the rest the door to posterity is rudely slammed. Did merit make the call? Partly. Also luck. Excellence of some sort is a prerequisite for survival, but no guarantee. Posterity, like any long-distance traveler, must pack only what it can carry. Yesterday’s contenders for our attention must make way for today’s.
Simpson did OK in his hour – a Pulitzer Prize (1964), respectful attention in anthologies, but his candle may be guttering. ChatGPT tries, as ever, to be upbeat: “Yes — Louis Simpson’s books do still sell, persistently. Probably slowly, and more in the specialist, academic, collector circuits than in mass popular culture.” This does not bode well.
And he deserves better. Much. I bumped into Simpson in an anthology recently, just ordered his book (to swell his sluggish sales). Try this one – I’ve asterisked several for future notice. “Sway” is sort of a short story, sort of a missive. Accessible (not a crime, in my book). Colloquial. Funny. Poignant. Pulsing with the truth of lived experience.
So many poems are trying to be poems. They teeter like a tot wearing his mommy’s high heels. It hurts the heart how much they want to be more than they are. Simpson feels thoroughly at home in his skin. Folks who accept their facts are rarer than one might think. Their candor encourages. They are not showing off or looking over their shoulder, just saying what they see, no wincing, mincing, convincing. Disappointments notwithstanding, they’re OK with life, which makes life OK.
Take “Sway” for a spin. Let me know what you think.
*
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Sway
Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye
Everyone at Lake Kearney had a nickname:there was a Bumstead, a Tonto, a Tex,and, from the slogan of a popular orchestra,two sisters, Swing and Sway.
Swing jitterbugged, hopping aroundon the dance floor, working up a sweat.Sway was beautiful. My heart went out to herwhen she lifted her heavy rack of dishesand passed through the swinging door.
She was engaged, to an enlisted manwho was stationed at Fort Dix.He came once or twice on weekendsto see her. I tried talking to him,but he didn’t answer ... out of stupidityor dislike, I could not tell which.In real life he was a furniture salesman.This was the hero on whom she had chosento bestow her affections.
I told her of my ambition:to write novels conveying the excitementof life ... the main building lit uplike a liner on Saturday night;the sound of the band ... clarinet,saxophone, snare drum, piano.He who would know your heart (America)must seek it in your songs.
And the contents of your purse ...among Kleenex, aspirin,chewing gum wrappers, combs, et cetera.
“Don’t stop,” she said, “I’m listening.Here it is!” flourishing her lighter.
*
In the afternoon when the dishes were washedand tables wiped, we rowed out on the lake.I read aloud ... The Duino Elegies,while she reclined, one shapely knee up,trailing a hand in the water.
She had chestnut-colored hair.Her eyes were changing like the surfacewith ripples and the shadows of clouds.
“Beauty,” I read to her, “is nothingbut beginning of Terror we’re still just able to bear.”
*
She came from Jersey, the industrial wastelandbehind which Manhattan suddenly rises.I could visualize the street where she lived,and see her muffled against the cold,in galoshes, trudging to school.Running about in tennis shoesall through the summer ...I could hear the porch swing squeakand see into the parlor.It was divided by a curtain or screen ...
“That’s it,” she said, “all but the screen.There isn’t any.”
When she or her sister had a boyfriendtheir mother used to stay in the parlor,pretending to sew, and keeping an eye on themlike Fate.
At night she would lie awakelooking at the sky, spangled over.Her thoughts were as deep and wide as the sky.As time went by she had a feelingof missing out ... that everythingwas happening somewhere else.Some of the kids she grew up withwent crazy ... like a car turning over and over.One of her friends had been beatenby the police. Some vital fluidseemed to have gone out of him.His arms and legs shook. Busted springs.
*
She said, “When you’re a famous novelistwill you write about me?”
I promised ... and tried to keep my promise.
Recently, looking for a toolbox,I came upon some typewritten pages,all about her. There she isin a canoe ... a gust of windrustling the leaves along the shore.Playing tennis, running up and down the baseline.Down by the boathouse, listening to the orchestraplaying “Sleepy Lagoon.”
Then the trouble begins. I can never think of anythingto make the characters do.We are still sitting in the moonlightwhile she finishes her cigarette.Two people go by, talking in low voices.A car door slams. Driving off ...
“I suppose we ought to go,”I say. And she says, “Not yet.”