Inside the July 2024 Issue
Can AI think creatively?; facing the ghosts of resistance and exile; among the ruins of Aleppo; Joy Williams; Donna Tartt, and much more.
July 2024
[ E S S A Y ]
The Gods of Logic
Before and after artificial intelligence
By Benjamín Labatut
“As the voices of warning form a chorus, it is harder and harder to think without panic or to reason with logic. Thankfully, we have many other talents that don’t answer to reason. And we can always rise and take a step back from the void toward which we have so hurriedly thrown ourselves, by lending an ear to the strange voices that arise from our imagination.”
[ E S S A Y ]
Metal Machine Music
Can AI think creatively? Can we?
By Laurent Dubreuil
“It is up to us to determine whether we now wish to multiply dullness through AI or refuse to be subjected to it. Before or after artificial intelligence a life worth living is never a ‘little creature’: it is creation, our creation.”
[ L E T T E R • F R O M • C O L O G N E ]
The Dead Admonish
Facing the ghosts of resistance and exile
By John Ganz
“As much as I want to wash my hands of it, I’m forced to admit that the Zionist project provided my family a temporary refuge that likely saved their lives. Were they colonists? If so, they were ones that would have much preferred to stay home.”
[ L E T T E R • F R O M • S Y R I A ]
There Was and There Was Not
Among the ruins of Aleppo
By Pauls Toutonghi
“As I stood in that domed, sacred space, I felt bleak and exhausted. It was hard to be hopeful about a single restored school or mosque rebuilt by a dictator within a terribly damaged city, especially when confronted by the intractability of the country’s ongoing crisis.”
[ S T O R Y ]
Liquid Papers
By Nicolette Polek
“Imagination, Ann came to realize, was difficult to control when laced not just with darkness but also pain.”
[ R E V I E W S ]
Yesterday's Men
The death of the mythical method
By Alan Jacobs
“The mythical method of the twentieth century arose from a desperate hope to bridge the chasms of hatred and fear that separate us from one another. Fact and argument alone cannot build forbearance and charity across racial and cultural and sexual boundaries; this requires image and event, the visualizable and the narratable, picture and story. One can see that the attempt failed while admitting and even embracing its nobility.”
D E P A R T M E N T S
[ E A S Y • C H A I R ]
By Hari Kunzru
[ T H E • H A R P E R ‘ S • I N D E X ]
[ R E A D I N G S ]
The Approach of a Dangerous Fate
and more...
[ F R O M • T H E • A R C H I V E ]
By Lucy Eisenberg
[ A N N O T A T I O N ]
By Kim Hew-Low
By Dan Piepenbring
[ P U Z Z L E ]
By Richard E. Maltby Jr.
See the full table of contents