Tony Horwitz, to be precise! Thanks for letting me know about the upcoming book. I'm a big fan of both Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horwitz and was so sad when he died.
Many thanks for all this, John. I think it's a really important and excellent piece.
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson is an extraordinary book about grief, and one that I keep coming back to.
I also want to mention "Death of a Fish," an essay by Adam Gopnik. This passage seems especially relevant: "The real proof of consciousness is the pain of loss...The pain we feel is not the same as the hum we know, and it is the pain, not the hum, that is the price of being conscious, and the point of being human."
I heard a podcast episode featuring Justin Harrison (A Hidden Brain episode I think) and I was also left feeling very sad for him, he lost his marriage and friends in this ongoing quest, and despite his insistence struck me as someone who is dealing with a deep grief he had been unable to face.
I think about those books I read as a child introducing us to loss like 'Where the Red Fern Grows' and 'Charlotte's Web'. I've had people question exposing children to stories about death or to the realities of losing a pet, but my own daughter had lost both pets and her beloved great grandmother and I think hard things and grief can come at any age and that knowing that we can go on is possible at any age.
I’m 54, too; my dad died in 2003. We were lucky to have our dads as long as we did, but it still felt shockingly early. But who I am now is absolutely shaped by the grief I had and have. I had to grow up in a way that I might not have at that time. It’s such a laughably ludicrous idea that somehow we can circumvent our grief, as if pretending we could “optimize” it (somehow) would improve our lives.
I just finished re-reading Benediction by Kent Haruf, and while it didn’t quite land as strongly as it did the first time I read it, I still found it a pretty good meditation on life and death and grief.
Read a couple really impressive novels about grief this year: The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, and I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore.
I feel grief on a daily basis. Losing my mother, my two young grandsons and my husband at various points in my life. I am horrified at the idea of using AI to avoid my feelings. I have read all the above mentioned books which have helped me in dealing with my grief as well as writing in a journal about my feelings. Another book I particularly liked was Tolstoy and The Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch. Books have always helped me through difficult times.
The AI re-creations remind me of the one time I saw a public psychic reading. It was all people desperately trying to contact loved ones who’d passed. So sad 😞
Laurie Frankel’s “Goodbye for Now” includes this concept of AI facsimiles “talking” with grieving family members in their loved ones’ voice and mannerisms. It’s a somehow funny and sweet meditation on grief.
Fantastic conversation piece. Grief, in simplest terms, is a shit gig that we don’t talk about enough. At some level it’s the basis for all suffering - painful feelings of want for what we’ve lost or what we never had - resulting in either obvious or subliminal anger, guilt, fear, numbness, sadness, emptiness, aimlessness, and general personal disfunction if not processed and integrated. There’s no denying that avoidance of appropriate processing and integration is damaging in a multitude of ways. Harrison’s admission of being perfectly content not going deeper, feeling the feels, and settling into a protective bubble of denial is indeed very heartbreaking. He mentions the idea of “gone forever,” as if the AI version of what is now gone softens that chest-squeezing “gone forever” feeling.
Assuming the ultimate goal is to reach a level where the “gone forever” feeling is less debilitating, less painful; how could one ever truly reach that point when they’re playing house with a computer? That is what is sad. Not interested in personal growth? Fine. But you’re still not actually making anything easier or better for yourself by engaging in what is ultimately pretending that a loss didn’t occur. It’s just coving up a bomb that will eventually blow up in your face one way or another. And, frankly, quite a disrespect to the one that has passed. If my friends or family employed an AI version of me after my demise, I’d haunt the shit out of them.
All that said, again, grief is a bitch. There is no one right way to deal with it and there is no wrong way. The only wrong way is NOT dealing with it. I can see the pure potential for this type of AI as a temporary crutch in the early stages of loss. In particular a sudden loss. An AI likeness could help some people actually reach the point of being able process grief by easing the transition or acting as another way to interact with a memorial of our loved ones rather than just visiting a grave or carrying around ashes. Of course, a temporary crutch like this would be difficult to part with. Another death to deal with. There really is no escaping it.
Nick Cave's generous writing about his sons' tragic deaths - from his "blog" - The Red Hand Files, to his book Faith, Hope, and Carnage, and much of his music.
John, thank you for recommending The Known World. It was not you who recommended it to me, but I read it and was profoundly moved by it.
Regarding grief, the second tragedy of my childhood was losing both parents in the same year, while I was in high school. That marked me, I'm sure, as did the first tragedy, their acrimonious divorce some years earlier. Now, in my autumn, I find so many dear ones have passed away, and each loss grieves me more. But never, NEVER would I want any bit of any of the lives of my beloved dead to be profaned by being "processed" by AI in any way. No, not. What is wrong with people? I have photos and memories, and sometimes little mementos, and that is enough.
Grief is with me everyday. It grows and shrinks. It makes me sad at times, but grateful at others. It is odd. But I wouldn’t change it. Grief is love.
H is for Hawk is another great grief book that weirdly helped me when I was in one of the sad patches.
Yikes - it's Anthony Horwitz, not Horowitz; the latter is still alive and publishing.
Tony Horwitz, to be precise! Thanks for letting me know about the upcoming book. I'm a big fan of both Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horwitz and was so sad when he died.
Many thanks for all this, John. I think it's a really important and excellent piece.
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson is an extraordinary book about grief, and one that I keep coming back to.
I also want to mention "Death of a Fish," an essay by Adam Gopnik. This passage seems especially relevant: "The real proof of consciousness is the pain of loss...The pain we feel is not the same as the hum we know, and it is the pain, not the hum, that is the price of being conscious, and the point of being human."
And this Sam Anderson piece is a knockout:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/31/magazine/dog-animals-death-mortality.html
And even more so the podcast episode! Sam Anderson is the best.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/podcasts/animal-episode-1-walnut.html
I heard a podcast episode featuring Justin Harrison (A Hidden Brain episode I think) and I was also left feeling very sad for him, he lost his marriage and friends in this ongoing quest, and despite his insistence struck me as someone who is dealing with a deep grief he had been unable to face.
I think about those books I read as a child introducing us to loss like 'Where the Red Fern Grows' and 'Charlotte's Web'. I've had people question exposing children to stories about death or to the realities of losing a pet, but my own daughter had lost both pets and her beloved great grandmother and I think hard things and grief can come at any age and that knowing that we can go on is possible at any age.
I’m 54, too; my dad died in 2003. We were lucky to have our dads as long as we did, but it still felt shockingly early. But who I am now is absolutely shaped by the grief I had and have. I had to grow up in a way that I might not have at that time. It’s such a laughably ludicrous idea that somehow we can circumvent our grief, as if pretending we could “optimize” it (somehow) would improve our lives.
I just finished re-reading Benediction by Kent Haruf, and while it didn’t quite land as strongly as it did the first time I read it, I still found it a pretty good meditation on life and death and grief.
Read a couple really impressive novels about grief this year: The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, and I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore.
I should've remembered "I Am Homeless..." That's a great example, a whole novel, really about grief.
I feel grief on a daily basis. Losing my mother, my two young grandsons and my husband at various points in my life. I am horrified at the idea of using AI to avoid my feelings. I have read all the above mentioned books which have helped me in dealing with my grief as well as writing in a journal about my feelings. Another book I particularly liked was Tolstoy and The Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch. Books have always helped me through difficult times.
The AI re-creations remind me of the one time I saw a public psychic reading. It was all people desperately trying to contact loved ones who’d passed. So sad 😞
Laurie Frankel’s “Goodbye for Now” includes this concept of AI facsimiles “talking” with grieving family members in their loved ones’ voice and mannerisms. It’s a somehow funny and sweet meditation on grief.
They say there's always a Black Mirror episode, but this is the only Black Mirror episode I've seen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back#:~:text=The%20episode%20tells%20the%20story,reluctantly%20decides%20to%20try%20it.
Fantastic conversation piece. Grief, in simplest terms, is a shit gig that we don’t talk about enough. At some level it’s the basis for all suffering - painful feelings of want for what we’ve lost or what we never had - resulting in either obvious or subliminal anger, guilt, fear, numbness, sadness, emptiness, aimlessness, and general personal disfunction if not processed and integrated. There’s no denying that avoidance of appropriate processing and integration is damaging in a multitude of ways. Harrison’s admission of being perfectly content not going deeper, feeling the feels, and settling into a protective bubble of denial is indeed very heartbreaking. He mentions the idea of “gone forever,” as if the AI version of what is now gone softens that chest-squeezing “gone forever” feeling.
Assuming the ultimate goal is to reach a level where the “gone forever” feeling is less debilitating, less painful; how could one ever truly reach that point when they’re playing house with a computer? That is what is sad. Not interested in personal growth? Fine. But you’re still not actually making anything easier or better for yourself by engaging in what is ultimately pretending that a loss didn’t occur. It’s just coving up a bomb that will eventually blow up in your face one way or another. And, frankly, quite a disrespect to the one that has passed. If my friends or family employed an AI version of me after my demise, I’d haunt the shit out of them.
All that said, again, grief is a bitch. There is no one right way to deal with it and there is no wrong way. The only wrong way is NOT dealing with it. I can see the pure potential for this type of AI as a temporary crutch in the early stages of loss. In particular a sudden loss. An AI likeness could help some people actually reach the point of being able process grief by easing the transition or acting as another way to interact with a memorial of our loved ones rather than just visiting a grave or carrying around ashes. Of course, a temporary crutch like this would be difficult to part with. Another death to deal with. There really is no escaping it.
Nick Cave's generous writing about his sons' tragic deaths - from his "blog" - The Red Hand Files, to his book Faith, Hope, and Carnage, and much of his music.
John, thank you for recommending The Known World. It was not you who recommended it to me, but I read it and was profoundly moved by it.
Regarding grief, the second tragedy of my childhood was losing both parents in the same year, while I was in high school. That marked me, I'm sure, as did the first tragedy, their acrimonious divorce some years earlier. Now, in my autumn, I find so many dear ones have passed away, and each loss grieves me more. But never, NEVER would I want any bit of any of the lives of my beloved dead to be profaned by being "processed" by AI in any way. No, not. What is wrong with people? I have photos and memories, and sometimes little mementos, and that is enough.