Very Specific People Who Should Read My Book
Maybe you're one of them? Read to find out.
I promise this newsletter will not be nonstop book promotion in the month leading up to the release of More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, but I got a notion in my head that I wanted to work out and as I argue in the book, there’s no better way of working something out than writing about it.
When you write a book proposal for a publisher, you’re expected to include an analysis of the possible audience(s) for the book you’re proposing.
You’re not allowed to say “all sentient creatures on this planet and any others we may discover,” even if that reflects your genuine feelings about the project you intend to undertake.
The audience I zeroed-in on for More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI was pretty straightforward, people who care about the experiences of reading and writing, particularly those tasked with working on these issues in education.
But I also had a more capacious notion of who might be interested in the book because while it has significant relevance to issues of schooling and writing pedagogy, my intention was to produce something that went both deeper and broader, a statement about values and philosophy, an examination of the cultural moment that’s being challenged by the arrival of generative AI and large language models.
The logline pitch - which I think was persuasive - was that the book would akin to Shop Class as Soul Craft except about writing instead of repairing motorcycles.
So, yes, this is a book for all sentient creatures on this planet or any others we may discover between now and forever. I’m keeping my expectations reasonable.
I’ve been thinking about my end-of-2024 resolution to leave everything on the field when it comes to trying to make this book as successful and impactful as I can, I’ve been thinking about more specific audiences who I would love to read the book. Perhaps by putting these wishes into print, I may help them come true.
Specific People Who Should Read More Than Words
Barack Obama
My wish for Barack Obama to read the book is multifold. For one, it’s the first step to getting on one of Barack Obama’s lists of books he’s read that he shares on social media, potentially driving significant sales of the book and raising my public profile as someone working on these issues.
What, you thought I’d be above that stuff?
As a writer himself who has spoken about writing as a vehicle for understanding himself and the world around him, I think he would appreciate the approach I take in the book, and the biographical details I share about my own journey on these fronts. I think he appreciates the power of writing to both shape the writer and the audience, and I have to think that he, like me, would be concerned about a world where young people no longer have access to the kinds of experiences that help them build those capacities.
More importantly, it is my view that the approach to education reform and the incentive structure for our public education institutions as embodied by Race to the Top (and George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Before That) was a bad turn in how we think about the work of teachers and students in this country. The embrace of achieving proficiency to develop one’s human capitol resulted in a shrunken notion of what schools are for and what students should be seeking to do inside of them. I think that vision is at significant odds with the experiences that allowed someone like Barack Obama to one day become the President of the United States. My hope is that the former President would appreciate a book that emphasizes freedom and agency as core values of reading and writing.
Terry Gross, Ezra Klein, Dax Shepard/Monica Padman
These are the hosts/co-hosts of the podcasts (Fresh Air, Ezra Klein Show, Armchair Expert) where I think I could have the most interesting conversation about the book for the widest possible audience. This would also really impress my mother.
Maryanne Wolf
Maryanne Wolf is the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Without her book looking at the nature and experience of reading, my book about the nature and experience of writing would be very different. Her work is cited extensively in More than Words, and I’d love her to know how important her book has been to me.
There’s many many others whose work I cite in the book, their ideas helping improve the impact of my own. I suppose Maryanne Wolf can stand in for all of those folks, but I hope someone who is curious about the book, but doesn’t know that I necessarily would cite them, is reading along and sees their own words. I can say from experience that this is very fun.
In a chapter discussing motivation and improving writing through practice, I make significant use of Adam Grant’s recent book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, so he falls into the same category as Maryanne Wolf, but I’d also like him to read it because at his
I’d love to have a conversation about Grant around what seems to me to be some unexamined questions about what exactly we mean by the “advances” of AI, and whether or not we should maybe think more critically about the kinds of changes billionaires like Hoffman (and Gates, etc…) have in mind for the rest of us.
Sal Khan
First, I read his book. Sure, I was not particularly kind to his book, nor to the vision of education that is embodied in his ChatGPT powered edu-bot, Khanmigo. But the reality is that Sal Khan is going to have as much or more impact on how generative AI tools will be used in education, and because I think he is working in good faith, I think he would benefit from the perspective of someone who believes we should teach writing, rather than just train students to pass writing assignments.
Anderson Cooper
Cooper was the correspondent on the 60 Minutes segment featuring Sal Khan and Khanmigo that (as Audrey Watters shows) came across like an infomercial, but which also had a couple of hints of Cooper’s skepticism. Maybe he’d like to tell a different side of the story.
Bill Gates and/or Important People from the Gates Foundation
Bill Gates has arguably had more influence on our system of schooling than any other single person over the last twenty years, and that influence has been, on balance, malign. Because of his enormous wealth, because his foundation is one of the only sources for funding for education research or innovation, he calls many of the shot, including imposing the Common Core State Standards on our nation’s children. I do not think Gates intends to be such a negative influence on students and I know some folks who have worked with and for the Gates Foundation who definitely want to help students.
But it’s been clear to me long before ChatGPT showed up that what we ask students to do is too cramped, too oriented around a notion of developing so-called “human capital” that instead leaves students disengaged and defeated.
We now have this technology that can mimic the kinds of work that seems to pass muster in school. Should we really have students keep doing that? Have we really moved past reading and writing as essential expressions of our humanity?
The Parent Who Thinks There’s Something Missing from What Their Child Is Experiencing in School
One of the core messages in the concluding section for More Than Words is that thinking and dealing with generative AI is a collective, public issue that requires collaboration among different stakeholder groups. A dream I have for the book is a parent going to a meeting with a principal or superintendent and politely and productively having a conversation that leads to some kind of positive change for not just their child, but all students.
The High School Student Who Thinks There’s Something Missing from What They’re Experiencing in School
One of my chief advantages in life was deciding early on that some (maybe even much) of what I was asked to do in school was kind of bullshit. Truth be told, I absolutely overshot the mark on declaring things bullshit, but at times that instinct drove me to find some way to make the uninteresting and rote more interesting and novel for the sake of my own stimulation, like when I decided to write my junior year term paper on the works of Tom Wolfe in the style of Tom Wolfe. I got a C on the assignment that I probably worked harder on than any other over the course of four years (My teacher did not appreciate the genius of my mimicry.), but I didn’t care because I liked what I’d done.
Writing can and should be a empowering experience, rather than something students fear or view as a repeated series of failures.
Either we give up or dig in. I vote for digging in.
Is anyone with me?
Links
This week at the Chicago Tribune I wrote about a pre-Christmas visit to Highland Park, Illinois’ Secret World Books, as part of my New Year’s Resolution to visit as many unfamiliar (to me) independent bookstores to me in the coming year. I’ll be on the road a bit speaking about More That Words so feel free to suggest places to visit?
turned the theft of his car into a fascinating rumination on what gets taken and what gets left behind.at
, has a chat with Jane Hartsock about her new novel, Load Bearing.I don’t think there’s any one right way to write a novel, but it’s interesting to see how others think of the task, which
did at his newsletter recently.The most read
piece of the year should resonate with teachers of all stripes.Recommendations
1. Almond by Sohn Won-Pyung
2. Orbital by Samantha Harvey
3. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
4. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
5. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Luke C. - Longford, Ireland
Some pretty august works here. Feels like I’ve got to zero in on a classic. I’m going to take a bold swing with a book that is often pretty polarizing, Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.
1. The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers
2. Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
3. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
4. Tiny Moons by Nina Mingya Powles
5. August Blue by Deborah Levy
Bhargavi G. - New Delhi, India
I always get a kick out of getting international requests, and here, this week, are two. Fun! Here’s a personal favorite, The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra.
Is everyone’s New Year off to a good start? Next week is my first week back at full responsibilities, one of which includes promoting my forthcoming book. Have I mentioned it to you?
Thank you for your indulgence this week.
John
The Biblioracle
1) Purchase request submitted through my local public library (and a reminder to all that you, too, can submit library purchase suggestions! A library loan is not a lost sale!).
2) Your description of writing a paper about Tom Wolfe in the style of Tom Wolfe cracked me up. I'm in the middle of reading the journals I kept in high school, and while for the most part they are as terrible as you might imagine, I'm also reminded of several such exercises/stunts I pulled, most of which were equally unappreciated by my teachers. (Our AP English teacher had the habit not only of assigning five paragraph themes but also of correcting you, should you make the grave mistake of varying the construction of the opening of your middle three paragraphs, of crossing out whatever you'd done and replacing it with "First, Second, Third." We did not get along.)
I am "the parent who thinks there is something missing from my child's education." The other day, in a meeting with my daughter's 7th grade teacher, I expressed concern that she doesn't read as much as she used to, and the teacher, who I really like, assured me that this is normal. "I know," I said. "But I don't want her to be normal." As someone who reads more than a normal person--maybe even more than is advisable--I'm wary of imposing my own personal standards for how to live on my children. Raising teenagers today, I think all the time about the act of reading and why, to me, it seems essential. Definitely planning to read this book.