opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 7 August 2026

1 August : Yet another AI-use to-do | Murder at The Flea Club review
2 August : Posthumous publishing | Book-destroying to feed AI
3 August : Monika Helfer (1947-2026) | Merve Emre Q & A
4 August : Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival preview | AI and translation | MFAs !
5 August : Gaelic Literature Awards shortlists | Chuck Palahniuk profile | Paul Celan review
6 August : Miles Franklin Literary Award | '50 Best 21st Century Thrillers' ? | AI v. human 'creative' writing ...
7 August : Hotlist longlist | Graphic fiction in ... Australia | Publishing advances | The Studio review

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       Hotlist longlist

       For the German Hotlist competition: "All German-language independent publishing houses are invited to submit one book regarded as one of the best of their current catalogue", and 205 did this year -- all of which you can find (after annoyingly clicking back and forth and through -- come on, people, just post a simple one-page list ...) here, and they've now announced the thirty finalists, which the public can now vote on. (Only three of the ten finalists will be decided by this public vote, the prize-jury fills out the other seven places .....)
       Both the list of submissions -- annoying though it is to navigate ... -- and the thirty longlisted titles make for a neat overview of what independent German-language publishers are publishing; among the longlisted titles are Dubravka Ugrešić's Fox, as well as books by Paul Éluard, Lídia Jorge, and Tierno Monénembo.
       Readers can vote through 4 September; the winner will be announced 9 October.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Graphic fiction in ... Australia

       At The Conversation the research team Folio considers: Friday essay: is there a great Australian graphic novel ? -- an interesting overview.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Publishing advances

       This week's academic scandal -- or at least the one that's been getting the most attention --, the one at Cambridge University that has now led to the professor in question stepping down from his position, comes with a well-timed publishing kicker, as a book by him -- a memoir, though with a co-writer -- is scheduled to come out shortly, from Simon & Schuster -- see their publicity page --, with Ella Creamer and Lanre Bakare now reporting at The Guardian that the (ex-)academic/author: "claimed he was paid “1.4 million” for his forthcoming memoir detailing his extraordinary backstory"
       He: "did not specify whether the 1.4m figure was in pound sterling or US dollars" but, hey, either way ..... Meanwhile: "Simon & Schuster did not respond to a request to comment on the sum", so we can't be sure as to the accuracy (also, how much his co-writer got), but, despite all the controversy and fuss: "Simon & Schuster US told the Guardian on Thursday night it was “proceeding with the publication [...] as planned”".
       Meanwhile, Creamer and Bakare also get some back-of-the-envelope maths regarding the project:

One senior publisher said it was an utterly mad number, but that “madness sometimes happens”, so it was conceivable. They said a book such as ***’s would normally be expected to sell about 5,000 copies, so with £2 of royalty per copy, that equates to an advance of £10,000, not 1.4 million dollars or pounds.

       (As I have often noted, I am completely baffled by the 'business' of publishing -- but, hey, given the controversy maybe this will sell like hotcakes.)

       Of course, the only thing that could improve this story is if it turns out that the memoir was AI-generated, too; given its 'substance' -- there seem to be some, um, 'hallucinations' to the author's whole life/story -- that might actually be a selling-point and lead to higher sales. Though I am afraid I don't see any way for Simon & Schuster to get back their investment (other than the priceless publicity being associated with a project like this generates ?).

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       The Studio review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of John Gregory Dunne's account of The Studio -- the studio in question being Twentieth Century Fox, anno 1967.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Miles Franklin Literary Award

       They've announced the winner of this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, the leading Australian novel prize, and it is Fierceland, by Omar Musa; see also the publicity pages from Penguin Books Australia and Penguin Random House SEA.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       '50 Best 21st Century Thrillers' ?

       Why provide actual content when lists are so much more fun ? The New York Times' book coverage is running with them -- now out: The 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century (presumably paywalled), as voted on by: "291 crime novelists, editors, booksellers, librarians and other book lovers".

       A few are under review at the complete review:

• 4. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
• 6. My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• 9. Slow Horses, by Mick Herron
• 13. Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson
• 23. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
• 28. The Perfect Nanny, Leila Slimani

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       AI v. human 'creative' writing ...

       In an already much-reported-on story -- see e.g. coverage at The Guardian and the BBC -- in a new article at Judgment and Decision Making Sydney Sears and Deena Skolnick Weisberg explore Bot or not: Can people tell the difference between stories written by a human or by an AI system ? and find ... umm, not so much.
       Unsurprisingly: "our participants displayed a bias against AI, rating stories more favorably if they had been told they were written by a human" -- but the fun part here was that part of the study was that readers were sometimes lied to as to whether or not a story was AI- or human-written, and: "Participants were no better than chance at differentiating between the human-written and AI-generated stories".
       Among the interesting findings:

Although self-reported expertise with fictional literature did not relate to accuracy, we found evidence that self-reported expertise with AI systems did positively relate to participants' performance on our task.

       Maybe something for publishing 'professionals' (who presumably profess an 'expertise with fictional literature') to think about when they claim to be able to identify AI-generated writing .....
       Of course, the other fun take-away, and what most of the coverage focuses on is that in the one study: "people tended to rate AI-generated stories more favorably than human-written stories" (and the authors find: "people actually prefer AI-generated stories while believing that these stories are worse"). Yes, this is just one study (though also: yet another), and a small sample, but still .....
       So, yes, this is just a (relatively) small study and the results are not somehow overwhelming, but I note that: AIs are going to get better (much, much better) and would suggest that any hopes of keeping them from swamping the creative field(s) are hopeless. (Also: I'm pretty sure at some point publishers will realize where things are headed (and how cheap content-creation is using LLMs ...) and jump aboard the bus and leave authors by the side of the road and in the dust .....)
       Yes, writers (and publishers) still have that bias against AI going for them for now, but how long will that hold ?

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Gaelic Literature Awards shortlists

       The Gaelic Books Council has announced the shortlists for this year's Gaelic Literature Awards
       There are seven categories, including two for unpublished manuscripts.
       The winners will be announced 15 September.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Chuck Palahniuk profile

       At El País Laura Fernández has a profile of the author, in Chuck Palahniuk: ‘Transgressive literature in the U.S. ended with 9/11, when we all became terrorists’ -- itself an interesting thesis.
       He also suggests:

Today, horror is the only genre that allows for transgression; it’s the only one that can reflect on what we’re experiencing, while attacking it at the same time

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Paul Celan review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Anna Arno's biography, Paul Celan: A Life, now out in English, from Harvard University Press.

       (As longtime readers know, I regard Celan as one of the three greatest twentieth-century German poets, alongside Rilke and Brecht.)

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival preview

       The Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival will take place at the end of the month, and while there's apparently nothing up about it yet at the Inizjamed site, at the Times of Malta Emma Mattei spoke to artistic director Leanne Ellul and festival coordinator Jean Paul Borg 'on their origins and the ideas shaping this year's programme', in A literary festival, unbound
       Seven writers from six countries will be featured, and it looks fairly promising.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       AI and translation

       Another take/look, this one from the Philippines, as Mye Mulingtapang considers Can AI translate literature ? Why human translators still matter at ABS-CBN, speaking specifically with local translator Kristian Sendon Cordero.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       MFAs !

       At The Guardian Madeleine Dunnigan tackles at some length (and based also on personal experience) the always fun topic of ‘I want to be ripped to shreds’: writers flock to MFAs -- but does it breed elitist literature ?

       I'll only say that I love the picture they cruelly put at the top of the article -- 'A School of the Museum of Fine Arts student works on writing in a tree in Boston, Massachusetts'.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Monika Helfer (1947-2026)

       Austrian author Monika Helfer has passed away; see, for example, the orf report or the statement from publisher Hanser.

       Bloomsbury recently brought out two of her books in English, Last House Before the Mountain and Library for the War-Wounded; see their author page.

       See also the Hanser foreign rights page for more information about some of her books. (They refer to her as 'Monika Helfer-Köhlmeier' there, though that's not how they print her name on the books; she was the wife of well-known author Michael Köhlmeier.) There's also additional (German) information at the Hanser author page.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Merve Emre Q & A

       At Kill Your Darlings Suzy Garcia has a Q & A with the critic, in Merve Emre Has Her Eye on Australia.
       Among the reveals:

I don’t own a television, and the last movie I saw in a theatre was Midsommar in 2019.

       And, of course, quite a few (Barley Patch-author) Murnane-mentions.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Posthumous publishing

       Another article about the publishing of works after an author's death, this time with a focus on kids' books: at USA Today Clare Mulroy reports that 'Experts say posthumous publishing may signal economic hardship for the industry, but it's also a way for book heirs to continue a family legacy', in Posthumous publishing may signal hard times and a need for nostalgia. Is it ethical ?
       I'm not sure about it signaling 'economic hardship for the industry' -- surely, publishers have always been eager to throw whatever they can on the market, milking an author (and/or the author's name) for all it's worth -- but some interesting color and examples here. And numbers: "More than 800 million Dr. Seuss books have been sold, with 10 million out the door each year, according to Random House Children's Books" !
       And some fun quotes about the whole posthumous publishing debate -- and all without mentioning Kafka/Brod. But, hey: "There are no standardized ethics" !

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Book-destroying to feed AI

       There have been quite a few articles about mysterious large-scale purchases of used books, with the apparent purpose of the purchases being to 'feed' (i.e. 'train') LLMs, with the books then destroyed, and at The Guardian Stephanie Convery now offers another look, in ‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI.
       While I really, really do not like what's happening -- the pulping of books (large-scale though it is, for other reasons, in any case) kills me, plus this sort of practice raises the price of used books, which I find very annoying -- I did have to giggle at the framing here, complete with big photograph of a '400-year-old document recording a Spanish Inquisition exorcism at the Antiquariat Forum BV and Inlibris stall at the 2026 Rare Book Fair' at the head of the piece: that is not the kind of book that is getting bought up, much less pulped. More typical are orders such as the grab-bag mentioned at the end of the article: "a 1970s manual on soil mechanics was bought alongside a 2010 book called Born to Thunder: Champions of New Zealand Cycling, a collection of Early Australian Poetry (1982), and a local history of the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn".
       Still, this is not a good thing, and if this sort of framing helps increase public outrage and opposition, I'm fine with that .....

       (Meanwhile, see also Samantha Cole's report at 404 on ISBNdb beating a hasty retreat ("We've removed a recent landing page, "Printed Books Sourcing for Your AI LLMs Dataset Needs." It was part of exploring demand, and we've chosen to pivot away from that direction" ...) after all the bad press they were getting for jumping on this train, in Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage. Though I am afraid that won't stop the general practice.)

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Yet another AI-use to-do

       Another case of a work of fiction being bought for a huge sum ("an offer for more than $2m [...] as part of a 14-way auction") and then being ditched by the publisher because of suspicions of AI-use is making the rounds and I can't resist a few comments.
       In The Guardian Emma Loffhagen sums up what seem to be the basics here -- and quotes the author:

He said the novel had “passed through first readers, second readers, editors, and acquisitions teams at numerous publishing houses ... If the manuscript had shown genuine signs of being generated by AI, it is difficult to believe that every one of those experienced professionals would have failed to notice.”

       The faith in 'experienced professionals' is endearing in its naïveté -- has he met people working in publishing ? -- but the larger point is the problematic one: sure, we've all come across internet slop -- usually some summary news article or maybe opinion piece -- that we can identify as having been AI-generated, but I'm sorry, 'genuine signs of being generated by AI' is a tall, tall order and anyone who thinks they can always or even often recognize it, or that there are people (or AI programs) that can, is deluding themselves -- already now, and certainly in the future. Other than authors literally leaving tell-tale signs in their manuscripts -- forgetting to delete the prompts they used (it happens, apparently) -- it's very hard to identify with any certainty; among the worst things about all this concern about AI-use in writing is that writers worry about their writing resembling AI-generated writing and trying to change it to avoid that -- no em-dashes ! no lists of threes, etc. Come on, people !
       (For now I have no concerns about anyone ever suspecting that my writing here at the complete review and this Literary Saloon (or, for that matter, my fiction, such as in my novel Salome in Graz) is AI-assisted -- stylistically, I have an awful lot of tics and idiosyncratic quirks -- but given how much and often LLMs are hoovering up my words (the overwhelming majority of traffic to the site now is clearly from AI bots that are simply copying all the material) they can probably already do a convincing imitation, if any thought it was worth their while.)
       As I've often noted, I don't really get this focus on authorship, when it is surely the text that matters, regardless of how it is produced. (Yes, I recognize there are great problems with the use of LLMs, including how they rely on a huge body of other people's work to function in the first place, as well as all sorts of environmental and other concerns, but it seems to me that in these debates the outrage is focused almost entirely on the ideas of 'authenticity' and 'authorship', and I find it difficult to understand why these are so important.) I have read several works of 'popular fiction' in the past year where I have actually wished the author had turned to AI, at least for some of the editing of the prose (having mostly given up on human editors ever stepping in); it couldn't have made things worse .....
       (The 'authorship' question/issue is, admittedly, of some additional interest in this particular case, since, as the author notes, his is (yet another) high profile case where the author in question is ... not white; it's hard not to suspect that that played some role in how all this unfolded.)
       The use of AI in non-fiction and relying on it for 'facts' seems to me to be a genuine and much greater problem (much as I love and value fiction, facts matter, in a whole different and important way), and I certainly believe that lawyers who cite non-existent cases or scientists who refer to non-existent articles and studies should be severely sanctioned, but as far as fiction goes -- surely anything goes, as long as the final product, the text, justifies it. (I initially was not particularly bothered by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk admitting that she used AI -- but almost cried when she 'explained': “I make use of artificial intelligence on the same principles as most people in the world – I treat it as a tool that allows faster documenting and checking of facts.” Dear, god, people, please, please do not think AI can be relied on to 'check facts'.)
       In any case, it's fun to see how publishing is 'dealing' with this whole issue -- one that is certainly not going away. The flood of poorly done AI-generated crap on Amazon is only the tip of the iceberg; as tools are refined and the product/output gets better 'writing' (and publishing) will certainly soon look very different.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Murder at The Flea Club review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Matthew Head's 1955 novel, Murder at The Flea Club.

       This is the fourth in his quartet of novels featuring Dr.Mary Finney; nothing special -- but it does leave me curious enough about the other three, which are set in the then-still Belgian Congo, where Head (actually: John Canaday) spent some time in the 1940s. (Canaday went on to become a long-time art critic at The New York Times, by the way.)

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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