Reviews and Comments

There is not a genre of punk-rock fantasy as far as I'm aware, or at least there wasn't until I read Saint the Terrifying. The story had me hooked in just the first few pages, though for very personal reasons. If you have ever seen the documentary Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, read about the punk club Gilman Street in the pages of Maximum Rocknroll back when it was iconic, or just loved the band Jawbreaker, it might have that same effect on you. The story features a character we come to know as Saint, a troubled punk with one eye and a prison record, and like Joyce's Ulysses the narrative follows his adventures over the course of one day. Saint is complicated--a recovering addict, violence-prone, but with a distinct sense of justice. What comes completely out of left field, though, is his fascination with his Viking heritage, passed on by his Norwegian father in lessons worthy of ninja movie. The result is a story that could be made into an action film, with fights and gore galore. What kept me going, kept me turning pages, though, was Saint's compassion to another addict named Jesse and the inside jokes about the punk scene from back in the day--with many a good-humored dig at Green Day that made me laugh. As someone that grew up in a punk scene somewhere in the Midwest and who longingly looked to all the cool things going in D.C. and at Gilman in San Francisco, this was a lot of fun. If I was still sixteen, I would read it over and over, just like I watched Suburbia and The Decline of Western Civilization over and over again.

There is not a genre of punk-rock fantasy as far as I'm aware, or at least there wasn't until I read Saint the Terrifying. The story had me hooked in just the first few pages, though for very personal reasons. If you have ever seen the documentary Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, read about the punk club Gilman Street in the pages of Maximum Rocknroll back when it was iconic, or just loved the band Jawbreaker, it might have that same effect on you. The story features a character we come to know as Saint, a troubled punk with one eye and a prison record, and like Joyce's Ulysses the narrative follows his adventures over the course of one day. Saint is complicated--a recovering addict, violence-prone, but with a distinct sense of justice. What comes completely out of left field, though, is his fascination with his Viking heritage, passed on by his Norwegian father in lessons worthy of ninja movie. The result is a story that could be made into an action film, with fights and gore galore. What kept me going, kept me turning pages, though, was Saint's compassion to another addict named Jesse and the inside jokes about the punk scene from back in the day--with many a good-humored dig at Green Day that made me laugh. As someone that grew up in a punk scene somewhere in the Midwest and who longingly looked to all the cool things going in D.C. and at Gilman in San Francisco, this was a lot of fun. If I was still sixteen, I would read it over and over, just like I watched Suburbia and The Decline of Western Civilization over and over again.

Schiff was an on-again, off-again staffer at the information desk of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and this experience and her memories of it shape this dreamy, associative fugue of thoughts on art, parasitism, colonialism, family, and the mundane and egregious indignities of working in a public museum. Yet she states in the acknowledgments that "Though I haven't worked inside the Information Desk now for more than twenty years, the experience has so asserted itself into my art that I regard the Information Desk as my private writing desk; I am always seated there."

I was drawn to this poem for its unique premise. But what made the reading experience powerful and enjoyable was the unexpected juxtaposition of the subject matter structured inside a series of poems with names like "Invocation: To the Jewel Wasp." While its self-designation as an "epic" is only playful (she makes brief, wry references to "Arms and the man- / made hammered steel plate" and "arms and / the mansion you can stroll through"), the poetry mixes entomology, art criticism, and personal reflection in a way that I found completely engaging.

This was recommended by Professor Liz Losh at a recent talk on AI literacy at Dartmouth. I picked it up as a possible reading for students in a freshman composition class, but ultimately decided that selected chapters would be appropriate for this rather than the entire book.

Baron's style is readable and welcoming to a layperson who might otherwise be mystified by the acronyms and computer science concepts that make up large language model. While there is a lot of history, explanation, and anecdotes in each chapter, the focus remains consistently on the question of what we give up by adopting these tools. It's not hysterical or anti-AI, just frank. While Baron offers no miraculous answers to the questions AI poses for all of us, her book helps a reader know just what AI actually is, where it comes from, and what it can do, and leaves the reader to decide for themselves to what degree they will allow these new tools to take over parts of their writing lives.

This was recommended by Professor Liz Losh at a recent talk on AI literacy at Dartmouth. I picked it up as a possible reading for students in a freshman composition class, but ultimately decided that selected chapters would be appropriate for this rather than the entire book.

Baron's style is readable and welcoming to a layperson who might otherwise be mystified by the acronyms and computer science concepts that make up large language model. While there is a lot of history, explanation, and anecdotes in each chapter, the focus remains consistently on the question of what we give up by adopting these tools. It's not hysterical or anti-AI, just frank. While Baron offers no miraculous answers to the questions AI poses for all of us, her book helps a reader know just what AI actually is, where it comes from, and what it can do, and leaves the reader to decide for themselves to what degree they will allow these new tools to take over parts of their writing lives.