US writer TC Boyle (“Water Music”) is concerned about division in the world United States of America under President Donald Trump and therefore no longer wants to travel to the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada to write as he once did. “I love the mountains, but I can’t stand being there any more. “The people at the top are almost all Trump supporters,” the 76-year-old told “Stern.” He used to go there to drink beer with his neighbors. “Today we are in a different world. “This breaks my heart – this division extends to the forest,” laments the author.
His country was on the verge of losing its soul, Boyle said. “The right wing has taken power and we no longer live in a democracy.” Some time ago he read another biography of Hitler by Volker Ullrich and commented: “The early stages of Hitler’s rise to power were very similar to what we see today: propaganda, cult of personality, manipulation. Trump not a populist. He is a fascist.” Nevertheless, many follow the US president because they can no longer distinguish between truth and delusion, Boyle said. “The truth is what the bubbles on the Internet present.”
AI without competition: “Writing is a very human act”
According to his own statement, the author views digitalization “with fascination and horror.” Humans were the first species to program their own extinction. “Our machines are faster, smarter, more efficient – but they don’t understand anything.” That’s why he at least doesn’t see literature being threatened by artificial intelligence (AI), Boyle said.
His son recently asked a chatbot to write a TC Boyle story, but the results didn’t worry the writer too much. “The text sounds like a cold robot, devoid of any humanity. Literature has often been seen as under threat – by television, by the Internet, now by AI. Writing is a very human act: an attempt to bring order to chaos. I believe true literature can survive because it celebrates imperfection.”
Boyle’s new book “No Way Home” was published in the fall. That writer currently on a reading tour of Germany and Austria.
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