Lyrics: “Try This At Home” – Frank Turner, 2009
At work this week I offered to rework / copy edit a text which had been generated by ChatGPT. Why anyone uses ChatGPT or any other AI to produce some words instead of writing those words themselves might be topic for another post (which might turn into quite a rant, I’m afraid). But people were grateful that I willingly offered my services even though copyediting is not part of my job description.
But it served a good reminder to me that I do enjoy writing and working with words in any kind of way. And that I’m quite good at it. So why don’t I make more use of this space I’ve got here, was a follow up thought of mine. Not thought right away, but over the course of a few days. I think over the last decade or so I might have raised the bar of what I myself consider a worthy content for this space to some impossible standard. Not everything has to be meaningful. Or essay length. I should just start writing here more often instead of typing my thoughts into the limited space of an Instagram story.
German news magazine DER SPIEGEL last week had a title story presenting their “World’s 100 best books from 1925 – 2025”. I’m often on the fence about these kind of lists, because it’s all so subjective, isn’t it? In the editorial they explain that they are aware of the European / North American centric view of literature tradition so to speak and thus they put German academics with interest and knowledge in African, Asian literature on the jury. For some reason they obviously didn’t consider putting a German academic or writer with an ethnic minority background on the jur.
48 of the chosen books are written by Europeans. 24 in USA / Canada. But “at least” (they state almost proudly) 28 were written in the Caribbean, Latin-America, Africa or Asia. To put it in perspective: Europe and North America are about 1,5 billion people (~ 20%) to the 6,5 billion (~80%) in the rest of the world. But they have produced 75% of the “World’s Literature” to mere 25% of the rest of the world. I can’t be the only one who thinks this is a very skewed way of thinking.
28 of the 100 books were written by women. That’s another discussion I’d like to have with this jury. At least it’s not a “top 100 list, counting down from THE #1 book”.
Like I said I don’t really care much about these kind of lists. I have only read 3 or 4 of those 100 yet. A few more are on my “to-read-shelf”. A few more I added now after I’ve read this article. Mostly from female writers, if I’m honest. I probably have read more than enough books by (white) men in the first 35 or so years of my life.
