By Leigh Rastivo

The ascendancy of digital life is acknowledged as unshakable, but in these essays Sven Birkerts offers useful insights into how serious writers can carry on.

The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing by Sven Birkerts. Arrowsmith Press, 174 pages, $20.

In a world now shaped by digital distraction and imprecise AI-generated text, what does it mean to be a flesh-and-blood writer, authentically creating and pursuing connection with an equally alive audience? In his newest collection, The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing, esteemed essayist Sven Birkerts examines this critical question, through a thought-provoking introduction and 14 contemplative essays. Those who write will particularly appreciate the refined consideration of creative integrity in the digital age while readers everywhere will benefit from the book’s blend of philosophical and practical perspectives.

Make no mistake – practicality is key here. While Birkerts eloquently discusses the dreamier mysteries of the writing process, his pragmatic acceptance of our collective reality is equally valuable. This is not just a lamentation — Birkerts offers useful insights into how to carry on. The ascendancy of digital life – “the great shift from a primarily analog to a primarily virtual engagement with the world” – is acknowledged as unshakable. Few of us can or will ever sever ourselves from an electronic existence. Birkerts describes the negative impact of this transformation, but he does not whine. And that is to the good: his critique comes off as investigative and forward-thinking, wary of being dismissed as reactive or as out of touch. We are where we are. So, how are we to respond?

In fact, Birkerts even admits to the good – the artistic good – that digital media has brought to him personally, recounting the moment when he realized that his first smartphone “was also a camera, one so fine and sophisticated and easy to use.” He now indulges his enthused interest in photography, admitting that he is “implicated completely” in online life, “clogging the ether… posting images” on Instagram with millions of others. This personal anecdote puts him in the same boat as the rest of us, even as he brilliantly articulates what is wrong with the hyper-reality vessel. So, the reader is prepared to join Birkerts as he expounds on the earthbound and mystical resonances of writing and reading.

Interestingly, Birkerts does not start off The Miró Worm with an admission of collusion, though most of the essays include some concern about how digital media acts as a pervasive barrier between people and real-world experiences, distancing us from others and even ourselves. The introduction, “The Uncanny Valley,” posits a sinister apprehension. The title is a reference to the unsettling sensation readers experience when AI-generated writing approaches a human-like quality — yet a disorientating gulf remains. This valley is a gorge to worry over — it is the pit where the language that “distinguishes us from the rest of creation” is co-opted. Yet, at the same point, it is also the valley where, if we distinguish carefully enough, we can see why and how human beings might well remain the only legitimate source of literature.

Like so many of us, Birkerts perceives machine writing as a troubling infringement on individual creativity as well as a danger to “evaluative” discourse. He condemns the unauthorized appropriation of literary works in AI databases as “outright theft” (as does the Authors Guild), warning that, as machine-generated text becomes increasingly sophisticated, the subtleties of human writing will become more rather than less essential. Thus, he sets the stage for subsequent essays, which will deal with these nuances, setting out perspectives that writers can adapt (again – practicality) to ensure they pursue an “unrepeatable” uniqueness.

Birkerts emphasizes that AI undermines, in part, “the age-old circuit between reader and writer.” We often have no idea if an actual person is accountable for what we read. AI also strips away subtext, the psychological resonances of “intended-but-unsaid.” He makes the argument that we must recognize the very real contrast between words “used intentionally by humans” to convey meaning and the “merely functional” language AI employs to achieve a meager “streamlined adequacy.” It is as ironic as it is instructive that Birkerts articulates this critique in richly descriptive yet accessible prose that AI, at least in its current form, could never replicate. Not only because of its intellectual depth, but also because Birkerts grounds his assertions in a tapestry of personal experiences that AI could not access as well as idiosyncratic references to his wide-ranging reading. Consider just the opening pages: they include quotes and paraphrases from Bill Pierce, Robert Frost, Hemingway, Voltaire, and Keats, in addition to the story of Birkerts’ childhood fondness for the formulaic Hardy Boy series laced into a discussion of a reader’s will to believe what is on the page. The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing contains myriad references to fictional and nonfictional works. Birkerts criticizes AI for lacking emotional capacity and complexity, and he proves this line of attack by infusing his prose with the intense resonance (personal, literary) that he admires for its human qualities. His writing demonstrates what AI can never be.

Birkerts insists on the deep-seated value of integrating experience into writing. Not only is it redemptive, but it also asserts the “difference between meaning and meaninglessness.” He is fascinated by the connection. Just as Julio Cortázar (an oft-quoted Birkerts favorite) “never admitted a clear distinction between living and writing,” the essayist self-consciously surveys his life, assuming “that it is all potentially material to be shaped into artistic expression.” So, for Birkerts, reading circles back to writing which circles back to daily life which circles back to reading, and so on, the cycling process churning up complex layers of thought, feeling, and memory, linking “seemingly disparate things” through “the agencies of syntax.”

Another of the book’s themes is for writers to follow a sensible imperative: to pay attention to the world around them, to recognize that “in our miasma of distractedness and diffusion” the “judicious detail” can still form links that resonate with a saving distinctness. Birkerts sees this is as duty for his essay writing and his photography, calling forth Flaubert: “Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.” The Miró worm of the book’s title serves as a metaphor for this attentive observation, the kind that leads to fresh perspective and new connections. It is derived from Birkerts’ experience of thinking that a coiling shape he saw on the ground in front of him was a piece of string, elegantly positioned. On closer inspection, he realized it was actually a nightcrawler worm, with a trail that resembled a “striking free-form” by Joan Miró. The experience directly spoke to what Birkerts had recently been thinking and writing about; he marvels at how “attention invites analogy” and that, on good days, “expression mysteriously exceeds the felt capacities.” Again, Birkerts effectively intertwines the practical (pay attention) to the mysterious ways that the unspoken can spring into conscious articulation.

Birkerts defines “the writer’s mind” as “of course not the same as the regular mind.” This distinction highlights the often-enigmatic nature of the writing process. These are the mysteries alluded to in the book’s subtitle. The critic wonders if “we, when we’re writing, reach in to actively find the parts of our next sentence, or are those ‘given’ to us?” Are we inventing what we mean or discovering it as we articulate it? He also marvels about how “words and ideas can seem to auto-generate” when a writer is in a “particular, receptive state.”

Many of these essays were previously published in AGNI; all are annotated with the year written (most within the last 15 years), but they are not presented chronologically. Rather, the order reflects the relationship among the topics, which provides a framework for Birkerts’ reasoning. For example, the collection ends with a short piece written during the pandemic — it revolves around a period of confinement. Birkerts is contemplating the room he is in, the nature of rooms in general, and quarantines. The piece closes with his failed attempt to snap a photograph of the “startling beauty” of the clouds he has been watching – the “display was not to be held or translated in a fixed shape.” This is a frustration we can all relate to: we want the photo of the sunrise we are admiring to reflect our experience, but the digital picture falls woefully short of the glory in front of our eyes. Thus, Birkerts concludes where he began: no matter how sophisticated, machines cannot satisfactorily express the aura of existence. Words, spoken or written by humans, will always take precedence.

Leigh Rastivo is a fiction writer, reviewer, and essayist. Her shorter fiction has been published or is forthcoming in several journals, including the MicroLit Almanac and L’Esprit Literary Review, and she recently attended the Under the Volcano international residency to workshop two novels.