Bot - Clemens J. Setz

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Bot

by
Clemens J. Setz

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Title:	Bot
Author:	Clemens J. Setz
Genre:	Dialogue
Written:	2018
Length:	160 pages
Original in:	German
Availability:	Bot - Deutschland

Gespräch ohne Autor
Edited by Angelika Klammer
Bot has not yet been translated into English

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Our Assessment:

B : not your usual Q & A -- but certainly of interest to Setz-readers

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
FAZ	.	2/4/2018	Oliver Jungen
NZZ	.	11/3/2018	Gerhard Melzer
Süddeutsche Zeitung	.	16/2/2018	Lothar Müller

From the Reviews:

"In ihrer Gesamtheit fügen sich die Fragmente tatsächlich zu einem Psychogramm. Und was sich dabei in zittrigen Konturen abzeichnet, das ist nicht allein das literarische Wunderkind Setz (das auch) oder der nahe am Wahnsinn gebaute Dionysiker (die Marke Setz), sondern ein tief romantischer Geist" - Oliver Jungen, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"Ob wahr, stimmig erfunden oder irgendwo dazwischen oszillierend: Entscheidend ist, dass aus dem üblichen Frage-Antwort-Spiel eine Art Setz-Reader wird, ein selbstreferenzielles Spiel, bei dem die Suchbewegung des Fragens nicht an ein Ende gerät, sondern sich unablässig weiterzeugt. Die Energie für diese Bewegung kommt allemal aus dem Werk, denn auch die Fragen, auf die die Journaleinträge antworten, sind überwiegend aus Texten des Autors hergeleitet, penibel aufgelistet im Anhang des Buches. (...) Die Gedankensplitter, Reflexionen, Reisenotizen, Leseerfahrungen, Erzählkeime und Befindlichkeitsprotokolle, die Bot versammelt, nehmen sich aus wie ein Versuchslabor dieser Weltsicht. Was Setz da registriert, ist ein irrlichternder Kosmos der Vorstellungen und Erscheinungen, der sich nicht in den Rahmen eingefahrener Denk- und Wahrnehmungsmuster fügen will." - Gerhard Melzer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

"Jeder Nachlass zu Lebzeiten ist ein Selbstporträt des Autors. Dieses ist ein Doppelbildnis. Im Vordergrund steht der nervöse Nerd, der Computerspieler und Internetnomade. Hinter ihm zeichnet sich sein Zwilling ab, ein Autor, dessen Sprachgefühl, Fantasie und Sprachreichtum aus seiner innigen Verbindung mit dem Elementaren, der physischen Existenz, dem Kreatürlichen erwächst. Das Wort Kreatur verbindet Menschen und Tiere. Wer in diesem Buch auf die Tiere achtet, seien es die im Zoo, im Labor, in der Natur oder in Büchern, kommt dem nur scheinbar abwesenden Autor auf die Spur." - Lothar Müller, Süddeutsche Zeitung

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

[Note: Bot has not yet been translated into English, and this review is based on the original German; all translations are mine; quotes originally in English are marked: †.]

In his Introduction, Clemens Setz explains that he was approached by his publisher (Suhrkamp), who wanted him to do an in-conversation book, with editor Angelika Klammer. The conversations that resulted when he and Klammer sat down were not usable, however, and so they went for a different approach. Inspired by, among others, the Philip K. Dick Android project, they wondered whether it wasn't possible just to collect his responses to questions from his extensive (unpublished) journals, conveniently accessible (and searchable) in a huge computer file. What they then tried to do is an early variation of a 'Large Language Model'-type response program -- much more rudimentary than ChatGPT and the like, but using the author's own words to respond to questions, a conversation not with but without an author, as the subtitle has it.
Among the responses on offer then, on Day Four (the book is divided into five day-sessions), is one from 2015 (each response includes the date of the journal-entry it is taken from), in which Setz briefly describes his experiences chatting with early-days chatbots -- "Brain Bot" and a George Orwell chatbot (unpromisingly claiming: "George Orwell is a chatbot that critiques the English language"†) -- and the results, especially with the latter, might have already given him pause as to this approach ("Orwell: Hi, tell me when for self-disciplining the cut."†). In different ways, the two were not quite what he was hoping for, though at least the one offered some insight, after the Orwell-bot broke language down too far:

Später antwortete er nur noch mit sinnlosen Buchstabenketten. Also ging ich zurück zum Brain Bot und fragte ihn: »Am I lonely?« Er sagte: »Yes. To my knowledge you are lonely.«

[Later it only replied with meaningless strings of letters. So I went back to the Brain Bot and asked it: "Am I lonely ?" It said: "Yes. To my knowledge you are lonely."]

Bot, however, is less a chatbot-exercise -- or, as it turns out, much of a traditional-type Q & A.
Setz explains the methodology behind the exercise in his Introduction:

Sie stellte also ihre vorbereiteten Fragen und suchte in der Datei nach Antworten. Damit keine menschliche Finderintelligenz die Ergebnisse verwässern konnte, wurden die Treffer durch eine simple Volltextsuche bestimmter zentraler Wörter innerhalb der formulierten Frage oder auch sinnverwandter Begriffe erzielt. In anderen Fällen wurde einfach nach dem Zufallsprinzip auf eine beliebige Seite gescrollt.

[So she asked her prepared questions and searched the file for answers. To ensure that no human finder-intelligence could dilute the results, returns from a simple full-text search of certain key words within the formulated question or synonymous terms were used. At other times it was simply left to chance, scrolling to a random page.]

       The resulting Q & A involves responses more than answers -- often only a single word or phrase in the question leading to a particular journal-passage or observation, addressing it, in some way, but not really answering the question in the way one might expect (or, in an interview, hope for). Adding to the self-referential circularity, Klammer takes many of her question-cues from Setz's published writings, referring to specific mentions, often quoting bits verbatim; a helpful list of sources for the citations is provided as an appendix. At one point, she simply asks Setz/the-Setz-file what occurs to him regarding terms that come up frequently in his writing, a simple sequence of one-word questions (making for the easiest of searches): Goose bumps; Balloon; Toes .....
       Klammer does begin gamely, and with follow-ups, asking first: 'When you're in a new city you like to immediately go to a local pharmacy. Why ?' and following up with two more related questions, but here already readers see how Setz/the-Setz-file goes its own way. Bot is less -- or barely at all -- a give and take of conversation, but rather almost an anthology of journal-excerpts, presented not so much thematically as by almost random keyword-prompts. The 'questions' do provide for some order and guidance, but only of the loosest sort -- and Klammer never seems to be in firm control of where things are going (understandably, perhaps, since she can never tell where Setz/the-Setz-file will lead with the next prompt) and rather than force the issue she willingly goes with and against the flow, accepting the randomness of the whole exercise. (She also takes advantage of these conditions in the formulation and range of her queries, from phrasing it: 'Is it permissible in literature to write from any perspective, in an extreme case even from that of a light bulb ?' (Setz/the-Setz-file has no light-bulb-specific answer, but does grant -- after giving an example --: 'One is allowed to write from the point of view of a monk who is fond of his cat') to 'When was the last occasion when someone asked you what time it was ?' (the Setz/the-Setz-file's entire answer: 'The moon is missing its hour- and minute-hands today').)
       If this sounds like an unpromising kind of Q & A -- well, generally it would be. What redeems it is that Setz has many and the most varied interests, and writes extensively about everything imaginable. (On a smaller scale he gave some sense of this on Twitter, before that platform was Musked.) Readers might not get the answers to Klammer's questions, but they'll get a lot of riffs on all manner of things and people, many of them quirky and of at least some sort of interest (not least the lengthy one on the Nihilartikel 'Pansilenz').
       Asking: 'Do you understand people who visit cemeteries ? Or do you understand those who avoid them better ?' leads, for example, to a longer account of Setz visiting the Kamikawa Cemetery and looking up Abe Kōbō's grave -- the only one there without the identifying name, just a rock. Throughout, there are both such personal experiences -- brief, often unusual -- as well as historical oddities and occurrences.
       There are quite a few literary references and opinions -- certainly of interest in relation to Setz-the-author -- even as it's sometimes unclear whether the responses are really the answers he would give to the questions (such as the list provided in response to the not-quite-question of: 'Poets whom one should read in spring ...'). Some opinions, however, are unequivocal enough, as in a list he explicitly makes of 'Works, from which one learns German' to the mention:

Ivy-Compton Burnett und Edward Gorey am selben Tag gelesen, die beiden besten Köpfe, die je usw. etc. Ich muss mich echt mehr anstrengen.

[Read Ivy-Compton Burnett and Edward Gorey on the same day, the two greatest minds that ever, etc. etc. I really have to try harder.]

At one point, Setz mentions listening to some German literature scholars discussing his work and hearing himself described as a "Sadomodernist". Bot, as experiment and as non/fiction, is certainly in keeping with Setz's work and methods as a whole -- and, yes, there's an element of 'sado-modernism' to it, both in the way(s) it challenges the reader, and in its appeal.
Conversations with an author should be complements to their work, helping to provide some insights into it as well as the writer, and Bot does manage that: fans of Setz certainly get their money's worth -- though it presumably also leaves them longing for the actual journals themselves, rather than this selected-bits version (especially given the odd selection-process). Those less familiar with Setz and his work will likely find Bot more of a head-scratcher. Bot certainly doesn't fulfil the conventional expectations of the author-interview -- but that's not all bad. Still, given the rapid advances LLMs such as ChatGPT have made a contemporary re-run of the exercise would certainly be of interest too -- even if the results would likely be far more conventional .....

- M.A.Orthofer, 6 November 2023

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Links:

Bot:

Suhrkamp foreign rights page
Excerpt

Reviews:

Other books by Clemens J. Setz under review:

Die Bienen und das Unsichtbare

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Interviews, conversations, and dialogues
See Index of German literature

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About the Author:

Austrian author Clemens J. Setz was born in 1982.

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