Huckleberry Finn and the Answering Machine

During high school in the summer after the temperature dropped and the streetlights came on, I often sat on the front porch and read novels. Screened in and under the shade of an established oak tree, the porch was the perfect place, private, quiet, not many cars passing by, and no mosquitoes. I had one rule: I would read whatever I wanted to read on the porch. I didn’t think about reading for school. I didn’t want to read as I did when I knew I would be tested on it. Even then, I was aware of the power of fiction to engulf the mind when being taken away to a different world was the goal.

Kurt Vonnegut’s books were amazing because he created these worlds I could step into and walk and talk with the characters. Player Piano and Cats Cradle stand out as I reflect back. Deliverance by James Dickey fascinated me because the collision between a backwoods peopled with hillbillies from primal times and moderns with restaurants and movie theaters was the dominant theme of my young life. My early years passed about a mile from a tiny town in rural Illinois where James Dickey characters lurked in basement homes, shacks, and old cars amidst wealthy farmhouses with cows and pigs. After my father passed when I was twelve, we moved to what to me was a metropolis of 20,000 people. Thus, my special, secret place, my porch.

Two books from that period went deep. I’ve reread each many times over the years and learned the truth about books from them: You can’t read the same book twice. I’ve actually internalized the narrator in each text and have developed some skill in writing texts using their voices. I’m a good mimic musically—I play guitar and sing in a classic rock cover band, not great music but fun—and I’ve played around with writing as if I were one or another character over the years. Sometimes, it’s really bad, but it makes me look carefully at the author’s craft. Lately, Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield have been on my mind. Huck showed up on my porch the summer of Deliverance, so these books have a serendipitous link. Each is about a river, each about a rupture in the world, about primal forces giving way to societal change.

For the fun of it, I decided to write about AI from the perspective of Huck. I picked up my notebook, grabbed a cup of coffee, and stepped into the backyard. The season is changing in northern California; I enjoy experimental writing on the patio in the sun, though I don’t read there. If you ever want to read some of my better writing experiments, check out my poetry on Shakespeare’s Monkey. ^.It took quite a while to write the following imitation. As usual, when the writing gets tough, the weak get going, and that’s what happened when I asked the bot. Very little help on this one. The bot is horrible at writing poetry and fiction in my experience. I’m getting the itch to try to write a piece channeling Holden.

Here’s me channeling Huck Finn on the raft with Jim:

The raft was peaceful in the cool night air. Frogs were singin’ on the shore under the moonlight. I was thinkin’ ‘bout things. Sometimes I couldn’t help it even when I didn’t want to think ‘bout things.

"Jim," I says, “You asleep?”

“Not no mo’,” Jim says. “I’s almost fixin’ to dream. What’s on your min’ Huck?”

"I been thinkin' 'bout Widow Douglas and what the teacher was always sayin' ‘bout how larnin’ was the most ‘portant thing a body could do. But, heck, now they got these new-fangled answerin’ machines that can think up answers quick as lightnin’, and all the teachers are in a powerful state. Tom told me they using willow switches all the time, take ‘em out back and larn ‘em good."

Jim, he was quiet for a spell, lookin' at the stars over the river. He was all the time lookin’ up at them stars like there was somethin’ he needed to know. Then he says, "Huck, I reckon folks been tryin' to get outta work since the beginnin’ o’ time. Ain't a thing new about that. So’s you know, I’d take a willow switch any time ‘bove a rawhide whip."

"That's just it, Jim," I says, getting’ excited, ‘bout to bust my britches. "The teachers act like there weren't never no cheatin' before these answering machines come along! Like we was all just sittin' there figurin' out them subtractions and them spellings honest as a church mouse. But I recollect how Tom Sawyer copied answers from the teacher’s desk and said she was stupid for leavin’ ‘em out, or how the big boys would write things on their arms before tests."

"Mmm-hmm, I unnerstan’ Huck," Jim nodded. "I ain’t never been to school, so I don’t really know, but I wanted to go as a chile. I begged. Massa say no school for Jim. People ain't changed, they still just fo’ themselves, they figger out new ways to cheat. Don’t forget how they lie."

"The way I see it," I continued, agreein’ with all Jim’s words, "all them teachers and ‘fessors is scared 'cause this AI thing shows how their whole way of teachin' might not be worth a dead spider. They give out the same questions year after year, like those questions don’t change, and now they got this answerin’ machine that can answer 'em just as good as any good boy who stayed up all night studyin'. They don’t even know how it works, but I b’lieve I do. It’s got an evil ghost trapped in it.”

Jim looked thoughtful. "Sounds like when massa got the new cotton gin. All the old ways of doin' things durin’ the harvest didn't matter no mo’. They still found plenty for us to do, yessir, they kept plantin’ and plantin’ like they wanted to cover the earth with cotton.”

"I reckon that's it, Jim. And all them grown-ups is frettin' and fumin' not knowin’ what to even do ‘sides pluck a willow switch and whup the bejeezus out of ‘em. Pap always said schoolin' was just a way to make folks feel like they better than others anyhow."

"Huck," Jim said real serious-like, "now I ain’t sayin’ this ‘bout me on account of I don’t know nothin’, but there’s things worth knowin' that no teacher and no machine can larn you. Like how to read the river, or when to trust a person’s word."

I thought about that while watching the moonlight dance on the Mississippi. "I expect you're right about that, too, Jim. Seems to me the real larnin' comes out of the river anyway, not cooped up in them schoolhouses with somebody always yappin’ ‘bout you bein’ lazy and cheatin’ and not wantin’ to larn. Pap beat hell outta me, but he never said what I had to think about and I am thankful for that.”

And we floated on down the river, the answerin’ machine and all them teachers' complaints seemin' mighty small and far away compared to the Mississippi River.

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