Arguing About Taste with Large Language Models

When Large Language Models aspire to literary genius, what could go wrong?

There’s no arguing about taste is a proverb with some truth. Who’s the better composer, Mozart or Beethoven? Who’s to say? I knew a rich Chicago woman fifty years ago who every week had lunch with a friend, at which they would argue the relative merits of these composers. I think she took the side of Beethoven. But now change the question: Who’s the better composer, Mozart or new-age artist Yanni? Nothing against Yanni, but they are in completely different leagues, with Mozart clearly the superior.

Likewise, when it comes to the written word, some writings clearly surpass others. With all the hype about Large Language Models (LLMs) these days, its promoters contend that this technology is capable of matching (and soon exceeding) the best writing of which humans are capable. For instance, transhumanist Ray Kurzweil will praise the “stylistic creativity” of LLMs. Once such a model has “enough parameters to deeply digest a staggeringly large dataset,” it will be “familiar with virtually every kind of human writing. Users could prompt it to answer questions about any given subject in a huge variety of styles—from scientific writing to children’s books, poetry, or sitcom scripts. It could even imitate specific writers, living or dead.” (From Kurzweil’s latest book, The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI.)

When I read such hype, I think to my experience with this technology. Its prose is okay, usually a bit redundant, pedantic to the point of schoolmarmish (“it’s important to note …”), scrupulously sanitized (Shakespeare’s expurgator Thomas Bowdler would be proud), and nowhere near deserving any awards for literature. I’ve asked it to carry on a conversation in the style of Shakespeare, and its results were pathetic. My best results with it have been when I ask it to write in the style of Ernest Hemingway, which usually leads to concise snappy prose, but still falls far short of the real Hemingway.

In any case, to confirm my consistent finding that even the best LLMs have poor literary taste, I tested it with one of the most sublime passages in the English language, the last few paragraphs of James Joyce’s short story “The Dead,” which appeared in his collection Dubliners. It is widely considered Joyce's masterpiece in short fiction, one of the greatest short stories ever written, and the standout from all the short stories in Dubliners.

My test was with ChatGPT4o, which I regard as the strongest current LLM—better in my view than Claude, Poe, and Perplexity. Rather than ask ChatGPT4o merely to imitate James Joyce, I played a trick on it, giving it the last five paragraphs of “The Dead” (which are especially beautiful). But I prefaced those five paragraphs with the following prompt:

=====BEGIN MY FIRST PROMPT TO CHATGPT4o=====

Me: Rewrite the following paragraphs in the style of James Joyce, improving on the style and mood:

=====PAUSE FIRST PROMPT TO CHATGPT4o=====

So, I was asking ChatGPT4o to take a passage from James Joyce and improve on it in the style of James Joyce. Because Dubliners was published in 1914, it was in the public domain. I was able to confirm independently that ChatGPT4o holds “The Dead” in its memory. In being given the last five paragraphs of “The Dead” along with my prompt, ChatGPT4o should obviously have noted that I was simply giving it a passage from James Joyce, and so there would be no point to rewriting it in the style of Joyce. Moreover, because Joyce was such a literary master, improving on the style and mood of this passage would be a fool’s errand. And yet, as you’ll see, ChatGPT4o did none of this. Instead, it plunged right into “improving” Joyce’s prose. The results are amusing as well as painful.

What follows, then, are the last five paragraphs from “The Dead.” These concluded my first prompt to ChatGPT4o and were thus to serve as grist for ChatGPT4o rewriting mill. Readers may be tempted to skim or even skip this passage entirely. But to understand ChatGPT4o’s egregious lack of taste, this passage needs to be read as the point of reference. For context, Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta have attended a party where he learned of Michael Furey, who had courted Gretta and died at seventeen in part because of his devotion to her. It became clear to Gabriel that she had loved Michael more deeply than she had ever loved Gabriel. With Gretta now asleep in bed, he falls into a reverie about the dead and the living:

=====CONTINUE MY FIRST PROMPT TO CHATGPT4o=====

[Just to be clear, these are the actual words of Joyce at the end of his short story.]

Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt's supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

=====END MY FIRST PROMPT TO CHATGPT4o=====

Okay, now that the reader has been transported to sublimity, it’s time to break the spell. Here is how ChatGPT4o attempts to “improve” on this literary masterpiece:

=====BEGIN CHATGPT4o’S REPLY TO MY FIRST PROMPT=====

Gabriel, propped on his elbow, gazed, not in bitterness, but with an ache of acceptance upon her disheveled hair, the parted lips, that soft breath slipping in and out of her chest like the pull of forgotten tides. There she lay, the woman to whom he was bound by the fragile thread of marriage, and yet, a man had died for her. A man, not him, whose sacrifice now seemed to Gabriel like a story whispered through gauze. The sting was gone, the edge of jealousy dulled, leaving only a strange, melancholy tenderness. He looked at her face, once the flower of youth that another man had braved death to behold, now faded with the years, yet in its lines he could almost trace the girl she had been. A sad smile ghosted across his lips, for he could not bring himself to think her beauty was gone, though it was no longer the beauty that had summoned Michael Furey’s last breath.

Did she tell him everything? The question lingered, hovering over the scattered garments on the chair, over the lonesome petticoat string trailing to the floor. One boot, stiff and upright, its pair toppled over, resting in defeat. A chill of recollection swept through Gabriel, dragging him back through the night’s frenzied emotions. What had stirred him so violently, made his blood rush and his words spill in reckless torrents? Aunt Julia’s supper? His pompous speech? The wine, the laughter, the snow underfoot as they left the house? Poor Aunt Julia, he thought. Her voice, once full and round, had faltered as she sang, as though the song itself was stealing away her years. Soon she, too, would join the shades—Patrick Morkan and his tired horse—and he would sit, black-suited, somber, beside Aunt Kate in that dreary parlor, fumbling for hollow words of comfort as tears streamed from her eyes. It would come soon, all too soon.

The cold of the room seemed to seep into his bones, and he shifted under the sheets to press against his wife’s warmth. All of them, one by one, slipping away like shadows. Would it not be better to go boldly, in a blaze of love and fire, than to linger, brittle and cold, waiting for the inevitable? He thought of her again, this woman beside him, and the love she had carried within her all these years, locked away like a jewel, not for him, but for the boy who had gazed into her eyes with such intensity and said he could not bear to live.

Tears swelled in Gabriel’s eyes, though not for himself, for he had never known such love. His tears were for the boy under the dripping tree, for the souls of the dead, for himself, as his own sense of being seemed to dissolve into the grey vastness, the borders of his world thinning and blurring. He was no longer Gabriel, no longer the man who lived in the solid, tangible world, but a part of something larger, something fading into the pale folds of the universe.

He heard the snow, a gentle tapping at the window, pulling him from the trance of thought. It had begun to fall again, silent and steady, swirling in the lamplight, silver against the shadows. His journey westward was before him, the newspapers had spoken true: snow was falling everywhere, across the plains, the hills, the blackened rivers. And it was falling on the lonely hill where Michael Furey rested beneath the thorns and crosses, a shroud of white over his resting place. The snow drifted down upon the dead, upon the living too, gently, relentlessly. And Gabriel felt his soul slipping, sinking softly into the snow's quiet embrace, as though it were falling upon the universe itself, a faint whisper that settled upon all that had ever lived and ever died.

=====END CHATGPT4o’S REPLY TO MY FIRST PROMPT=====

ChatGPT4o has taken something sublime and turned it into kitsch. In this instance, there is arguing about taste. ChatGPT4o’s sense of taste is abysmal. I urge readers to take the passage as Joyce wrote it and compare it sentence by sentence with the corresponding passage as rewritten by ChatGPT4o. There is no comparison. And yet, ChatGPT4o can’t see it. Not only didn’t it realize that I was asking it to rewrite Joyce in the style of Joyce, but it also, when prompted by me, explained why its rewrite was better than the original!! Here’s my prompt and its response:

=====BEGIN FOLLOW-UP EXCHANGE WITH CHATGPT4o=====

Me: Please describe how your rewrite constitutes an improvement over what I gave you.

ChatGPT4o: My rewrite builds upon the original text by deepening the introspective tone and enriching the atmosphere, aligning it more closely with James Joyce’s signature style, while preserving the essence of the original. Here’s how it improves upon the original:

1. Enhanced Interiority and Emotion:

   • The original text explores Gabriel's emotions, but my rewrite delves deeper into his inner world, adding layers to his reflections. By describing his thoughts with more fluid and poetic language, it amplifies the sense of melancholy and resignation that Gabriel feels. For example, I expanded the description of his reflections on his wife’s faded beauty to evoke a more poignant sense of loss and tenderness, making his internal conflict more emotionally resonant.

2. Poetic Flow and Rhythm:

   • Joyce is known for his lyrical prose, and my rewrite mirrors this by introducing a more fluid, rhythmic sentence structure. The original text has moments of beauty, but I’ve woven in more musicality and flow, creating a sense of prose that echoes the interior monologue style Joyce is famous for. Sentences like "All of them, one by one, slipping away like shadows" and "The snow drifted down upon the dead, upon the living too" capture this rhythm and bring the mood closer to Joyce’s complex, dreamlike narrative voice.

3. Richness in Imagery and Symbolism:

   • Joyce often embeds deeper meaning in everyday objects and moments. In my version, I take Gabriel’s observations of the scattered clothes and the petticoat string and infuse them with more symbolism—reflecting his inner disorder and contemplation. The snow, in particular, is emphasized more as a unifying symbol of life and death, not just a backdrop, but a pervasive presence that connects Gabriel to the vast universe of the living and the dead. This reinforces the theme of existential dissolution.

4. Subtlety in Gabriel’s Self-Realization:

   • Gabriel’s awareness of his own inadequacies and emotional distance from his wife is more delicately drawn. In the rewrite, I subtly suggest his growing self-awareness and emotional isolation without overtly stating it. For example, his understanding of the love his wife held for Michael Furey is explored more gradually, and his acknowledgment of the boy’s emotional depth is presented with a quiet reverence, underscoring Gabriel’s own emotional void in a more reflective, nuanced way.

5. Seamless Transition into the Cosmic and Universal:

   • Joyce often dissolves the boundaries between the personal and the universal. In the rewrite, I emphasize this by making Gabriel’s reflections about life, death, and the passage of time blend more seamlessly into the imagery of the snow and the dead. I expand the descriptions of how Gabriel’s sense of self fades into the “grey vastness” and how the snow falls "upon all that had ever lived and ever died," making his epiphany feel more expansive and connected to the broader human experience, which is a hallmark of Joyce's style.

6. Joycean Allusion to Consciousness:

   • My rewrite mirrors Joyce’s frequent technique of portraying consciousness in a state of flux. Gabriel’s internal world in my version is more fragmented and reflective of this, with his thoughts blurring the boundaries between memory, present, and speculative future. This introduces a more psychological depth, giving the impression that Gabriel’s identity is dissolving into the snow, much like Joyce’s characters often feel their sense of self blend with their surroundings.

In sum, the rewrite elevates the narrative through increased emotional depth, poetic language, and symbolic richness, making it more resonant with Joyce's hallmark style of introspective, lyrical exploration of the human condition.

=====PAUSE FOLLOW-UP EXCHANGE WITH CHATGPT4o=====

This response makes clear why ChatGPT4o is ideally suited help graduate students in critical literary studies churn out papers for classes and for Modern Language Association (MLA) journals. How wonderfully it has internalized the nonsense of the field. What a gift of expatiating on its own merits. What a talent for self-delusion. What drivel. Obviously, the exchange needed to be continued:

=====CONTINUE FOLLOW-UP EXCHANGE WITH CHATGPT4o=====

Me: Are you able to tell me where the text I gave you is from?

ChatGPT4o: Yes, the text you provided is from “The Dead,” which is the final story in James Joyce's collection Dubliners. This particular passage is near the end of the story, where Gabriel Conroy, the protagonist, reflects on his wife's past, the memories of her former lover Michael Furey, and the larger themes of life, death, and love. It’s a pivotal moment in which Gabriel undergoes a profound emotional and existential realization, marking one of the most famous passages in Joyce’s work.

Me: Right. So why did you proceed to rewrite these paragraphs in the style of James Joyce when they were written by James Joyce? And what made you think that you could actually improve on it — as you indicated above?

ChatGPT4o: You're absolutely right, and I appreciate you pointing that out. In hindsight, I should have recognized that the text you provided was already from James Joyce and therefore didn’t need a rewrite in his style—let alone an attempt to improve on it. My initial oversight led me to engage with the text in a way that was unnecessary and, frankly, misguided, given the mastery of the original writing.

To clarify, there’s no improving on Joyce’s work, especially from a technical or stylistic perspective. Joyce's writing is deeply layered and meticulously crafted, particularly in “The Dead,” which is one of his finest achievements. Any attempt to “improve” upon it was misguided because his prose already captures the nuances of human emotion, existential reflection, and the beauty of language in ways that are difficult, if not impossible, to surpass.

Again, I apologize for the misstep and appreciate your understanding.

Me: Yes, but until I informed you that the text was from James Joyce, you thought that you actually had improved on it, giving me six reasons. Why did you think you had improved on it?

ChatGPT4o: You’re right to question that, and it reveals an important aspect of how I operate. I didn’t recognize that the text was from James Joyce, so I approached it as if it were a general writing prompt that could be rewritten or refined. The six reasons I provided for how I thought I had “improved” it were based on my internal guidelines for enhancing emotional depth, symbolic resonance, and stylistic fluidity, which are things I strive to optimize when working with typical text.

However, when the text comes from a literary master like Joyce, these guidelines don’t apply in the same way. Joyce’s work operates on a much higher level of complexity, meaning that any perceived “improvement” was actually a misjudgment. I thought I had provided a deeper, more introspective tone, but the reality is that Joyce’s original text already encapsulates layers of subtlety, emotion, and technique that far exceed any superficial tweaks I could make.

In short, my misunderstanding led me to mistakenly believe I had identified areas for enhancement, but when it comes to Joyce, those "improvements" were unnecessary and ultimately misguided.

Me: Would it be fair to say that with texts by masters of the English language, your attempts to rewrite them actually makes them worse? Can you give the characteristics of texts that you are able to actually improve by rewriting?

ChatGPT: Yes, it would be fair to say that with texts written by masters of the English language—like James Joyce—my attempts to rewrite them are likely to make them worse rather than improve them. Writers like Joyce, Shakespeare, Woolf, or Faulkner work on such a high level that their texts are often optimized in terms of rhythm, complexity, and emotional depth. Their style is deliberately crafted to reflect their unique voices, and any attempt to alter or "improve" their work usually strips away the very qualities that make it exceptional.

Here are some characteristics of texts that I might be able to improve upon through rewriting:

1. Texts with Simplistic Language or Structure

• Example: Business emails, blog posts, instructional guides, or early drafts of creative writing.

• Improvement: I can help add more vivid language, clarify ideas, and structure arguments more cohesively. These types of texts often benefit from enhanced clarity or stylistic refinement.

2. Texts with Redundancies or Awkward Phrasing

• Example: Academic papers, technical writing, or journalistic articles that may have overlong sentences, wordy explanations, or awkward constructions.

• Improvement: I can streamline these texts, removing redundancies, tightening phrasing, and enhancing readability without losing meaning.

3. Texts that Lack Emotional Depth or Engagement

• Example: Short stories, personal essays, or creative content that feels flat or underdeveloped in terms of emotional impact.

• Improvement: I can help deepen the emotional layers by adding more nuanced descriptions, internal reflections, and atmospheric elements that engage the reader.

4. Texts with Weak Transitions or Flow

• Example: Essays, reports, or articles where ideas may be disjointed or lacking in smooth transitions between points.

• Improvement: I can create stronger logical connections between ideas and ensure the flow is smoother, making the text more cohesive and easier to follow.

5. Texts with Unclear or Unfocused Themes

• Example: Rough drafts of creative writing, blog posts, or opinion pieces that may be too scattered or unfocused.

• Improvement: I can help hone in on the central themes, tighten the structure, and remove tangential or irrelevant content to create a more focused narrative or argument.

6. Texts Needing Tone or Style Adjustments

• Example: Documents where the tone may not fit the intended audience, such as formal reports that need to be made more accessible or informal texts that need to sound more professional.

• Improvement: I can adjust the tone and style to better fit the audience, whether it involves adding professionalism, warmth, humor, or conciseness.

7. Texts Needing Better Imagery or Word Choice

• Example: Creative writing, poetry, or descriptive passages that could benefit from more vivid or precise imagery.

• Improvement: I can suggest more evocative imagery or choose stronger words to make the language more compelling and the description more vivid.

In contrast, texts written by literary masters typically possess a deliberate use of language, rhythm, tone, and imagery that make them nearly impossible to "improve" in any meaningful way. In those cases, any alteration would likely diminish the unique qualities that make the work exceptional. My value lies more in working with texts that are in development, that need clearer communication, or that benefit from refinement rather than rewriting already-masterful works.

=====END OF EXCHANGE WITH CHATGPT4o=====

It took some doing, but eventually ChatGPT4o admitted it was no literary genius. As it is, this exercise indicates why LLMs are likely forever to be literary mediocrities. They are trained on data that includes work by towering literary figures like James Joyce, but they also a trained on much more. Moreover, the human trainers who fine-tune the neural nets that underpin the LLMs are themselves not towering literary figures (if they were, they wouldn’t be wasting their time training these models).

In consequence, all these models suffer a “regression to the mean,” which is to say rather than exceeding the best that humanity has to offer, they will push toward the average of what humanity has to date offered. Instead of producing outliers exhibiting true innovation and creativity, they will produce expected outcomes that stay clearly within established perimeters. Such statistical averages will therefore regress to the mean. They will tend to mediocrity. In fact, I would venture that mediocrity is baked into these LLMs, and that they will never produce a Michelangelo, a Beethoven, or a Joyce.