The first novel I wrote a little over two decades ago is called The Empress of Lavapiés, enjoys recurring editions and a recent relaunch in Mexico where -inexplicably- it had disappeared from bookstores in recent years; On the contrary, in Spain it has been circulating for some years now in a commemorative edition of her status as Finalist for the First International Prize for the Alfaguara Novel, honorably in the shadow of the winning works by Sergio Ramírez and Eliseo Alberto. This edition has an epilogue entitled “A carpet of carnations” that narrates the adventure, joys and synchronicities that accompany a perhaps corny or simple story that is still endearing, even as the years go by.
That novel that is summarized in the transatlantic trip —back to Madrid— of a 70-year-old man born in Madrid, with a long life as a Mexican exiled by the Spanish Civil War in 1939, now in search of the woman of his life: Carmen, a Mexican Spanishized for love of art who had inexplicably disappeared from their life together in Mexico. Don Pedro Torres Hinojosa travels through Madrid with its epicenter in the Lavapiés neighborhood in search of that Carmen that he supposes has become an Empress forever versified in a chotis by Agustín Lara… during his journey, D. Pedro is accompanied by ghosts of the great Literature, minions of a Madrid that no longer exists and a memorable reverie of traditional scenes (or not) that frame what is called the crazy illusion of Love with a capital letter.
My brother Nacho knows the plot, tangle, outcome and genesis of The Empress of Lavapiés from its first inks, but in a recent consultation that he made to the aforementioned Artificial Intelligence, he has entrusted me with the crazy version of my own novel according to the intangible and invisible disgraceful and cybernetic machinery that now threatens our souls. It happens that Chatbot-AI invented a review of my novel that has nothing to do with the truth. According to the threatening entity, “the novel The Empress of Lavapiés by Jorge F. Hernández tells the story of Herminia, a woman who lives in the Lavapiés neighborhood in Madrid. Herminia is a prostitute who, despite the difficulties she faces in her daily life, always maintains a positive attitude and fights for what she believes is fair”. What a slip and dare! Now it turns out that Carmen is a prostitute and not a muse or an unfading illusion. It intrigues me if the internal machinery of what they abbreviate as AI is nothing more than a pot of electronic fentanyl where the cables have gone crazy at will.
In another paragraph or unfortunate pearl, the clicky Chatbot-AI affirms that “the novel focuses on Herminia’s life and her relationship with the characters that surround her, such as her friend Rafa, a former soccer player and the “Ghost”, a thief who he has fallen in love with her. Through its story —continues the fucking lying page— the novel also explores broader themes such as love, friendship, power, poverty and the corruption of Spanish society”. That’s just what I was missing! On top of the fact that the fucking machine didn’t read my novel, now it sums it up as a theater of the absurd interwoven with stupidity and stupidity in the sweat of crazy slime.
The false review concludes that my novel “is written in a close and direct language, which reflects the identity and the language spoken in Lavapiés and presents a vivid and authentic portrait of the different characters and situations that appear in the plot. In general, The Empress of Lavapiés it is an emotional and realistic novel that offers a deep and compassionate vision of the life of the marginalized in the big cities”…laughter and applause!!!
What they call “language spoken in Lavapiés”, is it perhaps the new dialect of memes and SMSes or, well, semantics of the Unheard of Arabia of the clandestine call shops located in that beloved neighborhood? Although it may seem buenaondita and progress imagine that the lover of the Meretriz de Lavapiés is a graffiti squatter or a Rastafari podemite, nothing could be further from the true plot and real characters already invented previously in ink that appear on paper and not in the uncertain and untraceable ethereal where not a few asses come from and idle think they get the right information for their homework or academic grades.
I am sorry for the students who avoid reading and resort to the absolutely dubious machinery of the supposed Intelligence and Artificial (never better said). Dependence on that contraption shores up what little we have left of intellect to an ignorant laziness that could come to believe that Moby Dick Is it a venereal disease or that the Mona Lisa is a chimpanzee hit on the road and, as the covert reliability of thousands of students immune to the minimum steps of investigation, the cultivation of doubt and the exercise of questions expands, we have to witness the growing empire of more and more fakenewsunforgivable filfas and gazapos digested as unappealable truths.
If the GPS chat or another so-called Artificial Intelligence engine is asked to write in free verse an abbreviated version of The prostitute of Lavapiés your phone, tablet or computer screen will most likely light up instantly with a bursting cascade of spun words and algorithmically calculated verbs that will concoct in seconds a new, albeit rubbish, novel that will most likely generate its own rave reviews, its ethereal praise and even the comforting condition of not being a finalist for anything or anyone. I even suppose that the fate of the umpteenth novel or nivola shaped by the electronic spark of AI, it will have thousands of non-existent readers and not a few royalties in non-transferable cryptocurrencies… the complete opposite of the true magic of any real novel: salty water from rain or tears, a silent look and a fingertip that turn the page or underline an aphorism; face of ink that speaks with clouds and an elusive woman who is lost in the mist, the get up early from Lavapiés its streets have just rained and that dog that barks from afar; the Moon that shines like the Sun for late-nighters, music on silent paper or the sweet mystery of who loves forever even though there are foolish mechanisms that want to facilitate the miracle of reading without having to read or insensitive machines that want to change the plot of this blessed literature that we call life.
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