Source: Row over bestseller fuels fear over future of literature • FRANCE 24 English

France takes its literary prize season seriously, so when a Haitian-born Canadian writer was accused of using artificial intelligence to write his best-selling breakout novel, the fallout was immediate and fierce.

In a recent episode of the FRANCE 24 Debate, host François Picard sat down with British author Stephen Clarke, Collège de France professor of comparative literature William Marx, and Sciences Po affiliate professor and journalist Aïcha Gouleth to dissect the scandal—and confront a much larger existential question: Is the age of human reading and writing coming to an end?

The “Aurélien Affair”: AI Suspicions, Plagiarism, and Backlash

At the center of the storm is Haitian-born Quebecois author Teddyson Aurélien. His breakout novel—which follows a refugee overcoming immense perils on a journey to Donald Trump’s America—was an early favorite for France’s top literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. The book had already sold 40,000 copies, with sales surging even higher after the controversy broke.

The scandal erupted when an anonymous X (formerly Twitter) account referencing Anthropic’s AI model Claude—linked in part to Le Figaro columnist Samuel Fitoussi—ran excerpts of the novel through an AI detection tool called Pangram, which flagged a 100% match with AI-generated writing. The fallout forced Aurélien to cut his promotional tour short and return to Quebec.

However, the case quickly grew complicated:

• Unreliable Detectors: Critics pointed out that Pangram is the product of a small startup, and defenders argued that English-trained AI detectors struggle to evaluate French texts infused with vibrant Creole rhythms. When the French news agency AFP ran the exact same excerpts through its co-created verification tool InVID-WeVerify, it concluded the passages were very likely written by a human.
• Accusations of Racism: An op-ed in The Globe and Mail and attendees at the Manosque Literary Festival questioned whether it was a coincidence that the first major author targeted by such an unverified witch hunt was a Black Haitian writer.
• Plagiarism Revelations: Just as defenders rallied around Aurélien, the Montreal newspaper La Presse broke a separate story revealing that Aurélien had plagiarized previous articles and poems. As Professor William Marx noted, in the literary world, plagiarism is the ultimate crime—once broken, the author’s credibility is shattered.

Despite his skepticism, Marx admitted that when he read the novel after the scandal broke, he found the narration vivid and powerful—even if certain repetitive, ternary rhythms and enumerations eventually gave off the stylistic hallmarks of a machine.

The Soul of the Writer vs. The Machine

If a book moves the reader, does it matter whether a human or an algorithm wrote it? For the panelists, the distinction cuts to the heart of what art is.

1. The Broken “Contract of Trust”

For Aïcha Gouleth, learning that a book might be AI-generated immediately made her feel cold toward it. She described reading a physical book as an intimate “contract of trust” between the author, the ink, the paper, and the reader.

• While AI has valuable applications in fields like medicine, Gouleth views literature as a near-metaphysical, spiritual process.
• Citing Nobel laureates and dissident writers who went to prison for their words, she argued that true literature requires human resilience, fieldwork, and lived observation. Furthermore, she accused AI of outright theft—scraping and feeding on the hard-earned work of human journalists and writers without consent.

2. The Pleasure and Pain of Creation

Stephen Clarke dismissed the idea of using AI to overcome “writer’s block,” stating that the entire point of writing is putting one’s unique personality and worldview onto the page.

• Comparing AI-generated text to over-processed modern vocals in music versus raw 1970s recordings, Clarke argued that AI can only imitate styles—it cannot make art personal.
• For Clarke, handing the writing process over to a machine deprives the author of the fundamental joy of creation, akin to a musician asking a machine to go on stage and play the bass guitar for them.

While Gouleth and Marx noted that many great writers—from Colette to Ha Jin—describe writing as a form of “torture” or suffering, Clarke likened that struggle to running a marathon: a pain barrier that artists willingly push through for the sheer pleasure of expression.

3. Historical Precedents: From 1845 to Today

William Marx placed the AI controversy in historical context, pointing to three literary milestones from the 19th and 20th centuries:

• Paul Valéry’s Automaton: In the mid-20th century, formalist writer Paul Valéry imagined an “automaton” capable of writing the purest, most efficient text possible—though for Valéry, this meant the human writer surpassing themselves to achieve impersonality, much like Racine writing Phèdre.
• Alexandre Dumas and Ghostwriters (1845): Long before AI, Dumas (who also had Caribbean roots) was targeted by a racist pamphlet accusing him of putting his name on novels like The Three Musketeers written by collaborator Auguste Maquet. Manuscript evidence shows Maquet provided research and 16-page drafts that Dumas then amplified into 80 pages of brilliant prose—using his collaborator much like some modern authors claim to use AI.
• Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven (1845): A year after publishing his romantic hit poem, Poe wrote The Philosophy of Composition, claiming the poem contained no sincere emotion and was instead mathematically calculated down to the smallest detail to produce a specific effect on the reader—a mechanical blueprint ahead of its time.

The Post-Literate Society: Is the Age of Reading Over?

The debate also tackled a sobering trend: global book sales have collapsed dramatically since the commercial launch of ChatGPT four years ago.

Referencing an Atlantic cover story titled “The Age of Reading is Over”, the panel examined how reading habits have shifted from complex, long-form literature—such as Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago topping the US charts in 1958—to simpler young-adult fiction and five-hour daily screen habits.

How the Next Generation Consumes Words

• The Disappearing Commuter Book: Clarke observed that on buses and metros, newspapers and paperbacks have been almost entirely replaced by phones and videos, turning book readers into a rare club.
• The 30-Page Hurdle: Gouleth shared that when she recently assigned her Sciences Po students a 30-page New Yorker profile, many were overwhelmed by the length. Some had to break it into tiny daily increments to comprehend it, while others chose to listen to an audio version rather than read it on the page.
• The Threat to Classic Culture and Democracy: Marx warned that foundational, complex works by authors like Montaigne and Proust—whose sentences can span an entire page—are becoming inaccessible to younger generations, even among university literature students. Gouleth added that when a society stops reading and writing deeply, political discourse, vocabulary, and ultimately democracy itself take a backseat.

Why the Printed Book Still Matters

While Clarke maintained that words are words—whether experienced via stage performances, audiobooks, or short poems—and worried more about internet algorithms polarizing society into extreme clans, Marx closed with a defense of the physical, printed page.

Citing neuroscience, Marx noted that the human brain memorizes and comprehends text significantly better on paper than on scrolling screens. Drawing on 20th-century French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, Marx emphasized two irreplaceable qualities of the physical book:

1. Cognitive Anchoring: Unlike “moving words” on tablets and smartphones that fracture concentration, a physical book is a massive, enduring object that speaks with authority and helps children and adults structure their minds.
2. An Unchangeable Historical Record: Digital texts online can be silently altered or rewritten at will by those in power. A printed book cannot be changed after the fact—making it an essential, permanent testimony to history and human thought.