Those new Isabel Allende and Percival Everett novels are fake, but the scandal surrounding them is real
An AI-generated list of summer book titles is the sort of thing Talmudic sages warned against
An AI-generated falsely claimed that Isabel Allende has authored a new climate change novel. Photo by Getty Images
By Aviya Kushner May 21, 2025
The Chicago Sun-Times is attracting a lot of attention — or more accurately, scorn — for publishing a summer reading list, which was generated by AI and includes some book titles that don’t exist.
Incredibly, only five of the fifteen recommended titles, which included a nonexistent climate change novel by Isabel Allende and a futuristic update of N. Richard Nash’’s classic playThe Rainmaker by Pulitzer Prize-winner Percival Everett, are real.
At least one edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer reprinted the mostly fake list, proving the old saw that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”.
That statement is often attributed to Mark Twain — who didn’t write it.
The truth about fake books and fake book coverage
Like many writers, I’m sad that the noble and very old profession of book criticism has been reduced and defunded until it has become something that can be generated by an algorithm.
It’s hard not to notice the irony that the fiction list has fictionalized titles. But the uncomfortable truth is that many “best-of” lists in seemingly reputable publications are compiled by people who haven’t read the books they are recommending. It takes a lot of time to read a book, especially the whole book, and many journalists are too overworked and overbooked.
Here’s what often happens:
A publicist will pitch a book in a compelling way — perhaps the writer has an intriguing personal story or is photogenic or the book is relevant to current events — and that’s enough to get a book some space.
As for professional book critics? Well, fewer and fewer exist. Adam Morgan, founder of The Chicago Review of Books, found that there are only seven full-time book critics working in the United States.
Why this is a Jewish story
Amid all this hoopla on fake books, I couldn’t help thinking that there’s a Jewish story here, too.
Judaism’s learning tradition insists on a chavruta — the Aramaic word for friendship. It means learning as a pair or learning as a group. As Rabbi Julian Sinclair explained in The Jewish Chronicle, “The Talmud declares, ‘Two scholars learning together sharpen one another’ (Ta’anit 7a). It also advises that scholars who try to learn Torah alone will become stupid,”
But stupidity is just one risk.
The Talmud is also concerned that removing the human element and camaraderie in learning — the real-life, in-person friendship factor — could be fatal.
There is a famous phrase, from Ta’anit 23 in the Talmud, that reads oh chavruta oh mituta, which means “camaraderie or death.” The authoritative Even Shoshan Hebrew dictionary interprets that phrase as meaning that “death is better than a life of loneliness.” The idea is that reading alone, or studying alone, is dangerous.
Though they did not have Twitter, or X, or Instagram, the rabbis of the Talmud knew that it is easy to convince yourself that something that isn’t true is true. Lies, conspiracy theories, hatred, and just plain nonsense were a danger to individuals and society then, just as they are now.
Contemporary rabbis have also pointed out that two readers, at a minimum, are necessary, in order to remain a sharp reader of Jewish texts.
The rabbi of the shul I grew up in liked to tell the story of a brilliant young rabbi he knew when he was starting out. The talented rabbi got a job in the hinterlands, and when he returned to New York a few short years later, everyone was shocked.
He seemingly knew nothing anymore — without a chavruta, without a study partner, he was lost.
The Jewish connection
In many ways, Jewish text is the anti-AI.
Over and over, Jewish tradition insists that human involvement is necessary — to learn and to live. That idea appears in Pirkei Avot or Ethics of the Fathers 1:6, which reads “Aseh lecha rav, u’kneh lecha chaver.”
Technically, the Hebrew is simple, but the concept is profound.
“Make for yourself a rabbi, acquire for yourself a friend” is the translation in Daf Yomi Review. In another translation by Rabbi Shraga Silverstein, the famous first phrase reads, “Make a teacher for yourself.”
What this intriguing phrase means, exactly, has been parsed for centuries.
“Make yourself a rabbi” or “make a teacher for yourself” means, according to the Daf Yomi Review’s summary of the great 11th-century French commentator Rashi, “do not learn on your own from your own logic. Rather, from a rabbi and from the tradition.”
And what about the advice to acquire a friend?
“Two are better than one,” the Daf Yomi Review explains, making reference to Ecclesiastes 4:9.
I would add that one is better than none.
What AI does is eliminate the human element completely.
It takes Judaism’s insistence on a minimum of two humans for learning and cuts it down to zero. While AI has its time-saving advantages — just as other technology has does — AI is especially dangerous because it makes it easier than ever to believe that what is false is true. And worse, AI can convince users that they wrote what they didn’t write, as any professor who has made it through the past 12 months can attest.
So when I see made-up book titles, in a place of honor in a long-running, reputable publication in a major city like Chicago, the rabbis’ centuries-old concern about “foolishness” and “danger” when the human element is removed seems very wise — and very forward-thinking, indeed.
