Essays from More Taste Than Fortune Books
The writing.
One question has a way of becoming several.
Essays by Glen Cantrell on small-town life, volunteer leadership, AI, writing, publishing, and Diderot. The questions travel. These are the places they’ve landed so far.
4 essays
Field Notes
Small-town leadership, volunteer capacity, and the people who keep a place going.
Why the Same Six People Do Everything
A volunteer Chamber president on why the same few people end up doing everything, how he helped arrange it, and what to ask before the next good idea.
The Drawer Marked That One Time
What episodic volunteering taught one small Chamber about volunteer capacity, burnout, recruitment, and changing the shape of the ask.
Rip Off and Duplicate: In Search of the Manual
What small and volunteer-led Chambers can learn from one another about capacity, institutional knowledge, leadership, and the problems nobody puts in the manual.
The Training Is Four Years. My Term Is Two.
A volunteer Chamber president asks what professional development, succession, and institutional knowledge mean when leadership is term-limited and unpaid.
7 essays
Artificial Polemics
AI, writing, context, evidence, and who gets to judge.
Beige
I asked Claude whether my prose was beige. His answer introduced me to Podium Glen, and to the limits of judging authorship by how writing feels.
AI, Write Like an Eighth Grader. Or a Robot. Possibly Both.
A reader stopped halfway through my book because the prose sounded artificial. Familiar rhetorical habits can invite criticism without proving who wrote them.
AI, Connect the Dots
Glen Cantrell traces a suspiciously well-informed book-marketing solicitation through email headers, tracking pixels, and templated websites, and considers how making himself legible to search and AI systems also made him easier to target.
AI, Prove It
What should an AI detector score be allowed to do? Glen Cantrell examines Jerry Falade’s account, authorship accusations, and standards of evidence.
AI, Bless Your Heart
Six scenes test how AI reads “bless your heart.” Model disagreements reveal contextual assumptions; memory complicates the apparent fresh starts.
AI, Check My Work
Can AI make independent publishing affordable without replacing human judgment? Glen Cantrell on cheaper inquiry, checking earlier, and accepting correction.
AI! Burn Him
Is using AI in writing cheating? Glen Cantrell examines authorship, disclosure, and where writers and readers draw the line.
3 essays
Diderotisms
Reading Diderot, following his questions, and occasionally finding ourselves in the machinery.
Rattling the Machinery
A personal essay about Denis Diderot, Jacques le fataliste, the Correspondance littéraire, and discovering that the joke can be serious business.
The Most Harmonious Poverty
A personal essay about Denis Diderot’s dressing gown, the Diderot Effect, and one vase that slowly redecorated a San Francisco apartment.
The Encyclopedia Guy
A personal essay about Denis Diderot, the Encyclopédie, and the difficulty of categorizing the man who helped categorize the Enlightenment.
3 essays
From the Author
Publishing, belonging, and the strange business of becoming an author.
Please Do Not Reply
After entering a self-published memoir in the Pulitzer Prize competition, Glen Cantrell considers literary gatekeeping, external validation, belonging, and what makes an author feel legitimate.
Harte Twain
A birthday essay by Glen Cantrell about broken friendships, Mark Twain and Bret Harte, Diderot and Rousseau, belonging, and what endings do not erase.
A Mid-Life Crisis on a Budget
A personal essay by Glen Cantrell about turning fifty-five, starting to write again, memory, and discovering a surprisingly inefficient mid-life crisis.