‘Yours in Speech (and Speakos)’: Automatic Speech Recognition as Writing Technology in Richard Powers’s Literary Practice

Past decades have seen a rise in scholarly interest in the impact of digital technologies on literary production (Berensmeyer 2022; Kirschenbaum 2016; Lyons and Marquilhas 2017; Côrtes Maduro 2017). However, little attention has been paid to the influence of one such recent technological innovation: automatic speech recognition (ASR). This article explores the affordances and limitations presented by this modern-day writing technology through the case study of renowned author Richard Powers. It will discuss how speech recognition’s hardware and software shaped Powers’s writing process. Subsequently, it will critically evaluate Powers’s claim that ASR facilitates a more immediate and authentic mode of storytelling by considering the technology’s operation within a multifaceted network of remediation (Grusin and Bolter 2000). The second part of the article will complicate Powers’s views further by analyzing his novel Orfeo (2014), which traces parallels between the author and its protagonist—a composer obsessed with wrestling free from the constraints of his medium in his quest for authentic artistic expression. Overall, this article will argue for the importance of understanding digital writing technologies as complex media networks that not only shape literary products but also their authors and modes of reception. Powers’s embrace of dictation software thus not only unveils a fascinating chapter in the evolution of writing practices but also beckons a deeper exploration of how digital tools redefine the relationship between author, reader, and text.