ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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Behind A Lot Of Successful Movies Stand Some Pretty Great Books

Here are this year's for the nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay (which was won by Sarah Polley, for Women Talking). - The Millions

Visiting The Grave Of Raymond Carver

"I read her 'Cathedral' while she rested her head in my lap. It was 'really something' as you had said. Your story, I mean, and this life too. There were times when I wasn’t sure I’d be able to say that and mean it, but I felt it that day, and I feel it now." - The Smart Set

New York’s Mayor Wants To Cut Library Funding, But Three New Libraries Show Their Value

"With the pandemic seemingly in the rearview mirror but the city still seeking its new normal, New York’s recovery depends on fortifying, not diminishing, tent-poles like parks, streets and libraries." - The New York Times

The Hay Book Festival Is Going Eurovision

It's real: "The Eurovision book contest will culminate in an event at this year’s literary festival in June, where a panel will discuss the books selected to represent the 37 countries that take part in the music competition each year." - The Guardian (UK)

Protect Children From Books? How Does That Make Sense?

The anxiety about what kids are reading inevitably bleeds into fear about what else they’re doing—the trope of the sexy librarian, ever about to loosen her hair and initiate you into forbidden knowledge, exists for a reason. But books are obscene in another way. - The New Yorker

Kouri-Vini: The Creole Language Of Acadian Louisiana Sees The Dawn Of A Revival

Roughly a French Louisiana equivalent of Gullah, the African-English hybrid of the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands, Kouri-Vini developed among the region's Black and mixed-race Creoles in the early 1700s. It faded away during the 20th century, but some present-day Creoles are working to bring it back to life. - BBC

A Writing Apocalypse?

Think of it as an ongoing planetary spam event, but unlike spam—for which we have more or less effective safeguards—there may prove to be no reliable way of flagging and filtering the next generation of machine-made text. “Don’t believe everything you read” may become “Don’t believe anything you read” when it’s online. - The Atlantic

On-The-Spot Poetry, Generated By AI Software Trained On The Works Of Great Black Writers

Artist/software developer Josie Williams created four chatbots, each built on a dataset consisting solely of the works of a great African-American writer: James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Octavia E. Butler, and Zora Neale Hurston.  A visitor interacts with the bot, whose responses are assembled from that author's own words. - Artnet

Rare Old Books Should Be Handled Bare-Handed, Not With Gloves. The Public Will Not Accept This.

Morgan Library director of conservation Maria Fredericks: "The glove thing. It just won't die."  Grolier Club director Eric Holzenberg: "Every time it comes up, I sigh deeply.  And then I give my three-sentence explanation of why it's ****."  And the explanation does make sense. - The New York Times

Bookmobiles Bearing Banned Books

"(In Florida and) along other fronts of the culture war, bookmobiles are motoring around the country to bring banned books to all, especially in Texas, which has censored more books than any other state." - WBUR (Boston)

At Heart, Revising Roald Dahl And Other Childrens Books Is About Copyright

At its core updating Roald Dahl’s children’s books is really about the rights and control copyright grants to authors and copyright holders. Those rights are exercised to update children’s books more frequently than many of these critics may realise. - The Conversation

Librarians Organize To Fight Book Bans

The conference in New Orleans was equal parts group therapy and war room, as nearly 2,000 librarians from throughout the country strategized on how to protect their patrons and themselves, and how to get the public to wake up to the urgency of the threat. - Washington Post

The Scourge Of Book Blurbs

Blurbing has always had discontents. In 1936, George Orwell decried the use of blurbs in his essay “In Defense of the Novel.” He feared for the novel’s “lapse in prestige,” for which he partly blamed “hack reviews” and “the disgusting tripe that is written by the blurb-reviewers." - The Millions

The Badass Women Who Rescued Hildegard Of Bingen’s Collected Works From The Red Army

Late in her life, virtually everything Hildegard had written was copied into a 33-pound illuminated manuscript — too heavy for Soviet soldiers to loot from a Dresden bank vault after World War II.  But how to get it out of East Germany and back to the nuns at Hildegard's abbey? - Literary Hub

Building A Canon Of Black Writers Of The Past

This re-engagement with Black authors of the past is being led by a fresh cohort of literary tastemakers: younger authors in search of ancestors; publishers eager to excavate Black literature, film and television executives in search of intellectual property; social media influencers on Bookstagram... - The New York Times

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