ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

From “Groomer” All The Way Back To “Miscegenation”, American Politicians Have Turned Words Into Culture-War Weapons

"Where groomer has a pedigree as a legitimate term of opprobrium, ... miscegenation was invented out of whole cloth, intended as a bludgeon to preempt debate in a racist society where intermarriage was deemed an appalling notion, even among many white abolitionists." The election year: 1864. - Literary Hub

Why It’s So Difficult To Write About Images

The English vocabulary is especially limited, with only 170,000 or so words in an English dictionary. What does this mean to the art writer trying to capture a brushstroke? You fall back on tried and true descriptors like lush, bold, tentative, delicate. - LitHub

Australian Writers Decry Their Place In The Country’s Cultural Support Structures

“Funding and the politics of funding within the Australia Council is dominated by performing arts, the lion’s share of funds goes to performing arts bodies, and it is essentially a performing-arts grants body. It’s time it was recognised as such, and literature split from it.” - The Guardian

The Adventurous History of The “Choose Your Own Adventure” Books

In a longread laid out like a choose-your-own-adventure tale, Leslie Jamison looks at why kids adore the books (agency!), their own origin story, how authors approach them, and the series's progeny (e.g., Neil Patrick Harris's Choose Your Own Autobiography or the choose-your-own-Macbeth-play Sleep No More). - The New Yorker

A History Of Encyclopedias: Our Search For Authority And Meaning

It "was meant as reference, but also to be savoured. The 11th edition of Britannica (1929) featured Cecil B. DeMille on motion pictures and J.B. Priestley on English literature. It was ‘plausible, reasonable, unruffled, often reserved and completely authoritative’. And sometimes plain wrong. - The Spectator

How Did This Fragment Of Dead Sea Scroll Wind Up In Montana?

"The scrap of papyrus — scarcely larger than a postage stamp with four lines of angular script — is one of just a few from the Late Iron Age, archaeologists said." How it ended up being sold to a Montana woman in 1965 is unclear, but it's been returned to Israel. - AP

One of France’s Hottest Bestsellers Is Disqualified From The Prix Goncourt, Ostensibly Because Its Author Once Served On The Jury

"Punk feminist" author Virginie Despentes's novel, titled Cher connard (roughly, "Dear Asshole"), goes deep into what this correspondent describes as "France's sometimes difficult relationship with the #MeToo movement." - The Guardian

Meet Wikipedia’s “Deaditors” Who Updated Queen Elizabeth’s Entry

While some on the internet were glued to Twitter or the BBC, checking for news or watching the planes en route to Balmoral Castle, one group of dedicated Wikipedia editors sprang into action updating the late queen’s page in the minutes after Buckingham Palace announced the news. - Gizmodo

How Book Battles Roiled A Texas Town And Put Librarians On The Front Lines

Strategies on how to lodge complaints against books are traded on Facebook and shared among branch chapters of parental rights groups. One of the most influential of these groups is the Florida-based Moms for Liberty. Since January 2021, it has grown to 200 chapters with 100,000 members.  - The New York Times

Why So Many Book Bans? Facebook

"It’s absolutely beyond creepy—and therefore totally in keeping with Facebook’s general vibe—that adults are spending time avidly thumbing through children’s books to look for anything they might consider vaguely 'pornographic' (or, you know, vaguely affirming of non-white or queer identities)." - LitHub

Some Teenage Girls In Afghanistan Meet In Secret To Read The Diary Of Anne Frank

One 17-year-old in the secret book club: "Anne Frank is, like, as a friend for me. ... I mean, Anne Frank is suffering from war, and I am, too. And Anne Frank cannot go to school, cannot, like, go out very freely. And I have the same situation." - NPR

The Art, And Popularity, Of Retelling Old Tales

"Sometimes writers draw from older stories—myths, histories, ancient epics—when crafting new ones. One might find in that rewriting an opportunity to recast a celebrated figure." Obvious. but many new (or popular on BookTok) works are strong on the retelling right now. - The Atlantic

Writers Need To Put Some Thought Into Building Trust With Readers

And that doesn't just mean adding werewolves to chapter one. - LitHub

The Future Of A James Joyce Museum Is No Longer In Doubt

Volunteers held the line for a decade, but now local government has stepped in to save and shore up the tower in Dublin where Joyce began Ulysses. - Irish Times

This One Cool Trick Gets Completely Intact Language Past China’s Censoring Software

That software, like the rest of the government of the People's Republic, uses Mandarin Chinese.  It doesn't read Cantonese. - Quartz

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