ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

What Does It Mean For Writing To Be “Great”?

The Swedish Academy is not here to tell you what writers you might like. Greatness is not the same as popularity. It may even be the opposite of popularity... Great writers are the ones who matter whether you read them or not. - The New York Times

Salman Rushdie Is Working On His First Volume Of Fiction Since He Was Almost Murdered

Speaking by videolink from New York to the Lviv BookForum, the author revealed that the book will be a trilogy of novellas about "the three worlds in my life: India and England and America. And they all in some way consider the idea of an ending." - The Guardian

Book Banners Are Trying A Stealth Method To Get Targeted Books Off Library Shelves

Regular weeding — librarians' term for removing from collections books that are out-of-date, damaged, or too seldom checked out to be worth shelf space — is standard practice. Some officials have started using the process to remove books about race or LGBTQ issues, and courts will soon weigh in. - The New York Times

Show Everyone The Money

On the literary importance of money in fiction (even Raymond Carver agreed). - LitHub

What Is The Graphic Novel Equivalent Of Show, Don’t Tell?

It’s the two-apple problem. - LitHub

Some Good News For Books, And Readers

“The number of independent bookstores has grown by 200 from 2022 to 2023, and the number has more than doubled between 2016 and 2023.” Then there’s the internet - for indies. - Salon

Demon Copperhead Author Barbara Kingsolver Knows A Thing Or Two About Anti-Hillbilly Bigotry

And she knows the real Appalachia - one, she says, a certain vice-presidential candidate doesn’t. - The Guardian (UK)

A Master Storyteller Approaches Her Death The Same Way She’s Approached Her Fiction

Lore Segal, at 96, “still approaches everything in life and her writing in the same way: as something interesting, something to be dealt with as directly as one can manage.” - The New York Times

Working, Teaching, Writing, And Living In Three Languages

“My husband tells me, ‘You are a nicer person in Hindi than you are in English.’ I believe him. For everything that English has granted me, it has also been the language of competition and of getting ahead in life.” - LitHub

The Black List Has an Amazing Track Record For Spotting Hollywood Writing Talent. Now It’s Expanding To Books

Fifty-four Academy Awards and 267 nominations. That’s the sort of concrete impact the Black List has had since launching in 2005 as Hollywood insiders’ go-to index of emerging screenwriters. It now hopes to do the same for publishing. - Wired

Federal Court Orders Arkansas Library To Stop Segregating Books

"In yet another major win for freedom to read advocates, a federal judge has ordered the Crawford County Public Library in Arkansas to stop segregating books deemed inappropriate by some local residents into special 'social sections,' and to return the books to general circulation." - Publishers Weekly

Less Than Half Of American Adults Read a Book Last Year. And Yet A Billion Books Were Sold…

In 2022, fewer than half of adults reported reading a book in the past 12 months. Furthermore, only 38 percent reported reading fiction or short stories, a rate that has fallen a worrisome 17 percent over the past ten years. But digging into the data, I also found reasons for hope. - National Endowment for the Arts

The Art And Craft Of The New York Post Headline

An oral history: current and former Post staffers, along with people involved with the incidents in question, talk about how they come up with the headlines, reveal which ones were too much even for the Post, and flesh out the stories behind them. Yes, this includes "Headless Body in Topless Bar." - Esquire

How Syntax Changes Meaning — The Context Of Adjacent Words

Often, their authors are all too clearly estranged from the full resources of the English language: What should be putty in their hands is tough, fibrous, unworkable. Or they just can’t be bothered. They plunk down words one after the other like inopportune Tetris blocks, mismatched, ill fitting, and in the wrong order. - Hedgehog Review

How British Words Invaded American English

The chattering classes – another useful Britishism – have a persistent desire for ostensibly clever ways to say stuff. They have borrowed from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, teen culture, African American vernacular, sports and hip-hop, and they increasingly borrow from Britain. - The Guardian

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