ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

New Book Publisher Says It Will Publish 8000 Books Next Year Using AI

Spines, founded in 2021 but which published its first titles this year, is a startup technology business which—for a fee—is offering the use of AI to proofread, produce, publish and distribute books. - The Bookseller

Writing A Recipe Versus Writing Fiction

Michèle Roberts, author of French Cooking for One, says, “Writing a recipe is very close to writing a poem, which is about choosing words and ingredients and things. The right thing in the right place and so on, the time, the narrative.” - Vittles

The Sense That Defines A Culture

“When your homeland has been under foreign control for centuries, your tastes are inevitably shaped by that reality—by the culinary traditions the colonizers bring with them, and by the attempts to maintain traditional flavors in the face of erasure.” - The Atlantic

Why Are Men Claiming Online To Make Fortunes Self-Publishing Classic Literature?

“The theory is simple. Countless classic works of literature have fallen out of copyright and into the public domain, granting normal people the right to reproduce, remix, and resell them.” - Slate

Will The New Info About Cormac McCarthy Affect The Writer’s Reputation?

“Everybody knew about Augusta, but they all knew her as a secret. … Because they met when she was so young, she was an abused child, she was a runaway, and Cormac was in his 40s, it was a situation that in many ways would look bad.” - The New York Times

Why Did The Onion Buy Infowars? Yeah, It Was A Joke — At First

Onion CEO Ben Collins's first thought was, "That’d be one of the funniest jokes of all time if we pulled this off." Once it became a serious possibility, Collins saw the opportunity to use Onion-style satire to expose the fear-mongering, guns-and-dietary-supplements-peddling scam that right-wing outlets like Infowars run. - New York Magazine

Prominent Author Accused Of Stealing Algerian Woman’s Story

This year’s winner of France’s biggest book prize is being sued in Algeria over claims he stole the story from a patient of his psychiatrist wife. - BBC

When A Writer Should Just Say “Etcetera” (Literarily Speaking, Of Course)

When do we feel compelled to say “etcetera” or “ityadi” or even “blah blah,” not just literally or in a manner of speaking but in the way we experience and create the world? - LA Review of Books

2024 Word Of The Year From Cambridge Dictionaries Is “Manifest” (As A Verb)

"The formal 600-year-old word (has) been given new life by Olympians like Simone Biles, entertainers like Dua Lipa, and people across social media who increasingly use the word to describe channelling their dreams into successes." - CBC

National Book Award To Percival Everett’s “James”; Jason de León Beats Out Salman Rushdie

Everett's revisionist riff on Huckleberry Finn continued its prizewinning streak in the fiction category; in nonfiction, de León's Soldiers and Kings pipped Knife, Rushdie's memoir of his stabbing and recovery. Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's Something About Living took poetry honors; Shifa Saltagi Safadi’s Kareem Between won for young people's literature. - AP

Study: Many Readers Prefer Chatbot Shakespeare To The Real Thing

A.I. chatbots can imitate famous poets like William Shakespeare well enough to fool many human readers, according to a new paper published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. In addition, many study participants actually preferred the chatbot’s poetry over the works of renowned writers. - Smithsonian

Swedish Company Uses AI To “Post-Edit” And Create Translations Of Books

Nuanxed's approach, known as post-editing (PE), combines the use of AI translation tools with human editing and proofing. According to cofounder and CEO Robert Casten Carlberg, the company completes roughly 50 translations per month, and in total has worked with 150 authors to complete around 800 translations. - Publishers Weekly

Author Richard Flanagan Wins Baillie Gifford Prize For Nonfiction — And Turns Down The Prize Money

Accepting the award for his Question 7, the Australian author said he would not take the £50,000 which comes with the prize until sponsor Baillie Gifford presents to the public a plan for divesting from fossil fuel companies and investing in renewable energy. - The Guardian

How Technology Has Reshaped The Ways We Talk To One Another

The kinds of speech that strike us as authentic, satisfying, and desirable change with time, and depend on our position in the world and on the conversations happening around us. - The New Yorker

Let’s Get Real: What AI Does Is Not Speaking Language

To invoke language when talking about LLMs is to misunderstand the nature of language and miss its fundamentally lived and embodied character. LLMs may get better and better at sourcing certain kinds of information or completing certain kinds of tasks, but they are finders, not creators. - The Dial

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