ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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Considering The Problematic Revenge Memoir

Admission of desire for revenge on the page also reeks of shame: it’s the thing that every writer—certainly every memoirist—grapples with but generally never talks about. - LitHub

Academic Research Publishers Increasingly Turning To AI To Check Peer Review

In 2024, more than 4,600 academic papers were retracted or otherwise flagged for review, according to the Retraction Watch database; during a six-week span last fall, one scientific journal published by Springer Nature retracted more than 200 articles. - InsideHigherEd

What Will Be Lost When Library Services Agency Goes Away

The agency provides financial support to a wide array of cultural and educational institutions, including art, science and history museums, zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens and historic sites. Libraries of all types – public, academic, school and research – also benefit from the agency’s funding. - The Conversation

Trump Appoints New Head Of Library Services (While Promising To Shut It Down)

"I am committed to steering this organization in lockstep with this Administration to enhance efficiency and foster innovation," Keith Sonderling wrote in a press release. - NPR

US Limits Access To Heritage-Listed Library That Straddles US-Canada Border

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House, built in 1904, has been declared a heritage site on both sides of the border and has long been considered a symbol of harmony between Canada and the U.S. The border line literally runs across the floor of the building. - CBC

Alexei Navalny, Anne Carson, Hisham Matar Among National Book Critics Circle Award Winners

Navalny’s Patriot, released eight months after his death in a Russian prison, took the autobiography prize. Matar’s My Friends beat Percival Everett’s James for fiction; Carson’s collection Wrong Norma won for poetry; Adam Higginbotham’s Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space won for nonfiction. - AP

What These Newly Deciphered 4,000-Year-Old Tablets Tell Us About The Akkadian Empire

These particular artifacts mostly demonstrate that the people running the empire day-to-day were (pick one or both) thorough, detail-oriented administrators or obsessive bureaucrats. - The Observer (UK)

How Government Layoffs Are Affecting DC Bookstores

"There’s also been a noticeable uptick in conversations among shoppers about the general plight of federal workers and the precarity of government employment these days.” - Publishers Weekly

The Phrase “Pride And Prejudice” Has History From Long Before Jane Austen’s Novel

“The phrase, which has religious origins, appeared in hundreds of works before Austen was born. From Britain it traveled to America, and from religious tomes it expanded to secular works. It even became a hallmark of abolitionist writing.” - The Conversation

AI And Writing: Looking Beyond Whether It’s Cheating

As a history and literature concentrator, most of my humanities courses strictly prohibit generative AI, viewing it as a shortcut that undermines learning. But it seems that AI is here to stay—so how can generative AI coexist with the goals of humanities education, and what does this mean for the future of writing? - HarvardMagazine

Publisher Sold, Leaving Writers Wondering If They’ll Get Paid

The unique selling point of the publisher, launched in 2011 by QI researchers John Mitchinson and Justin Pollard, and Crap Towns author Dan Kieran, was that it allowed writers to pitch ideas online directly to readers. - The Guardian

Why Robert Frost’s Poetry Became Uncool, Especially Among Literary Types

“This has a lot to do with the fetishization of what’s difficult, especially as both poetry and criticism professionalized. … (Ordinary people) understand the words. People read the poems and think they know what the poems mean. … (And) many people read Frost for the first time as children.” - The Paris Review

The UK Is Losing About 40 Libraries A Year

According to those who depend on them, local libraries are far more than a repository of books - they are community focal points and, for some, a vital lifeline to the outside world. What happens when one closes? - BBC

Graydon Carter And The Golden Age Of Magazines

The truism has it that most great New York magazine editors come from away—from the West or the Midwest or across the Atlantic—and arrive with an ability to see what natives don’t. - The New Yorker

Italian Newspaper Publishes First All-AI Generated Edition

The initiative by Il Foglio, a conservative liberal daily, is part of a month-long journalistic experiment aimed at showing the impact AI technology has “on our way of working and our days”, the newspaper’s editor, Claudio Cerasa, said. - The Guardian

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