“A magazine’s response to accusations of publishing AI-generated fiction points to a new phase in the struggle to keep literature human.”
Literature
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Man Who Reads Books For a Living (One Every Two Days)
“Clarke Seicher is something much more specific and much rarer: a professional book reader who evaluates literature specifically for screen adaptation.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Prehistory of A.I. Slop
“Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship.”
Posted inFeature
The Secret Door
“When we read, we make believe. We aren’t duped or ensorcelled. Deep down we decide. We make ourselves believe.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The First Tomato to Know Everything
“On gray literature and Webster’s Timeline History books.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Hardy Men
“Why is a right-wing press reissuing century-old adolescent mystery novels?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Do You Actually Have to Finish That Novel?
“A critic considers the strange moral pressure we feel to read to the very last page.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Don’t Close Your Teeth
“Cynthia Zarin traces the rise of fascism through the diary entries of Virginia Woolf.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
When Dementia Steals the Imagination of a Children’s Book Writer
“Robert Munsch wrote ‘The Paper Bag Princess,’ ‘Love You Forever’ and other classics by performing them over and over for kids. But his stories are slipping away.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Inside Beirut’s Fight To Save Its Reading Culture
“As reading declines and self-censorship grows, bookshops are shuttering in the city once hailed as the Arab world’s publishing capital.”