A roundup of the most engaging recent pieces on the web read by the Pittsburgh Review of Books this week.
“Students Keep Booing AI During Commencement Speeches, and Honestly, They Might Be Right” from Vice
“What’s hysterical about it isn’t that it’s happened once, but several times in the past week alone. Rather than take the stage and fight in the name of the younger generation that’s getting squeezed out in the name of a technology that they don’t want, that almost nobody wants, they fight for the tech and not the people. It’s all just so sad, so miserable.”
“Everyone is an AI Cop Now” from LitHub
“Soon, and almost predictably, the conversation about Mr. Nazir’s story has devolved into a cesspool of conspiracy theories about ‘rules of three,’ ‘metaphors,’ and ’em dashes,’ a couple of screenshots from Pangram ranging from a near perfect AI-generated proof score to strong and moderate AI-signal of different sections of the story, summation of the story as postcolonial garbage, accusations of wokewashing (whatever this means), and writers who have not been so lucky with the prize getting their lick back through jabs, edged on by concurring applause from an already polarized audience.”
“Which Way, Western Marxism?” from Dissent
“‘Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?‘ starts from a wholly incorrect premise and does not improve from there, arguing that Western Marxism is a deviation from true dialectical and historical materialism.”
“When Criticism Was Life and Death” from Artforum
“Today, one rarely encounters the kind of stridency that Rose deplored in critics like Rosalind Krauss and Michael Fried, then leading voices in Artforum, not to mention the fury of Rose’s response. Not because criticism has become neutral, but because we displace its controversial debates onto questions of intention and impact.”
“The Spammer Becomes the Spammee” from Air Mail
“The letters were well written but only vaguely touched upon her novel, leading us to believe they had been composed with the assistance of A.I.; even her publisher was fooled by one.”
“The Private Worlds of Charlotte Brontë and Octavia E. Butler” from Hyperallergic
“A great number of readers believe they know writers intimately after reading their articles, books, or poems. However, as evidenced by Stories from the Library, readers only get a small glimpse of a writer’s world in their published work.”
“Wallace Shawn’s Moral Cliffs” from Jewish Currents
“Shawn’s beguiling characters carry us along on the incontestable force of their reasoning, casuistic though it may be, and then drop us off a moral cliff.”
“On Organized Labor’s AntiBlack Mythology” from Scalawag
“All too often, when people reference American Labor, they allude to a ‘middle America’ imaginary, centering white men and factories. This makes a few things clear to me.”
