Nicholas Basbanes Explained

Nicholas Basbanes
Birth Name:Nicholas Andrew Basbanes
Birth Date:25 May 1943
Birth Place:Lowell, Massachusetts
Occupation:Author, journalist and lecturer
Language:English
Nationality:USA
Alma Mater:Bates College (BA)
Pennsylvania State University (MA)
Genre:Nonfiction, journalism
Subject:Authors, books and book culture
Spouse:Constance Valentzas
Children:Barbara Basbanes Richter, Nicole Basbanes Claire
Website:nicholasbasbanes.com

Nicholas Andrew Basbanes (born May 25, 1943, in Lowell, Massachusetts) is an American author who writes and lectures about authors, books, and book culture. His subjects include the "eternal passion for books" (A Gentle Madness); the history and future of libraries (Patience & Fortitude);[1] the "willful destruction of books" and the "determined effort to rescue them" (A Splendor of Letters);[2] "the power of the printed word to stir the world" (Every Book Its Reader);[3] the invention of paper and its effect on civilization (On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History),[4] and an exploration of Longfellow's life and art (Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). [5]

Early life and education

Basbanes is the son of two first-generation Greek-Americans. He graduated from Lowell High School in 1961 and earned a bachelor's degree in English from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine in 1965.[6] Following a year of graduate study at Pennsylvania State University, he did research for his master's thesis in Washington, D.C. then entered U. S. Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. He attended the Defense Information School in the spring of 1968 and earned his master's degree in journalism in 1969 while serving aboard the aircraft carrier during the first of two combat deployments he made to Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of Vietnam.[7]

Career

Early journalism

Discharged from active duty in 1971, Basbanes went to work as a general assignment reporter for The Evening Gazette in Worcester, Massachusetts, specializing in investigative journalism. In 1978, he was appointed books editor of a sister publication, the Worcester Sunday Telegram, a full-time position that included writing a weekly column.

Due to cost cutting measures, the Telegram, then known as the Telegram & Gazette, removed its book section in 1990. When Basbanes left the newspaper later in 1991 to complete his first book, he continued writing the column and distributed it through Literary Features Syndicate, an agency he formed that placed it in more than thirty publications nationwide.[7] He writes the "Gently Mad" column for Fine Books & Collections magazine and lectures on book-related subjects.[8]

Books

Basbanes' first book, , was published in 1995. The topic was originally dismissed as too arcane for a general readership by many New York editors who had passed on the opportunity to publish it, but the book later found sizable success with multiple printings.[9] Michael Dirda of The Washington Post called it an "ingratiating and altogether enjoyable book", praising the book's "wonderful gallery of modern eccentrics" despite its occasional lapses in literary history.[10] A Gentle Madness was named a New York Times notable book of the year[11] and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction for 1995.[12] In 2010, Allison Hoover Bartlett writing for the Wall Street Journal named it one of the most influential works about book collecting published in the twentieth century.[13]

By 2003, with the publication of A Splendor of Letters, Basbanes was already acknowledged as a leading authority on books and book culture. One reviewer commented, "No other writer has traced the history of the book so thoroughly or so engagingly,"[14] and Yale University Press chose him to write its 2008 centennial history, A World of Letters, which chronicled the inside stories of its classic books from conception to production.[15]

Basbanes' ninth book, On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History, is not only a consideration of paper as a principal medium for the transmission of text over the past ten centuries, but also a wider examination of the ubiquitous material itself.[4] The eight-year project, which was released in October 2013, was supported in part by the award of a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship in 2008.[16] It was named a notable book by the American Library Association,[17] and was one of three finalists for the 2014 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.[18]

In July 2015, Basbanes received one of the inaugural grants from the Public Scholar program of the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of his tenth book, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 2020. The Public Scholar program is designed to promote the publication of scholarly nonfiction books for general audiences.[19] Cross of Snow was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2020 by the Christian Science Monitor,[20] one of the Books of the Year 2020 by TLS [21] and was selected as an Honors Book in the non-fiction category by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.[22]

Litigation

On January 5, 2024, Basbanes and Nicholas Gage, nonfiction book author and journalist, sued Microsoft and OpenAI in a proposed class action complaint filed in the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.[23] The lawsuit alleges that the defendants “stole” writers’ copyrighted works to help build AI chatbot ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence system they say is worth billions of dollars. The class is defined as all nonfiction writers in the United States, many of them trained as journalists, “who are authors or legal beneficial owners” of copyrights that have or are being used by the defendants to “train their large language models” and it estimates the class to include tens of thousands of people. It seeks damages of up to $150,000 for each work infringed. This lawsuit follows several other suits and letters of complaint filed alleging copyright infringement not only by these defendants, but also by Meta Platforms, Alphabet and IBM.[24] These suits by authors and performers, and actions by The Authors Guild, The Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild are seeking protection for creators over AI use.[25]

Considered too similar to lawsuits filed late last year, this January complaint has been consolidated into a case brought by other nonfiction writers as well as fiction writers represented by the Authors Guild.[26]

Open AI issued a statement, "We respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new revenue models."

Archives

The Cushing Memorial Library and Archives of Texas A&M University acquired Basbanes' papers as the Nicholas A. Basbanes Collection in December 2015. The collection includes archives of Basbanes' professional career as an author and literary journalist, as well as a significant portion of his personal library. Highlights of the collection include research materials related to the writing of his nine books and approximately eight hundred books inscribed to him over the course of his career.[27]

Two selections of his literary journalism were collected in Editions & Impressions (2007) and About the Author (2010).

His collection of books resides in North Grafton, Massachusetts.

Bibliography

Selected journalism and op-ed essays

External links

Lectures

Notes and References

  1. Merle Rubin, you have too many books? Musings on Bibliophiles From Classical Alexandria to the Internet", Christian Science Monitor, December 27, 2001.
  2. André Bernard, "Fear of Book Haunts Bibliophile's Musings", The New York Observer, December 15, 2003. http://observer.com/2003/12/fear-of-book-assasination-haunts-bibliophiles-musings/
  3. Brigitte Weeks, Manifold Beauties of Books", Washington Post, January 5, 2006.
  4. Martin A. Hubbe,"On Paper - A Celebration of Two Millennia of the Work and Craft of Papermakers", BioResources, 8(4), 4791-4792, November 2013 http://www.ncsu.edu/bioresources/BioRes_08/BioRes_08_4_4791_Hubbe_Editorial_OnPaper_Basbanes_4414.pdf
  5. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/nicholas-a-basbanes/cross-of-snow/ "Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow"
  6. Web site: A Bible for Bibliophiles. Davis. William. abacus.bates.edu. The Boston Globe. 2020-05-18.
  7. Chauncey Mabe, "The Book On Books: Nicholas Basbanes Brings a Journalist's Training and Sensibility to Writing About, well, Writing, and Books", South Florida Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL), March 14, 2004.
  8. Nicholas Basbanes, "Acute Bibliomania", Fine Books & Collections, Summer 2020.
  9. William A. Davis, "Bible for Bibliophiles: Basbanes' 'A Gentle Madness' Confounds the Naysayers", Boston Globe, June 26, 1996, reprinted Bates Magazine, Spring 1997. http://abacus.bates.edu/pubs/mag/97-Spring/bibliophile.html and John Baker, "A Mania for Books," Publishers Weekly, vol. 252, issue 45, November 11, 2005. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20051114/20772-a-mania-for-books.html
  10. News: Genuine Book Cases. Dirda. Michael. July 30, 1995. The Washington Post.
  11. "Notable Books of the year 1995", New York Times, December 3, 1995.
  12. Web site: NBCC Finalists . 2013-04-08 . https://web.archive.org/web/20190427180857/http://bookcritics.org/awards/past_awards/#1995%20Awards . 2019-04-27 . dead .
  13. News: Bartlett. Allison Hoover. 2010-10-09. Extreme Book-Collecting. en-US. Wall Street Journal. 2020-05-15. 0099-9660.
  14. Andre Bernard,"Fear of Book Haunts Bibliophile's Musings," The New York Observer, December 15, 2013. http://observer.com/2003/12/fear-of-book-assasination-haunts-bibliophiles-musings/
  15. Web site: Yale Press Centennial: A World of Letters by Nicolas A. Basbanes . Yalepress.yale.edu . 2013-04-15.
  16. http://www.nhalliance.org/bm~doc/fy08nehmassachusetts.pdf NEH 2008 Grant Obligations Massachusetts
  17. http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2014/01/rusas-reveals-notable-books-list-winners-outstanding-fiction-nonfiction-and "2014 Notable Books List"
  18. http://www.ala.org/awardsgrants/carnegieadult/short-lists Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, Awards Finalists, April 7, 2014.
  19. [Ron Charles (critic)|Ron Charles]
  20. The Christian Science Monitor "The Best Nonfiction Books of 2020 Offer Wisdom and Insight," December 9, 2020 https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2020/1209/The-best-nonfiction-books-of-2020-offer-wisdom-and-insight
  21. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/books-of-the-year-2020/ "Books of the Year 2020, Sixty-five Writers Make Their Selections From Around the World"
  22. Web site: Massachusetts Book Awards Announcement and Call for Submissions. February 24, 2024.
  23. https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/klvydkdklpg/OPENAI%20COPYRIGHT%20LAWSUIT%20basbanescomplaint.pdf
  24. https://www.reuters.com/legal/microsoft-openai-hit-with-new-lawsuit-by-authors-over-ai-training-2024-01-05/
  25. https://www.courthousenews.com/authors-guild-to-add-microsoft-in-its-lawsuit-against-openai/
  26. https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/07/12/nicholas-gage-basbanes-grafton-authors-ai-chatbots
  27. Basbanes Collection Added to Cushing Library . . 2015-12-07 . 2016-01-05 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20160104143426/http://library.tamu.edu/about/news-and-events/2015/12/Basbanes-Collection.html . 2016-01-04 .

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