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Research dossier · General Reference

Stop Smiling

Arts & culture magazine

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 1, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Stop Smiling was an arts and culture magazine founded by J. C. Gabel in the Chicago suburb of Darien, Illinois. He started the magazine at age 19 in 1995. The magazine was published on a bimonthly basis. The headquarters was in both Chicago and New York. Each issue followed a theme and consisted of feature-length interviews, essays and oral histories. With a focus on preservation, Stop Smiling published some of the last in-depth conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Altman, Lee Hazlewood, and George Plimpton. The company ended the magazine in 2009 and became an independently owned imprint of Melville House Publishing.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Stop Smiling” as arts & culture magazine. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1995, 2009—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Stop, Smiling and Arts can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as arts & culture magazine. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1995 and 2009.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Stop Smiling”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Stop Smiling primary sources, Stop Smiling archive and Stop research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Stop Smiling”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Stop Smiling” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.