Talk:David Leavitt

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:05, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Leavitt
Does anyone here know for sure? Is it like "Leave it?" Enquiring minds want to know. Aviad2001 00:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The Lea is pronounced like the le in let

Disambiguation page
I see there was an attempt to force a change on this article, namely to turn it into a disambiguation page. I have reverted the edits and formatted the hatnotes at the top of the page. I've also redirected the newly created David F. Leavitt back to this article – since this project operates under the GFDL, a page rename cannot be done by simply pasting the contents into a new article, as that doesn't effectively preserve the page history (which, among other things, acts as a record of different editors' contributions to an article).

If there is a need for a disambiguation page for the three Davids – and I'm not sure there is – it ought to be discussed first. And if that discussion determines the author article ought to be renamed "David F. Leavitt", the change needs to be handled via a page move, not a copy'n'paste. --Sturm 21:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't there be a David Leavitt (disambiguation) page? Then each of the three can use otheruses. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 23:04, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I have never seen his name as 'David F. Leavitt', so it seems a little odd to me - I could be misguided though.Zigzig20s (talk) 23:14, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Now that you mention it, the only David F's I can find via Google appear to be unconnected to the writer. Does Leavitt even have a middle name? --Sturm 23:30, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know, but it's a pretty safe assumption that he goes by 'David Leavitt'. If he has a middle name - more people do - then that isn't his professional name, if that makes sense.Zigzig20s (talk) 23:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * (Reply to SatyrTN) It depends on how likely you think it is that someone will arrive at David O. Leavitt, say, when they actually want to get to David I. Leavitt or David Leavitt. A disambiguation page wouldn't actually do any harm as far as I can see; I'm just not convinced there's much to be gained. --Sturm 23:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * What's to be gained is that then we don't need to keep adding to the pre-lede paragraph of this article when Dave Leavitt, David A. Leavitt, and Davide Leavite all become famous. We simply otheruses the top of this article and leave the rest alone. It's far more likely anyone looking for David O. will land here, and a dab page allows for at least a little more description than we would want to provide here. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 23:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * NM. I was WP:BOLD. :) -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 23:56, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, well. It forces an extra click in the disambiguation process, but at least it provides a more appropriate target for David F. --Sturm 00:23, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Did we ever decide who David F is/was? -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 02:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I had a look around last night and nothing promising showed up. There's an academic interested in aquaculture (D. F. Leavitt) and a maker of block prints. Trying possible f's (Francis, Forrest, Finbar etc) turned up nothing beyond this, but I didn't run through an entire dictionary of baby's names. --Sturm 09:12, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, a Google search with quotes around David F. Leavitt turned up a professor at Roger Williams University who is on the executive board of the Rhode Island Aquaculture Initiative and a artist who did block prints of Charles Lindberg that show up on the vintage auction markets. clariosophic (talk) 13:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation redux
It happened again, this time with David Leavitt (author) as the new copy'n'paste job. I've reverted and left an explanatory note on the user's talk page, pointing them towards the discussion here. --Sturm 20:43, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Edits/Updates to Leavitt Page
Hi, all. I noticed there were some errors in the existing David Leavitt author page, and have, on my Userpage, suggested some changes. Full disclosure: I am a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Florida, in poetry. Since I know David Leavitt personally, I wanted to make sure my edits didn't fall afoul of the Conflict of Interest policies of Wikipedia. I thought, too, this would be a good way to get some peer-review feedback, as I have not before now edited a Wikipedia article.

I link to my User page edits here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Misprision/David_Leavitt_(author)_(revision)

I have kept the majority of the existing page intact, but made a few changes to the following areas:

Biography: Leavitt no longer divides his time between Italy and Florida; he is a permanent resident in Florida. I also expanded the brief description to include short stories and non-fiction, and to explain his relationship to Subtropics (which I also link to in this updated version).

Controversy: I clarified some of the terms in this section, excised the Spender quote (and linked to Spender's original article in the NYTBR), added a citation to another article that addresses the issue (in PMLA about a decade ago), and clarified the thesis of Drew Patrick's Shannon's article which, while it does address the critical fall of Leavitt and his work (which is found in the existing article), attributes that fall to a latent homophobia in book reviewing at the time.

These edits, I would argue, more fairly frame the controversy surrounding the copyright infringement charge.

I also added an Adaptations section, and cleaned up the bibliography (eliminating collections that aren't collections, adding more complete titles, etc.).

As I said earlier, I did worry about a conflict of interest, seeing as I was a student at Florida, and worked on Subtropics, though was never directly a student of Leavitt. I was hoping to get feedback on these suggested edits. If they are found worth including, I would ask one of my fellow Wikipedia contributors to make those changes (again, so as to align my suggested edits with Wikipedia's COI policy).

Thanks! Misprision (talk) 17:29, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 May 2017
Hi i'd like to edit this page. Please give me access. Anonymous12345768 (talk) 04:26, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is not the right page to request additional user rights. You may reopen this request with the specific changes to be made and someone will add them for you, or if you have an account, you can wait until you are autoconfirmed and edit the page yourself. Cannolis (talk) 05:16, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, if your intention is to edit this page due to a recent controversy regarding one "David Leavitt", this is not the same David Leavitt. Lizard  (talk) 05:47, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

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