Talk:Herman Melville/Archive 3

Lead section
The lead section of the article does not summarize the contents of the article. It focuses on only one aspect, M's literary recognition. It should be rewritten to include a summary of the major parts of the article. JoshuSasori (talk) 04:13, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Almost a year later this still stands. The lead will have to be revised, along with the article itself. The biography is divided into pre- and post-Moby-Dick, as if the whaling book would have been some kind of dividing line, whereas the true division is the fact that HM published so little after The Confidence-Man (1857). It is much better to give every work from 1846 to 1857 a section of its own. This revision will then have to be reflected in the Lead section, which should conform to Wikipedia policy of being a kind of abstract of the whole article.MackyBeth (talk) 18:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I took the liberty of further revising the lede, which I agree needed revision. However, the new version was a little verbose and some of the new material was unencyclopedic -- the editorial comments on HM's Romantic nature, for instance, would be subject to controversy. Other material was mistaken -- that there was a problem discovering what books he had written or that the study of his marginalia is the major topic of Melville studies today (it is certainly a fascinating and significant topic). But thanks to MackyBeth for taking the initiative! ch (talk) 03:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I edited the lede some more. It now describes Melville's career as a writer somewhat more, with mention of the short stories and his final prose work from 1857. I also edited out some material: 1) the statement that HM was the first author to be featured in the Library of America may be worth including in the section of his reputation, but is not important enough to be in the lead. 2) The claim that Melville's poetry is well esteemed today overstates its reputation. 3) The statement that Melville's poetry was not much read in his lifetime is correct, but suggests that it could have been otherwise. With privately printed editions of 25 copies, a small audience is unavoidable.MackyBeth (talk) 14:39, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Edit War: please take a step back and ask for other input
User:MackyBeth you are now at the edge of violating the three revert rule; you have reverted edits made by User:TreebeardTheEnt three times within 24 hours. Please read this article. This kind of editing is damaging to the Wikipedia; it's time to get more editors involved. In the meantime, please assume good faith and avoid name calling and aggressive language: 'Stop messing around! and 'Do we have a vandal here?'. No one owns a Wikipedia article; this is a collaborative project. - Neonorange (talk) 00:14, 21 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Well said. For my part, I apologize for any strong language or ill-will generated.  Also, for my part, should it have any impact, I would not like to see any editors sanctioned for obviously strong, and earnestly held, views. Below I have added a rationale for the inclusion at issue TreebeardTheEnt (talk) 16:53, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Good reply; I think you get it. Wikipedia is a collaborative project. The English language version now has over 4,000,000 articles. No person or bureaucracy has control over the content so the only way articles can develop is thru consensus. Editors have to work out any disagreements on the talk page of the article (biographies of living persons are a slightly different case). There are several resolution venues within Wikipedia that can be used when discussion about content can not be resolved on the article talk page. Wikipedia does have sanctions that can be imposed for behavior by administrators or by the Arbitration Committee. Some of these sanctions can be imposed by a single administrator very quickly (for edit warring, for example). Some involve a long process. Usually the approach is through persuasion, discussion.


 * Wikipedia can survive bad content; that eventually gets corrected (sometimes within minutes). Bad interaction among editors is more problematical. Assume good faith, don't be hasty! Use edit summaries as a summary of the change(s) you made, nothing else. Use the talk page to discuss questions of content, avoid discussion of the behavior of another editor.


 * I have looked at the section you added below, '9 Melvilles parents, religion and adulthood'. While I may think the sentence "The contrasting beliefs of his parents would be mirrored in Herman Melville's life." you added to this article seems to show a reasonable conclusion, as Wikipedia editors, we are not allowed to draw conclusions. We are not allowed to do our own original research (WP:OR) or draw conclusions(WP:SYN) that are not found in reliable sources (WP:RS). The three guidelines I mentioned are Wikipedia are articles that, though long, are helpful. Each has a short 'in a nutshell' blurb:
 * WP:OR,No original research, "This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources themselves."
 * WP:SYN, (same article)
 * WP:RS, Identifying reliable sources, "This page in a nutshell: This guideline discusses how to identify reliable sources. The policy on sourcing is Verifiability. This requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations." The clarity your edits bring to this article are welcome; good job. Perhaps, with some digging, you can find a cite to support the conclusion!


 * If you should need more help, there are many editors with much more experience than I (total the number of edits among you, me, and the other involved editor; the sum is less than 1000). I can try to help, but... I've learned a lot from just watching this article over the past several months (makes me want to reread Moby Dick, if not Typee and Omoo). If you should happen to enjoy science fiction, I suggest you take a look at this article; it is rated as a 'featured article', the highest classification. For the technical aspect of editing, I've learned from copying segments of an article's source to my sandbox (directions on how to set up a sandbox) - mine is User:Neonorange/sandbox; yours would have the same syntax) and experimenting with the Wiki markup. - Neonorange (talk) 03:23, 22 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I understand what you are saying and I don't disagree. But, in the context of the entire section, I remain troubled: simply put, the inclusion of the paragraph, sizeable and comprehensive as it is, regarding the differing religious beliefs of Melvill pere et mere doesn't make much sense.  I don't know why it is there at all if not to illustrate Melvilles upbringing and subsequent wrestling with the questions.  And, absent a definitive statement, the reader is left helpless to draw their own, appropriate, conclusions.  The inclusion of the sentence " characters from the Bible always remained as vividly alive as the worthies and villains of his own time. " invites the reader to draw the conclusion that Melville wholeheartedly embraced religion.  That is a decidedly wrong conclusion.  I think it's a good guideline to not invite editors to draw specific conclusions not in evidence by sources, but by the same token it is just as problematic to allow something that might deliberately cause them to draw the wrong conclusion.  TreebeardTheEnt (talk) 22:46, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Interesting argument. I agree the section has a gap. The way to bridge it is with a conclusion that justifies the current paragraph. Ideally that would be accomplished by finding a citable synthesis. Certainly Melville deserves a well-written, illuminating Wikipedia article that concisely brings his life and creations to Wikipedia users; an article with a narrative thread that runs through it. In a nutshell, good writing. - Neonorange (talk) 03:32, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The Bible as a book that Melville was thoroughly familiar with in a way that he was familiar with Shakespeare should be distinguished from Melville's religious stance. Characters from all kinds of ancient books were as alive in his mind as people around him. After he attended a lecture by Emerson, he wrote a letter calling Emerson "this Plato who talks through his nose." The sentence discussed above, taken from Delbanco's biography, is not suggesting any conclusion about Melville's religion.MackyBeth (talk) 15:50, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * This is a problem:" The Bible as a book that Melville was thoroughly familiar with in a way that he was familiar with Shakespeare should be distinguished from Melville's religious stance. " We're not talking about Melvilles familiarity with books, of any kind, we're talking about John Q. Wiki-Reader who's going to look at that and fairly be invited to draw the in-escapable (and thoroughly wrong) conclusion that Melville approved of the Bible.  It absolutely suggests a conclusion.  TreebeardTheEnt (talk) 19:31, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Having looked again at the Delbanco quote at the end of "Birt and ancestry", I still don't see how it would suggest or imply any conclusion. Delbanco simply, and correctly, states that Melville was thoroughly familiar with the Bible as a book.MackyBeth (talk) 17:18, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Melville's spelling of Gram(m)ar, and in general
Throughout his life, Melville never achieved - or never even bothered to achieve - consistency in his spelling habits. The two quotations from his earliest surviving letters show the word Grammar spelled both with two M's and with only one M. This may lead Wikipedia editors to confusion, for is this a typo by the quoting Wikipedia editor, or a correct quotation from a letter with spelling anomalies? As this article develops, this issue will keep surfacing again and again. My proposal to avoid this: 1) when qu (talk) 14:18, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You can raise it here if you wish; however, it is understood that original texts sometimes contain rent errors, so we usually make the textual mark (sic). There is a template for this purpose: Template:Sic, which when placed, looks like this: [sic].  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  19:46, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Expanded lede
I'd suggest a bit less detail in the lede expansion. Maybe not use the phrase 'Some half', and perhaps add Billy Budd as 'unpublished until x years after his death' rather than "Melville published The Confidence-Man, his final work of fiction.", which isn't exactly correct. I think such a sentence better conveys the sense of the decline of public and critical interest in Melville's work. - Neonorange (talk) 15:19, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Good thinking. Done.MackyBeth (talk) 16:24, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

I wish I could me even ten per cent so vigorous on improving articles as you. (Here comes the but B^) I'd suggest that the addition of the quote from Woods characterizing Melville as the among the "millionaries of style" in the e lede is a quote too far. Surely, if you think still another quote is necessary in the lede, there is copious scholarship concentrating on Melville; enough to avoid this puzzling metaphor. You might wish to read The New York Times Sunday Book Review article on How Fiction Works that concludes: "How Fiction Works" is a definitive title, promising much and presuming even more: that anyone, in the age of made-up memoirs and so-called novels whose protagonists share their authors’ biographies and names, still knows what fiction is; that those who do know agree that it resembles a machine or a device, not a mess, a mystery or a miracle; and that once we know how fiction works, we’ll still care about it as an art form rather than merely admire it as an exercise. But there is one question this volume answers conclusively: Why Readers Nap. New York Times Sunday Book Review; Published: August 15, 2008 - Neonorange (talk) 17:51, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * 1) The list is perfectly random, important books stand next to less important works and many important books are not included.
 * 2) The list of Sources will keep on growing and can be used as a guide to Further Reading as well.
 * 3) As the article expands, it will be wise to omit any sections that do not seem useful.MackyBeth (talk) 15:12, 3 April 2014 (UTC)


 * After SilkTork added the label indicating the Further Reading list is too expansive, I finally took the liberty to remove some titles. Literary criticism should only be retained here if it discusses Melville's works in general; this is not the place to suggest criticism on specific topics. Such suggestions should be made at the articles on the individual works of Melville. Second, many biographies are seriously out of date, especially because in 1983 a large chunk of Melville family documents were discovered. I therefore only retained the most recent biographies, of which Hershel Parker´s two volumes are the most important.MackyBeth (talk) 12:53, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
 * With this smaller list, it is more obvious that Parker's two volumes and the Delbanco book are both in the FR section AND in the list of Sources. Eventually, the FR section will be abandoned as the Sources expand, but as for now it would be nonsense to have such list and not cite these two major biographical enterprises.MackyBeth (talk) 13:24, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Good work on trimming the list; I have removed the FR tag. I have, however, put a tag on the external links section, as that also looks to be excessive.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  19:46, 17 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I read your comment on your own Talk page, but I thought it best in this case that you removed the label yourself, so that it would be clear we have consensus here. I will remove the new label right after the list of links has been suficiently cut down. I noticed there are some links on individual works such as The Confidence-Man, and such lists belong to the articles on the individual works. Same rationale as with the books list: links included here should be on topics too general to be delegated to an article on a specific Melville work.MackyBeth (talk) 20:00, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Why I put the Nabokov quotation in the lead
This week someone took out the Nabokov quotation stating that it is not relevant what Nabkov's favorite writers are. I put the quotation back, because the lead usually has one or more quotations summing a writer's achievement or reputation. See for instance the lead section at Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway. This is not to say that the Nabokov quotation is perfect and should never be removed, but it seems to me reasonable that editors only remove this citation once they have found a replacement that is better suited for the purpose, and not remove it without replacement at all.MackyBeth (talk) 13:40, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Article breakdown into sections
It may seem unnecessary that I have supplied a breakdown into sections for the article, because quite a few sections are now very short. In fact, I have had to add a few sentences on the short fiction to create a section because the article contained nothing on the short fiction yet. I hope that this breakdown and the numerous gaps it reveals will inspire users to help developing this page. It also should be helpful to readers, because they will need less time to scan the article to find what they are looking for. I also noticed that quite a few things were out of chronological order and some information appeared twice in this article. This is now repaired. The section "Melville's poetry" contained the only mentionings of some works in the article. These sentences have been moved to their place in the chronology, and what now remains of the section is focused on the reception of the poetry and Melville's reputation as a poet.MackyBeth (talk) 17:44, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Article organization
I just noticed that in biographical articles for writers the discussion of the life is separated from description of the writings. Is this a standard policy, and if so, should the Herman Melville page be reorganized in order to comply with the format?MackyBeth (talk) 20:47, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Structure
The Biography section of this article currently has far too many headings and subheadings, making it difficult to read. Many of the sections contain only one paragraph. I suggest combining these into a more readable structure: Also, the Moby Dick section needs to be expanded. Even though there is a main article for the novel, this section should at least summarize the style, major themes, background, reception, etc. of his most famous work. Bede735 (talk) 18:07, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Early life
 * 1845–1850: Early novels
 * 1851: Moby Dick
 * 1852–1857: Later novels
 * 1857–1876: Poetry
 * 1877–1891: Final years
 * It was indeed not a smart move of mine to add so many sections. I have now reduced them. As for Moby-Dick, I will look at other articles on writers to see how they discuss the works for which a separate article exists. I suspect that the biographical article is the place to discuss developments and consistencies throughout a body of work rather than merely summarize information already available elsewhere.MackyBeth (talk) 19:56, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I think your new structure improves the article. Bede735 (talk) 20:12, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Irreconcilable differences in Hershel Parker and Andrew Delbanco's Melville biographies
Wikipedia guidelines state that editors present the scholarly consenus on the topics they work on. Working my way through the Melville biographies by Hershel Parker (Vol 1, 1996, Vol. 2, 2002) and Andrew Delbanco (2005) for this article, I have now stumbled upon differences that cannot both be accomodated. One must choose a version, and since this choice implies inevitable judgment on the part of the editor, it will be wise to state my reasons for the choice. The issue is this:

In the 1830s, Herman Melville worked as a bank clerk until his brother hired him to work in his cap and fur business. Also in the 1830s, Gansevoort's business suffered when a fire destroyed his skin-preparing factory. Not only the date, but the whole sequence of these events in Parker is different from Delbanco. Parker says on page 95 of his first volume: The fire occurred in 1934, and because of the fire Gansevoort could no longer afford his employees. So he was forced to withdraw Herman from the bank to help him out. Delbanco says on his page 25: Gansevoorts business prospered so well that he could afford to hire Herman, and after that he suffered a setback by the fire, which he says occurred in 1835.

Parker's version should be the one included in this Wikipedia article, I think, because:
 * 1) In addition to all of Delbanco's sources, Parker uses (among other items) unpublished family correspondence, and thus must be rated the better documented biographer;
 * 2) Delbanco goes from the death of Melville's father in 1832 to 1839 in not much more than two pages (p.24-26), while Parker has tens of pages on the young Melville in the 1830s, indicating a difference in commitment to Melville's younger years.

I am aware that Delbanco focuses on Melville's writings, so his book is something between a biography and a critical study. His aim, as he stated in interviews of the time, is to get readers to read Melville whereas Parker aims more strictly at writing a thorough biography. My comments here should therefore not be read as an attempt to indicate what is the better book, since both have different merits. What is at stake is only what should be in the Wikipedia article.MackyBeth (talk) 15:55, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi, typically when differences are found in sources the solution is to present both sides, or to attribute a fact to one source and then mention that another author's fact differs. Sometimes this can be done in a note, sometimes it has to be done directly in the text. But it's generally not a good idea for us to choose a version but rather to present both versions. Hope this is helpful. Victoria (tk) 13:59, 23 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Victoria, that is helpful indeed. Since I noticed that you are one of the 100 top-Wikipedians granted a JSTOR account, it would be foolish not to heed your advice, even though it is hard for me to swallow having to describe a view I think is a mistake. Now you are here, maybe you have time to look at one of the entries at "Further Reading." I put the edition of Melville;'s Correspondence alphabetical under the name of the editor Lynn Horth, because Melville himself never published his corresondence. Is this correct or should I file it under Herman Melville?MackyBeth (talk) 14:43, 23 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Often one of the most difficult issues (which I tend to run into more with literature than in other subject areas) is to present a view we believe to be mistaken. But a very wise and now unfortunately deceased explained to me, when I was new and building the Ernest Hemingway page, that the more biographies and points of view we use, the better. We want to be comprehensive and so our editorial judgement should be to include all the top scholarly literature. I'm unfortunately not up-to-date on the Melville bios, but might have a look when I get a chance. Re the correspondence, I think for Hemingway I always use the editor's name (Baker). Getting one of the first 100 Jstor accts was probably more because of my rush to sign up rather than anything else! I am keeping a watch here, and try to post answers to your questions - but I've been a bit overly busy lately. Victoria (tk) 15:22, 23 August 2014 (UTC)


 * What a coincidence, I became aware of Wadewitz recently when I was looking for some well-developed biographical articles that could give me an idea how to work on Melville. One of the articles I read was Mary Shelley. Her "Wikium vitae" indicates clear enough what loss this is. To inform you and possible other visitors of this page on the Melville bios, in a nutshell the story is this: the early biographers took his writings for reliable autobiography, but in the 1930s research showed that this was not justified. The first biography that was called "definitive" was Leon Howard's book of 1951. However, research conducted for the Northwestern-Newberry edition, and in addition to that a miraculous find of Melville family documents in a barn in upstate New York in 1983, made a new biography necessary to revise what has been shown to be wrong and to accomodate new information.

Links to reviews of Melville biographies
In 1993, Stanton Garner published a book on Melville's Civil War years: Melville Society Extracts review of Stanton Garner, Melville's Civil War World Two biographies taking advantage of the new documents appeared in the same year, 1996. See reviews here: In 2000, a short biography by Elizabeth Hardwick appeared in the Penguin Lives series, see review here: In 2002, the second volume of Parker appeared, see review: Review of Parker, Vol. 2 Andrew Delbanco published his book in 2005, when the internet was so mature that many reviews are still online. Here are three:
 * Review of Robertson Lorant in the New York Times for July 14 1996, by David Kirby
 * Melville Society Extracts review of Laurie Robertson-Lorant's biography, by T. Walter Herbert.
 * Melville Society Extracts review of Parker's Volume 1 (1819-1851), by Stanton Garner.
 * Review of Elizabeth Hardwick's biography
 * New York Times Review of Delbanco's Melville
 * Delbanco reviewed in The Guardian (UK)
 * Review of Delbanco in the Independent (UK)

The Hardwick book rehearses the autobiographical readings as if nothing had been discovered since the 1920s, so as I see it, there are currently three bios that can be called serious sources: Robertson-Lorant, Parker's two volumes, and Delbanco. In addition to this, we still have Jay Leyda's The Melville Log, a collection of documents covering the whole of Melville's life. And Wilson Heflin for Melville's Whaling Years, and other books for periods of Melville's life. And of certain topics, such as the collection of essays on Melville and Women.MackyBeth (talk) 21:00, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

HM's early works" Novels, Travel Literature, or what?
put a thoughtful question on my TalkPage asking about my reversion of his changes from the longstanding "book" to "novel" for HM's early works, Typee and Omoo. I had put an explanation on Bede735's TalkPage, but now I think this is a better place for a general discussion.

Bede735's post on my page was:
 * Hello, CWH. I noticed you changed "novel" to "book" in two of the Melville articles I recently edited. With the exception of The Piazza Tales, the books Melville wrote from Typee through The Confidence-Man are considered novels by the reliable sources, they're listed as novels in the navbox, and they're categorized under Novels by Herman Melville. Why the distinction? Regards,

I'll repeat my post on his talkpage here:
 * Your good work on the Melville template and a number of the articles brings up a question that has been swept under the rug, namely the genre of the first books. It's pretty clear that Typee and Omoo are based on HM's own experience so are not exactly fiction. He presented them as actual, though we know that he made up or plagiarized a lot. He used the word "narrative" in several cases. So "book" seemed to be a workable compromise because the lead didn't seem to be the place to go into an argument one way or the other. Maybe "travel adventure" would be better. But you are quite right to make bold edits and raise the question.


 * The other question is the Template, which to be sure now says "novel." You seem to have some experience with this. Would it be a technical problem to change the category from "Novels" to "Travel adventure and novels" or some such? This would finesse the problem, if it could be done.

A little background. and I had a discussion of this in 2013 at. When MackyBeth and I discussed Omoo, I looked through enough reliable sources and could not find a consensus for novel. The NN editions, as I recall, did not use the word, although several surveys did.

Now that I look at the boxes for Typee and Omoo, I see that they now say "Travel Literature" (and it looks like Bede735 made them consistent).

Another point was that "novel" was not a common term in the 1840s, so strictly speaking it is anachronistic, but not an important point for our articles or genre classifications since we're more interested in helping readers.

So all in all, I don't see what is gained by introducing the change from "book" to "novel" in the leads to Typee and Omoo, which are not novels. The next books gradually become more and more fiction, but I'm not sure where the dividing line is. The later novels can still be, for example, Moby-Dick ... sixth book... a novel" or some such.

The Template could be adjusted by someone who is competent.

But again I thank Bede735 for raising the question in a clear way and I hope we can enlist him or her to help bring about consistent treatment in the various articles and the template. ch (talk) 03:10, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Addendum: I searched Parker's HM and found that he is happy to call HM's later books novels but that when he discussed HM's reading of Gulliver's Travels and Robinson Crusoe, he said they were books which could be called novels "about as uneasily as we call Melville's first books novels." (p. 234). The search "Typee" + "book" seems to show, as far as I can see, that Parker always refers to Typee as a "book." So my impulse, subject to correction, is that if it's good enough for Parker it probably should be good enough for us. ch (talk) 04:12, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Hello all, I see that the issue of the genre has been raised again. In line with Wikipedia policy that editors present the scholarly consensus, the articles on Melville should avoid the word "novel." For convenience, I copy here the quotation I put on the Typee Talk page, followed by three more examples:


 * 1) In John Bryant (ed.), A Companion to Melville Studies (Greenwood Press, 1986), Bette S. Weidman writes on Typee: "To the vexed question of whether his first two books, Typee and Omoo, are novels or autobiographies or varieties of travel literature, let it be said at once that Melville is best defined as a writer: one who writes in order to explore what he knows" (p. 85).
 * 2) In the chapter on Melville in Columbia Literary History of the United States Robert Milder mostly refers to Melville's books as "narratives." See, for instance, how on page 430 he avoids using the word novel for Typee: "Melville's later observations in Tahiti...also intruded upon his narrative...Neither strict autobiography nor fictional romance, Typee...is an appealing mixture of adventure, anecdote, ethnography...that gave novelty to a South Sea idyll...The main critical issue is the book's divided attitude" etcetera.
 * 3) Warner Berthoff on page 35 of his The Example of Melville explicitly denies that White-Jacket is a novel: "For White-Jacket is not a novel, despite an opening chapter which...announces a character and promises a story,..."
 * 4) Looking at the summary I made of Andrew Delbanco's 2005 biography, I cannot find the word novel for Typee, which he discusses from page 70 onward.

These sources indicate that Wikipedia editors better not use the word novel either. It is of course perfectly possible that Bede735 has come across one or more sources, even from the Melville authority that Hershel Parker is, that actually do refer to Melville's works as novels, but the general approach seems to be for scholars/critics to avoid it. Since this issue will probably keep cropping up as new editors join the Melville project, it may be a good idea to keep these quotations on the Talk page so we can refer to them.MackyBeth (talk) 16:13, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All this being said, I hope and other editors on the Melville pages will join me in thanking  for many edits in the Melville pages, which are thoughtful and useful! If you look at Bede735's "Contributions" you will see an impressive range. I think we would be lucky to have his or her further contributions to editing and discussions, especially to the Template and the HM article. ch (talk) 17:06, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * No doubt about it. We need all the good hands we can get.MackyBeth (talk) 17:14, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Quotation from Stanley Williams: too academic for intro
Hi all -

I made an edit cutting this quote from the intro:


 * "In Melville's manipulation of his reading", scholar Stanley T. Williams wrote, "was a transforming power comparable to Shakespeare's".

Another editor has restored it, in very good faith. Let me talk about it a little, because I believe this quote is not so great for Wikipedia, and a real problem in an intro section.

It's quite a difficult sentence to parse; I had to read it a couple times, and got puzzled reactions when testing it out on people. It's in the passive voice; the subject, "power", comes along late. (If my parsing is off somewhere, I propose that that will only emphasize the point!) Is 'Melville' the subject? No, is 'manipulation'? No..."his reading", no, and a non-academic reader will not always clearly grasp that this refers to 'the matter he read', and not, confusingly, 'the act of reading'. That's an academic way of talking (and fine in its place, in a context where you can presume a lot more). I wouldn't label it jargon; it has a certain style, but it's a grad-school level sort of style. I don't think we want to demand that Wikipedia readers unpack a sentence this dense (when it's not the necessary subject matter itself), and certainly never in an introduction.

To explain the ideas with anything like appropriate clarity, you'd need to piece it out more. A crude breakdown of the ideas might be, to overdo it: "Melville read a lot. He used that in his own writing.  Not just in a simple way--he manipulated these sources.  Williams says this was great: Melville achieved a great power with these effects.  [And I agree. :) ]  On a level, in fact, with Shakespeare, the most celebrated writer in English, who is also famous for this."

If someone wants this whole topic in the introduction, might they work that up, better than the above? :)  I have not, because I feel that the concept is a fairly advanced one--not the kind of thing we want to hit the reader with, right out of the gate.  I do not feel as strongly about the general topic, at any rate, as I do about this particular sentence! :)

If it's here because someone likes to demonstrate Melville's prominence by quoting a comparison to Shakespeare, could they find a more straightforward one?

If people truly want to retain it, can you paraphrase the first half, more straightforwardly, and use the second half? E.g, the complex things that Melville did...had "a transforming power comparable to Shakespeare's"?

As you see, I'm concerned about all of it, but,


 * "In Melville's manipulation of his reading was..."

is the worst of the little assault we are committing on the general reader, the young learner, the non-expert English speaker. Anyone else troubled by this?

At any rate, thank you for listening! Ale And Quail (talk) 23:25, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * A fair question, well put, though at some length. I tried to make the quote easier to understand by adding a sentence before it to prepare the way, but I may not have succeeded. At least we cut "allusivity"! Since the quote had been there for a while, I thought maybe nobody else had a problem with it. I agree that it would be good to have a useful quote, if only because it ties up the thought. I also wonder if anybody who is not an expert will know who Williams is. What do others think?ch (talk) 07:40, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I added the Stanley T. Williams quotation and for a good reason: It sums up both the essence and the greatness of Melville's creativity. Melville scholarship has devoted much attention to his intricate use of sources, more than scholarship on any other writer I know of. The objection raised against the quotation is not convincing to me. First, the proposal to expand on the manipulation of his reading does not take into account that the lead of any article needs to be succinct (which is one reason why I find this quotation so terrific). Second, the proposal to find a more straightforward comparison to Shakespeare: that comparison itself is not the point. The point is how that comparison, by an important Melville scholar, ranks Melville's powers. Third, the way to improve Wikipedia is to replace material with better material, not to remove a quotation without having anything better to offer. Fourth, the quotation is perfectly free of any academic jargon and therefore can hardly be labeled "too academic."MackyBeth (talk) 17:17, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, 's rework of the lede paragraph is an improvement. The language at the last of the previous lede paragraph set two stumbling blocks, detracting from "was a transforming power comparable to Shakespeare's." The point is not "how'' Stanley expressed the idea, nor even that Stanley wrote it, but rather that WP:RS supports it.
 * As far as who Stanley is, the specialist knows; the general reader can depend, if curiosity serve, on Wikilinks and notes. — Neonorange (talk) 04:19, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes I agree with that, and I also noticed ch improved the STW article to emphasize his importance for breathing life into Melville studies. Well, it seems we have consensus that the Williams quotation is worth keeping after all. Cheers.MackyBeth (talk) 18:14, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, for creating the Williams article and for finding the Williams quote! This is a good example of the Wikipedian back and forth which -- in theory, at least -- ends up improving things.ch (talk) 19:09, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, and here in this case, not only in theory!MackyBeth ((User talk:MackyBeth|talk]]) 20:33, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * And thanks to for improving the article to the point discussions like this can arise; and thanks to  for expressing his concerns, which started this very satisfactory discussion. — User:Neonorange (talk to Phil) 08:46, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I almost forgot that the Wikipedia pages for Melville were almost "dead" for years, but since a few editors are working on them regularly, Melville seems more alive. Thanks to all involved. Might be worth not giving up in 2015.MackyBeth (talk) 10:59, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I restored the STW quotation back in its original shape, because even months after the first half was objected to I don't see why it would be "too academic" for inclusion. I put that quotation in the intro, because when I found that sentence I immediately recognized that it is a succinct, clear description of the major characteristic of Melville's style. It only needed a preceding sentence leading into the quotation. It is worth keeping in mind that so far only one reader has objected to the quotation: if it were a real problem, one would expect more people bringing it up. Suggestions made on a Talk page should not be followed without first establishing if they are actually reasonable. On 15 March ch followed a suggestion and added a sentence about the spelling Melvill(e), while that information was already provided for.MackyBeth (talk) 10:57, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

What to do with short fiction attributed to Melville
In Melville studies some stories are attributed to him, but his authorship has not been proven. Today I have come across the description of the earliest of such prose, and I wonder how these works should be treated in the article. Some of them are printed in the NN Piazza Tales in a section of Attributed Pieces. Should these pieces be treated at all? The first such piece is "The Death Craft" of 1839, published under the name "Harry the Reefer." Hershel Parker in his biography says little else than that it may or may not be written by Melville.MackyBeth (talk) 10:59, 30 December 2014 (UTC)