Talk:Hogg (novel)

Time frame
I believe this wikipedia article is inccorect when it states that the novel Hogg takes place in the 1960's. At one point in the book, a news reporter mentions how Denny's murder spree might come to rival John Wayne Gacey's. Gacey committed his murders from 1972 and 1978. Other cultural references included in the book point to the events taking place in the 1970's as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.31.231.17 (talk) 00:54, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Identification as pornography
As a reader of Wikipedia I take issue with this page identifying Hogg as pornography. It is an amazing book, and as a legal or vulgar term "pornography" falls short. When you click on the word pornography on this page it takes you to an article which defines pornography as "the depiction of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual excitement." Hogg can hardly qualify. Myself, I found this book impossible to masturbate to, and I am usually pretty good about that sort of thing. I'm gonna change it and see what happens. Trst (talk) 14:13, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Removal of plot summary
Since there's no discussion here to explain why most of this entry was deleted, it should probably be reverted. 76.242.155.180 Excalibre (talk) 21:33, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's cruft, it's unencyclopedic and it adds little or nothing to the article - A l is o n  ❤ 09:49, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * See Plot_summaries, specially the section "Fixing stubs or bad articles". A plot summary is good, but only if it's brief, concise, written from a real-world perspective, does not attempt to explain all the details, etc, etc, etc. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:58, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * And what had been there was basically none of these things - A l is o n  ❤ 10:10, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Exactly.


 * Someone who wants to improve the article can search for literary comment about the "Hogg" novel and use that to make a new plot section. Some of that comment in inside books that deal with all the complete work of Delany. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:32, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't disagree with any of that and frankly the old plot summary is stomach turning and inappropriate. But removing the plot summary entirely is totally inconsistent with how this is normally handled. If you want to remove the pornographic summary then do the work to pare it down to a proper summary of the work. There's no reason someone should be removing 80% of an article without so much as a mention on the talk page.Excalibre (talk) 17:02, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I fully agree with Excalibre. And yet 90% of the entry has once again been removed, along with some actual researched information. I'm all for it being edited down, researched, and improved, but there's no reason to remove it all. I'm going to keep restoring it until someone actually desires to do some true editing work instead of hacking away at it. Kdring (talk) 20:51, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Translation, "I'm going to edit-war for my version to stay live" - please don't do that. Discussion is clearly ongoing here - A l is o n  ❤ 21:54, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I will kindly ask you to NOT put words in my mouth. That is rude. I want no such thing. What I want is responsible editing, not a hatchet job. While discussion is ongoing, there is no reason to remove the vast majority of the article.Kdring (talk) 21:25, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "I'm going to keep restoring it" is the very definition of edit-warring, plain and simple. Given the length of that absolute screed, it's clear that "responsible editing" is not on the agenda here, quite frankly - A l is o n  ❤ 21:31, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * And continuing to rip huge chunks out of the article without regard to relevance is not contributing to an edit war? Pot, meet kettle. I am strongly advocating an actual EDIT of the article. It is very much needed. Simply removing the vast majority of the article is not helpful. As SethTissue said, "The too-long summary can serve as a basis for a shorter version." I very much hope someone will give it a shot. And with no malice or sarcastic intent, I hope you will give it a try. I do not have the time.Kdring (talk) 21:42, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * That has to be a joke, right? You can't possibly think that you somehow are occupying some moral high ground by continuing to delete almost all of this article over and over, and then blaming others for starting an "edit war". With no thought towards even beginning to do the work that you apparently feel the article desperately needs. Excalibre (talk) 00:30, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the plot summary is too long. But better a too-long plot summary than no summary at all. If you're not willing to do the work of judiciously editing it, don't just remove the whole thing, please. The too-long summary can serve as a basis for a shorter version. SethTisue (talk) 14:39, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I haven't read the book, I have no clue of which parts are important and which aren't. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:01, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's been several years since I've read it, and even if my memory was perfect, I have very little time to do such editing. Hopefully this discussion will prompt someone with greater knowledge of the novel (and time on their hands) to properly edit the entry. It does need responsible editing.Kdring (talk) 21:34, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

tighter, better version
I read the thread above, and feel that the version currently 'live' is far tighter, clearer, easier to read, and generally better than the version which includes unnecessary detail in my view. More eyes and opinions would probably be useful at this point :-) Privatemusings (talk) 03:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I concur. If a plot summary is returned to the article, it would have to be about 75% shorter than the one that was excised. -- Stani Stani  06:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

No. "Tighter, clearer and easier to read?" There's no fucking content left! None whatsoever! There's nothing but one short and vague paragraph about the book, and a "literary significance and criticism" section that's a worthless joke. The fucking article is a skeleton compared to the previous one - not even a skeleton, but a small scattering of loose bones. At least a skeleton implies some structure. The version currently 'live' is a pathetic excuse for an entry on ANY topic on Wikipedia, being as it is stub-length and featuring a bare minimum of information, let alone an entry about a complicated and detailed book, especially a complicated and detailed book that is as controversial and has pushed the envelope as far as Hogg. If the detailed plot summary and character analysis section was too long, then for God's sake, edit it to make it more concise if you want - don't just remove the whole damn thing!

If your house was cluttered and you hired a maid to clean it up, and then returned from work to find that every single thing in your home had been thrown into a dumpster and carted off to a landfill except for your microwave, your refrigerator and a few pairs of pants and socks, would you consider that to be a satisfactory "cleaning" job? If you asked your secretary to organize your office and she threw all of your papers out the window, would that be acceptable? Fuck no! But the equivalent of these scenarios has been done to this article and it is an absolute butchery. 98.223.176.40 (talk) 11:38, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't really agree with your analogies - I really do think the article is much better in its current state. I'd go further, and say that we have a bit of a mini-consensus in that regard too (alison, Stan, and myself) - I just don't think the material you clearly value added much - in fact, it made the article worse in my view. To my mind, the correct analogy would be 'if I hired an editor to edit my article, and they cut it down to this, would that be cool?' - my answer is 'yes', and of course that's not so much of an analogy as description of what's happened ;-) Privatemusings (talk) 01:17, 1 March 2010 (UTC) heh.. except I didn't get paid :-(

Utterly Preposterous
No, this would be like if you handed in an article to an editor and he deleted everything except the first paragraph. Someone obviously went to great lengths to write out a detailed plot summary and descriptions of the book's characters. You will find this in most Wikipedia entries for books of any consequence - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to name just one example. If you look up Huck Finn you will not find one short paragraph saying, "This is a novel by Mark Twain about a boy and his adventures, etc etc" and then a little section with one sentence saying "Critics over the decades have hailed this as an important novel." Are you kidding me? You, or someone, deleted the entire body of the article leaving scarcely anything of value. Yes, the original summary may have gone a little too far. Big deal! Selectively pare it down then! It's better to have more information and not less.

Looking at your user page I see you have been blocked four times and banned at one point for ninety days! What the hell kind of record is this, for you to be acting like you know anything about editing an article? Clearly your indiscriminate butchery has already had negative consequences for you in the past. Why don't you try to break that streak by actually doing something useful here?

98.223.176.40 (talk) 03:45, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
 * ah, I'm quite proud of coming through my previous wiki shenanigans - though I don't think I've been accused of 'indiscriminate butchery' before! ;-) I don't agree that the big long thing before is better than the current version - in fact, I think the big long thing before had heaps of problems, and wasn't a good fit at all. I think a small plot summary para. could be useful, but for various reasons it's also possible that it might not work at this article. We'll see how it goes... ps. - please try and tone it down a bit - forthright is fine, but angry and pissed off probably aren't so cool / collegial.... Privatemusings (talk) 04:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
 * they don't want wikipedia readers to know what is in the book because they are trying to make the author into some great man when he is really just a perverted weirdo. 2806:106E:19:14EE:45A0:3260:4809:8F12 (talk) 20:05, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Credit in description
Hello! The description of the book cites Inventory by the A.V. Club, and credits it to Chuck Klosterman. However, Klosterman only wrote the introduction to the book. The passage quoted is by me. I'm not sure, given Wikipedia's guidelines on entering your own work, if I should make the change, but I'd suggest that the credit line be altered to either credit me individually or the A.V. Club collectively, as Klosterman had no involvement. Thanks!

Leonard Pierce (talk) 22:48, 2 October 2018 (UTC)Leonard Pierce