Talk:Travels with Charley

Copyvio
The text being copied into the article comes from http://static.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/gems/americanstudies/TWCwikimodelprocess.doc --Stbalbach 03:43, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

This is original content and I (and my American Studies students) are the creaters. Please see our classroom site (central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/americanstudies) to verify. Thanks —This unsigned comment was added by Tmchale (talk • contribs).


 * Ok restored. There's a few things your doing in the article that are not according to Wikipedia standards, but that can be cleaned up. I've restored it. --Stbalbach 03:59, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Copying from Wikibooks
I've started the copy from Wikibooks. The text is a mix bag, it contains a lot of research, but grammatically it shifts from present to past to future tense all over the place -- Ive tried to edit for past tense consistency per the MoS but may have missed some on the first try. There is also a fair amount of repeated material and stuff like "feels like" that needs to be copyedited to be more encyclopedic. --Stbalbach 16:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I voted to delete b:Travels With Charley: In Search of America from Wikibooks. The problem is that you Wikipedians seem to be using it not to expand an encyclopedia article, but to store it temporarily while you edit it here at Wikipedia. By Wikibooks policy, encyclopedia articles are out-of-scope at Wikibooks.


 * I want to suggest that when an article violates Wikipedia policy, but you Wikipedians intend to edit the article to fix it, that you keep the article at Wikipedia. We have an "Edit this page" feature to change a bad article into a better one, so be bold and use it! --Kernigh 07:25, 9 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The version at Wikibooks and the version at Wikipedia are very different. The question is, is the material on Wikibooks appropriate for Wikibooks? I have not seen a valid reason why not; it is a study guide. It's clearly been written by a teacher for students for educational purposes - the very mission of Wikibooks. You seem to be trying to teach people a lesson or commenting on your dislike of how things transpired, which is irrelevant to the question, is the material appropriate for Wikibooks or not. -- Stbalbach 16:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)


 * As I was trying to point out, it was sort of half-way between being good for Wikipedia and Wikibooks. Single page articles generally are strongly discouraged on Wikibooks.  It also still has hallmarks of being a Wikipedia article with all of the hyperlinks scattered throughout the page.  This doesn't mean that you can't have them, just that it appears more as a Wikipedia article as presently constructed.  Essentially, much more effort needs to go into the Wikibooks side of the content, and at the moment it is just a stub, with even page formatting that is needed.


 * If you had started the Wikibooks content concurrently, you might have perhaps a bit of justification to complaining about it being removed from Wikibooks. Unfortunately from what I saw with the edits here that it wasn't moved to Wikibooks until after it was deleted on Wikipedia.  The Wikipedia and Wikibooks content were identical (other than a page edit here to cull some content that one editor didn't like).  Sure, as time goes on they may be very different in terms of scope and content.  But I will re-emphasis that Wikibooks is not a temporary holding area for working on Wikipedia content.  If you are going to work on Wikibooks, it should be developed into a substantial text for Wikibooks.  If you want an encyclopedia article, you need to follow content standards here.  --Robert Horning 17:17, 9 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah but the way things transpired it was a newbie teacher with a class who started a (proto) study guide on Wikipedia. Study guides don't go on Wikipedia. Study guides go on Wikibooks. So it was moved over there so it could be further developed. That's all that happened. I'm currently working on adapting it to an encyclopedia version, maybe you can help them by showing them how to create a full-blow study guide. That would be more productive than deleting it entirely. -- Stbalbach 17:40, 9 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm satisfied. I wish this whole issue would have been dealt with better on Wikipedia rather than trying to resolve the issue on Wikibooks, but that is another battle for another day.  The book summary is certainly not original research, and is something that is common for other parts of Wikipedia, especially when related to other book content.  This is clearly something that can be done with a Neutral Point of View, so I fail to see where the problem lies for including what is currently on this page.  Some minor cleanup, perhaps, but this is a good article right now.  --Robert Horning 18:32, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not aware of any problems at the moment. --Stbalbach 23:02, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Fixing up footnotes
You might want to read the Footnotes page on how to fix up the footnotes. There appears to be a new php script that has been added semi-recently that I wasn't aware of that can substantially help out with preparing footnotes even better than another system I was going to demonstrate to you. This allows for professional citations and helps even with the formatting of the footnotes. There are some manual ways to do this as well that work out pretty nice as well. It would be nice to clean up the citations that are currently just a simple number. I think you had some of the citations in the earlier version that were just raw links to web content hosted elsewhere. This allows you to also include things like ISBN numbers and traditional bibliographic references that are not HTML or web related. --Robert Horning 02:54, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Point of view
This article seems to pick only the "negative" comments about America in the book (and seems to agree with them)so that it seems as if he has nothing "good" to say about America at all- which is not the case.

comments
I first read this book as a very young man in 1965 or 66 and at the time found it an odd and difficult read, I was after all only 19 or 20 and a soldier serving overseas at the time. However, some 40 years on there were two small parts of the book that remained lodged in my memory. One was the vehicle that Steinbeck used for his journey which I was certain until my re-reading of the book in 2005 - was a British Land Rover. I remember this because I was of course driving them myself everyday as a soldier. I also remembered his comments about the noise the tyres made being over sized. Secondly, the description he wrote about the incident at a filling station where a State Trooper or Sheriff or policeman watches him and mistakes Charley for a Black man sitting in the front seat of his vehicle. The dialogue in the originally published book was far more shocking in its language and in the use of the "N" word than in this 1990's version I have just read. Can it be that the book has been edited to be more "politically correct" for the new new century....? Or, did I simply forget what I read?

I would love to know -- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.19.242.122 (talk • contribs).


 * I have a first edition and yeah the "n" word is used a bunch of times near the end. -- Stbalbach 18:43, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Need help correcting section 2...
-Says Steinbeck drove US1 to Wheaton, IL. US1 is an Eastern seaboard road, never remotely close to Illinois! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrkvasnicka (talk • contribs) 13:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a 6th grade book report
This is like an elementary school level book review, full of run-ons, nonsequiturs, and incomplete thoughts. It hardly does justice to Steinbeck's concern for clear, concise writing, nor his wish to balance and report things as even-handedly as possible. A lot of the "then he did this, then he did that" needs to be weeded out, and a more philosophical gloss on the book added, for starters. I'd read it as something a student created and inserted into the 'pedia so they could cite it for a term paper, frankly. (And when my students do things like that, they fail the paper and can only get a D at best on the re-write....).198.176.188.201 (talk) 18:51, 13 July 2011 (UTC)


 * If you think you can do a better job, please rewrite it! This is a wiki and it can be improved or even entirely replaced.  It is easy to be a critic, but it is much harder to actually have to sit down and write it out.  If you think one of your students could even perhaps do a better job, I'd like to see you suggest that to one of them.


 * The wonderful thing about a collaboratively-written article like is found on Wikipedia is that stuff which is irritatingly bad often gets fixed. I'll warn you, however:  you might get "hooked" on Wikipedia once you get started with re-writing an article like this.  --Robert Horning (talk) 21:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Latest news on lack of veracity of Travels With Charley -- Penguin Group confesses
Wiki needs an update on what I have learned over the past three years about the nonfictional/dishonest/fraudulent nature of John Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" (now summed up in the ebook "Dogging Steinbeck" (http://www.amazon.com/Dogging-Steinbeck-Steinbecks-America-ebook/dp/B00A6X9ZR0):

Recent developments in the "Travels With Charley" "scandal" include Penguin Group, the current owner of Steinbeck's works, inserting a disclaimer into the introduction of the Oct. 2 (2012) 50th anniversary edition of "Charley" that warns readers that the book is so heavily fictionalized that it should not be taken literally. The disclaimer in the intro by professor Jay Parini mentions my former paper, the Post-Gazette, but not me. I, Bill Steigerwald, have written about that development in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Reason magazine's web site and the New York Post.

Plus "Dogging Steinbeck," my book about how I discovered the truth about "Charley" and ended 50 years of what I called "literary fraud," is available at Amazon.com.

From the Oct. 14, 2012 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, here is the article I wrote breaking the news that Penguin Group had confessed the truth --  http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/ae/book-reviews/travels-with-charley-now-officially-mostly-fiction-657495/)

here is a longer version of the New York Post link:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/sorry_charley_LNMWjiR3fNhMVaYHt0FXzN

This item from my web site The Truth About 'Travels With Charley' includes a photo of the introduction page that includes the largest disclaimer:

http://www.truthaboutcharley.com/its-official-travels-with-charley-is-fiction/

```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xpaperboy (talk • contribs) 15:00, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your suggestion. I have added a bit to the section. I'm rather old myself and, for its soporific qualities, listen to C-Span radio at night. I was woken up by your Q&A interview and am now up a bit early listening to it again on C-Span. We probably need to create an article about Bill Steigerwald, if there is anything else notable, although Dogging Steinbeck by itself might be enough. As noted on Q&A Dogging Steinbeck only sells at the rate of 4 or 5 copies a day, perhaps that will change, but as compared to New York City or The Trojan War, is of limited notability. User:Fred Bauder Talk 11:18, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Link to site for sale of book
A persistent editor keeps reinserting this. I've reverted a couple of times, but don't want to keep up a cycle of edit-warring. I've invited the editor to this thread. If others might offer an opinion, that might help, too. David in DC (talk) 21:01, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Hello! This link was up for many years, and it disappeared a couple of years ago when "Dogging Steinbeck" started taking over this page. As for being notable, it has been mentioned in the press (newspaper as well as television) as far back as 2004 (http://travelswithjudy.blogs.com/news/press.html); has been encouraged by the National Steinbeck Center; and the author was invited by the National Park Service to do an educational talk about it at the Homestead National Monument. It's not a best-seller, nor is it controversial, but the above-mentioned qualifications make it as notable as the other self-published book on this page, and therefore deserves representation as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Giraphe (talk • contribs) 21:58, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * User:Giraphe: Thank you for explaining your rationale for inserting the link. I've posted a notice on the External Links Noticeboard, asking uninvolved editors to review this matter.
 * In my view, this isn't really about whether a book "deserves representation." It's about whether a book has received significant coverage in multiple, independent reliable sources. I've looked through the links on http://travelswithjudy.blogs.com/news/press.html . They do not appear to be even remotely comparable to the coverage of the Stegerwald book. Just as inserting an External Link to a page that promotes sales of Travels With Judy's is not comparable to covering the Stegerwald book in the Travels With Charley wiki-article. I'm hoping editors drwan here by my posting to the EL Noticeboard can help us sort out whether I'm getting the policy issues right here. David in DC (talk) 22:18, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Does it contain information that could be integrated into the article as a cited source? I see that the book itself appears to be published by CreateSpace, which is on the List of self-publishing companies.  Per WP:SELFPUB, there is a higher threshold before these can be used and their uses are quite limited.   Giraphe, can you provide links to your info other than the press section of the gal's web site?? That would help.    Montanabw (talk) 04:31, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Dogging Steinbeck is a self-published CreateSpace book too. 23.25.44.251 (talk) 15:36, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * However the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Reason Magazine and the New York Times are not. David in DC (talk) 16:47, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * And the inclusion of Stegerwood's reporting in the Parini foreword to the 50th edition of the Travels with Charley seems, in my editorial judgment, to make any comparison between Stegerwood's work and Travels with Judy extraordinarily inapt for the purpose of justifying an External Link to a page selling Judy's book. David in DC (talk) 16:57, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Right, but why do we have an external link to a page selling Steigerwald's book when we already have the the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Reason Magazine and the New York Times? 23.25.44.251 (talk) 17:00, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to comment on content, but will note that there can be exceptions to the selfpub rules for some footnoted sources, though I would agree that we probably should hear what that exception would be if there are footnotes to either work, or else toss both self-pub works if they both appear ONLY as external links.  Montanabw (talk) 18:18, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

There are three external links. None are to a page that sells a book.
 * Travels With Charley: In Search of America at Wikibooks
 * Steigerwald, Bill, The Next Page: The fabulism of 'Travels With Charley', Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 December 2010. Retrieved 15 December 2010. A journalist fact-checks Steinbeck's account of his travels.
 * C-SPAN Q&A interview with Bill Steigerwald about Dogging Steinbeck, March 3, 2013 David in DC (talk) 18:42, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I deleted the one inline ref to the book's CreateSpace page. It was being used simply to establish the existence of the book. I substituted the CSPAN Q&A page, which establishes the fact just as easily, and deleted it as an External Link. Now we have no reliable source for "self published". Which is kind of ironic. David in DC (talk) 18:59, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Ha! That's true. 23.25.44.251 (talk) 19:02, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Ironic, but probably safer. That said, on reflection, I restored the link; the question is more if the whole section is a bit undue to the self-pub book. To that end, I tweaked the section title and did a bit of copyediting; see if that helps.  Montanabw (talk) 02:18, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm another visiting editor, who noticed this problem because David-in-DC brought it up elsewhere. I'm going to go ahead and play devil's advocate here.  Travels With Judy is definitely a noteworthy book, that deserves to be given a mention, right here in this article.  It doesn't matter that the Judy book, and the author thereof, do not have their own wikipedia pages --  notability guidelines do not limit content within an article, as opposed to creation of a *dedicated* article.  Wikipedia has one standard only in this case:   Reliable Sources, of course.  The dirty secret is that 'reliable' here more or less exactly correlates with how much power the publisher in question has.  Here is a list of books, in order of the power of their publishers:   Bible by God, Dark Tower by Stephen King, various stuff by Martha Stewart, The Grapes Of Wrath by our very own John Steinbeck, textbooks for high school students by anonymous committees of ordinary academics, Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, various run-of-the-mill novels, self-published Steinbeck Is Dead So Now I'll Prove He Was A Liar or maybe Dogging Steinbeck by wikipedia's own Xpaperboy, self-published Travels With Judy or maybe Travels With Vicki as put forward by wikipedia's own Giraphe, self-published End The Fed by Ron Paul, and self-published The Book Of Known Knowledge by The Onion.  Clearly, the notability of Steinbeck exceeds the notability of Steigerwald by several orders of magnitude... but it is not very clear to me that the notability of Steigerwald exceeds the notability of Cain by very much.  Both of them have reliable sources.  Sure, sure, Steigerwald can boast of the New York Post, and my personal favorite Reason.com -- but those aren't exactly the only places that reviewed Stephen King's most recent novel, right?  They aren't the supermarket tabloids, though -- they are reliable sources, and justify notability.  Below is my paragraph on the book under discussion.  74.192.84.101 (talk) 03:56, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Vicki Cain self-published a book about her travels with her dog Judy, following the same route as Steinbeck. She discussed the book in 2013 at a bookstore open house in her home state of Connecticut; the event was advertised in three local papers.  In 2012, she gave an interview to WHO channel 13 in Des Moines; the book was also mentioned on-air by KOLN of Lincoln Nebraska and WTNH of Westport Connecticut.  The project also received media coverage on local television, local radio, and local papers when she began the trip in 2004.&lt;!-- hidden comment please replace these links to archives on the author's website with ones to archive.org --&gt;  74.192.84.101 (talk) 03:56, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * That could be slimmed and trimmed, obviously... it was written for readers of this talkpage discussion, not for readers of the article -- it is not intended for cut-n-paste without slimming first. Still, if I wrote a book, and got on TV in three or four states, plus a couple interviews on the radio, that might easily qualify me as Notable enough to have a mention in wikipedia, I would argue.  There are plenty of way-less-important rock bands, porn stars, software consultants, and local politicians that have their own wikipedia *page* not just their own wikipedia paragraph.  Basically the question boils down to a discussion of *degree* of notability.  Sure, the local NPR affiliate in one of the smaller media markets of Connecticut is nothing compared to getting on the Howard Stern show, broadcast throughout the known universe on XM radio... but it ain't peanuts.  Anyways, I have no further input on this subject; I will leave it up to the editors who care about this high-quality article to decide whether Vicki's book deserves a mention.  It *is* a fully cited paragraph, which establishes notability beyond a doubt.  Doing a quick bit of googling, I see that Steigerwald's novel is far more notable... but  the notability of one, doth not eclipse the notability of something else.  Steigerwald's contribution to the post-Steinbeck literature is currently considered to be worthy of about 20% of the words on the page; this is  justified by my googling, albeit barely (I would vote for 10% tops -- the size of that section is approaching the size of the entire plot summary -- just because it happened recently does not make it more important folks).  Please strongly consider whether or not devoting 1% of the words, out of wikipedia's entire article on Travels With Charley, would be putting undue weight onto Vicki's directly related book, and please base your answer not on a relative comparison of Steigerwald versus Cain, but on a relative comparison of Cain's sources (wnpr/koln/wtnh/who13/etc) versus the  relevant wikipedia policy guidelines.  Disclaimer:  never heard of Steigerwald or Cain before today, no financial interest in either of their works.  Love the original by Steinbeck, though.  And a final note:  my congratulations to the editors of this article, you are the number one hit in the search engines, beating out B&N as well as Amazon and ebay by very healthy margins.  The homepage of Xpaperboy is midway between B&N's bookstore and Amazon's bookstore, so not too bad.  Vicki's book is not in the top 250 hits... but google  claims there are 1.1M webpages with *some* mention of "steinbeck" AND "charley" keywords... adding "Judy" to the list turns up the WPKN hit, among others.  This is a question of whether Vicki's sources satisfy the Reliable Sources criteria, and if so, of how she should be added to the article without violating WP:UNDUE.  Thanks for making wikipedia better; see you around.  74.192.84.101 (talk) 03:56, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * p.s. While we are on the subject of famous books involving roadtrips, I will point out  one particular example which has never sold much more than 100k copies in any given year in the USA.  Seems doubtful that Vicki will achieve *that* level of quality... but then, that is why she does not yet have a page about her on wikipedia, or page about her novels here on wikipedia, whereas Pirsig does, and well deserves it, too.  I will be interested to see what decision is made on this matter.  74.192.84.101 (talk) 03:56, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

The issue here is not notability, it is WP:SELFPUB. Such works are held to extremely strict scrutiny. Were content from the book to be used as an actual reference, on a case-by-case basis (i.e. each individual citation on its own) it is possible some material could be incuded Montanabw (talk) 21:20, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Hello Montana, I'm not sure we're talking about the same WP:SELFPUB here. There are three sets of sources for three different factoids.  Which are you disputing, specifically?
 * Factoid#1, the book exists and was nontraditionally-published. Source for this factoid is the blog-post from the author where they say exactly that.  WP:SELFPUB is a guideline for using self-published material as *sources*.  To be clear, we are discussing a self-published blog (Cain's blog-site written by her), being used as a source, for the factoid that her book-deal was via CreativeSpaces.  Here is the relevant snippet:  "Self-published sources may be used as sources of information about themselves."   That is exactly what happened here.  Which means everything is peachy.  Correct?
 * Factoid#2, the bulk of the sources, which demonstrate the book itself is noteworthy, are WPKN, Hartford Courant, WHOTV, KOLN, WTNH. Those are not *alleged* sources, with the author claiming coverage but nobody doing the legwork to verify.  I did the legwork, and looked them up at the official URLs.  So these are not WP:SELFPUB, they are independent and reliable.  Their fact-checking may not be as good as the Economist, but that is not necessary, as long as they pass muster as WP:RS, and as long as the coverage is Notable.  If so, it just is a question of degree, under WP:UNDUE.
 * Factoid#3, there was also some earlier coverage, in 2004 and 2005, about the beginning of the trip, which the author claims was covered by WNPR, WSEE, and the New Haven Register. *Those* need fixing.  I said as much in my explanatory-sample-paragraph, with my fake-html-comment.  But it does not seem that hard to fix them.  I've already done the legwork on the recent sources.  Sigh.  I'll start the legwork process on these older sources, too, I suppose.  No archive on official websites anymore.  No archive on parent websites anymore.  Not in archive dot org.  Not in archive dot is.  I've emailed some library in CT which claims to have the New Haven Register on microfilm.  If they get back to me, I'll confirm at least one verified source.
 * In the meantime, we can either put the relevant factoid "there was some earlier local coverage when she began the trip in 2004" into the article without a source ( gasp! the horror!), or with tags, or with  tags, or with Template:Better_source, or perhaps  with a pointer to this talkpage discussion.  Deleting information because sourcing is non-perfect usually means the information is effectively gone forever.  Putting a tag in, to remind people to find somebody to check the microfilm in the basement and verify they author is not a bald-faced liar with their "local coverage" claims and allegations, is way better than just assuming bad faith, and wiping the info from mainspace.  The assertion that some local paper and radio station made mention of this back in 2004 does not seem contentious, likely to be challenged, or otherwise Evil Bad Stuff.
 * If your difficulty is with factoid#3, because you insist on somebody verifying the microfilm or equivalent really and truly exists, then that's cool with me. We then just remove the final sentence, but retain factoid#1 and factoid#2.  But removal of less-than-perfectly-cited factoids is not mandatory, unless the material is suspicious.  Here is a slight rewrite:


 * Vicki Cain self-published a book about her travels with her dog Judy, following the same route as Steinbeck. In 2012, the book was mentioned on local television stations in Iowa, Connecticut,, and Nebraska.  (The project also received local coverage when she began the trip in 2004.)

There is no question the work is self-published, thus the greater scrutiny given SELFPUB works applies. This doesn't mean self-published works can never be notable or never used or never discussed, but in this case they are also not suitable for a random external link, as was done in this article. See also WP:ELNO. As far as using her work in this article as a cited source or footnote, then SELFPUB applies and it MIGHT be allowable for limited purposes. However, it would be up to the regular editors of this article to discuss the relevance and usefulness of these sources. Montanabw (talk) 20:09, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Since I'm about to begin the sentence with "I promise I'm not stupid but I still do not understand..." it behooves me to re-read the links you provided. Yet I still do not understand.  :-)
 * "There is no question the work is self-published," correct
 * "thus the greater scrutiny given SELFPUB works applies." no... only if we are using it as a source.  If you are saying, *despite* the teevee coverage, this book is not WP:N because it is selfpub, which is to say, if it were published by Random House rather than creativeSpace you would think the sentences belonged in the article... then please show me the policy which says that is the case, because WP:SELFPUB is clearly talking about something completely different (namely the use of selfpub material as a *source* aka reference aka citation).


 * "This doesn't mean self-published works can never be notable or never used or never discussed,"  correct... and the article already has one such example, the Steigerman book, which was self-pub
 * "but in this case they are also not suitable for a random external link, as was done in this article." sure... but *nobody* is talking about adding an external link anymore, we all agree about that, what I'm talking about is adding these exact sentences:
 * Vicki Cain self-published a book about her travels with her dog Judy, following the same route as Steinbeck. In 2012, the book was mentioned on local television stations in Iowa, Connecticut,, and Nebraska.  (The project also received local coverage when she began the trip in 2004.)
 * "See also WP:ELNO." which I did re-read, just to make sure, but how does that apply (in any way shape or form) to the sentences above?
 * "As far as using her work in this article as a cited source" nobody is suggesting that now, or ever has AFAIK... the contents of the book are never cited, in my sentences, or elsewhere.  But I'm arguing that the phenomena of the book, which is a follow-in-the-steps-of-steinbeck's-original-pathway, is demonstrably in WP:RS on teevee etc, and thus mention of the new *book* belongs in the article as Noteworthy.  Nobody is trying to say, on page 123 of selfpub book XYZ, it says the moon is made of green cheese... which is what you seem to be cautioning against here.  Which is fine and correct, but nobody is doing what you caution against.  :-)  Right?
 * "or footnote," I'm suggesting adding sentences, in the main text, probably under the InTheArts section, or maybe added to a retitled LaterWorksThatRetracedTheRoute (called AccuracyCritique now)
 * "then SELFPUB applies and it MIGHT be allowable for limited purposes."  no, see above, or to rephrase, *how* do you think SELFPUB applies specifically?
 * "However, it would be up to the regular editors of this article" kinda... they called us in for help on this sticky wicket
 * "to discuss the relevance and usefulness of these sources." correct... but you are saying there is no point in even having such a discussion, 'because SELFPUB', and I just flat don't understand the objection at all.  Can you help me out here, by pointing specifically to where we disagree, now that I've tried to lay out everything?  Thanks.  74.192.84.101 (talk) 20:55, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:ELNO is applicable because a link to a page selling the Judy/Vicki book appeared as a an external link. I deleted it, per WP:ELNO. The Judy/Vicki book does not belong anywhere in an article about Travels with Charley: In Search of America beacuse it sheds no light on the topic of the article.

The Judy/Vicki book may be notable. If so, please, be my guest. Create a stub for the book asserting notability by way of significant coverage in multiple, independent reliable sources.

Vicki may be notable. If so, please, be my guest. Create a stub for a biography of Vicki asserting notability by way of significant coverage in multiple, independent reliable sources.

Judy may be notable. Presumably the rules about biographies of living people do not apply. But please, be my guest. Create a stub for a for a dogography of Judy, asserting notability by way of significant coverage in multiple, independent reliable sources. David in DC (talk) 22:17, 19 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Hello David. It seems we are talking about different things, just as MontanaBw and I were talking about different things.


 * 1)  a link to the page selling the book does not belong.  Everybody agrees about this... me included... but that is the official topic of this section, so maybe that is the reason ELNO keeps coming back up?
 * 2)  zero mention of the cain book belongs in the travels-with-charley article.  Agreed parties:  notMe, david, montana (who defers to david's judgement).  will open separate section for this.
 * 3)  cain book deserves own article.  nobody believes this, not even Cain WP:SPIP
 * 4)  cain deserves BLP.  nobody believes this, unless she publishes further WP:BLP1E
 * 5)  dog deserves BLC aka bio of living canine.  Heh heh!  Okay, your suggestion did make me laugh, I'll admit.  But, seriously, nobody believes this one is necessary either.  WP:EVERYTHING

So, officially closing this discussion of whether an external link belongs. It does not. Whether the book is noteworthy, see separate section.

Adding sentence about noteworthy (per sources) new copycat book
Suggest the following sentence be placed into the InTheArts section. Vicki Cain wrote a book about her travels with her dog Judy, following the same route as Steinbeck, which was mentioned on local television programs in several states.


 * 1)  These  multiple independent sources indicate mild notability.   Self-pub does not auto-kill notability (cf Stegerwald).  Dozen libraries?
 * 2)  The sources are relatively minor-league, and thus unlikely to justify even a stub-article, themselves... it would contain that sentence, nothing else. WP:PERMASTUB
 * 3)  Furthermore, a separate article is not necessary, because the sentence about the copycat-book belongs here, in the article about the original.  (Just as Stegerwald's critique is here, not elsewhere.)
 * 4)  The new book, by virtue of copying the route & the dog-gimmick, sheds light on this article:  by proving 50 years later that both Steinbeck's concepts are still Notable (see assertion#1 for proof).
 * 5)  It is well within policy to mention something in an article, which is not directly the title-topic.  The cain books satisfies WP:NOTEWORTHY, a (slightly) lower standard than WP:AfC.
 * 6)  One sentence is not WP:UNDUE, I assert.  There is some wiggle-room here... I could be convinced otherwise, given some examples of excluding notable copycat-books from other articles about famous literature pieces, or some WP:POLL results by previously-uninvolved editors.

Will it help if I swear up and down that I'm not talking about external links, and never was? :-) Hope this clarifies what I'm trying to discuss with you.  p.s.  I thought that our entire discussion would be about WP:15MIN and maybe WP:SPIP, but we never got that far....  &mdash; 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:29, 20 October 2013 (UTC)


 * If you can write an article about Vicki Cain or her book and it passes WP:N, then come back here. Until then, don't bother us.   Montanabw (talk) 00:51, 21 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you, 74.192.84.101. I think you've done an admirable job closing down the ELNO discussion and summarizing the views about insertion a mention of the Judy/Vicki book into the Travels With Charley article. In my view, the book is too trivial to include in the Travels with Charley article. But I respectfully disagree with Montanabw, on both sentences he's typed above:


 * "If you can write an article about Vicki Cain or her book and it passes WP:N, then come back here." Rather I think that if you can accomplish that task, you shouldn't come back here. At least not first. First, you should create the article and invite collaboration, or create the framework of such an article in your sandbox and invite collaboration. If you follow either of these courses of action, please invite me. If we can create such and article (candidly, I have my doubts) a wikilink to it in a "See also" section might be appropriate.
 * "Until then, don't bother us." As to the personal pronoun with which this sentence ends, I fall back on the words of Samuel Goldwyn; "Include me out." David in DC (talk) 19:17, 21 October 2013 (UTC)


 * My take is that anyone is welcome to return to a talk page. That does not mean we will agree with that person when they do.  My apologies to David in DC for my use of the "editorial we."   Montanabw (talk) 22:26, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
 * ((edit conflict)) At the risk of digging myself deeper into a popularity-hole, and raising MontanaBw's wikistress, I had written a rather stern response.  Thank you for making it unnecessary, Montana!  :-)    I will go ahead and post it anyhoo, with strikeout used to get rid of the portions which do not actually apply.  I am not doing this to be troublesome, or try and anger anybody, but because I care about WP:RETENTION.  Personally, I was not offended by MontanaBw's words, but my worry is longer-term, namely, that some poor innocent frail editor might be offended someday, and quit editing.  That is bad for all of us, because we want wikipedia to  last for the ages.  Apologies in advance for using the scientific we, or the zealots we, or the borg we, or whatever kind of we I just used.  As for agreeing about Cain, no, I don't expect you will.  In fact, I'm not even sure *I* agree that Cain belongs in this article, despite local teevee coverage in a few states... because it may not go beyond WP:NOT.  Anyhoo, brace yourself, here comes my hammer of thor-thunder, or at least, my rubber mallet of editor-retention. Consider yourself  trout'd!  74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:07, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
 * MontanaBw, I understand if you are under wikistress, due to your heavy load of contributions over huge expanses of wikipedia -- but I gently suggest you have forgotten the face of your forebears .  Your contributions to wikipedia are vast, and I appreciate them, you are a big part of the reason why wikipedia is great... but... you knew there was a but coming along... but with great status comes great responsibility.  You know that this is not  your article, let alone your talkpage .  You know about WP:BITE and WP:FIVE_PILLARS.  You and I definitely disagree over WP:ABOUTSELF, and the applicability here -- I'm not sure why, specifically, because I have less experience; of course, you are not under (and I would not wish you to be under) any obligation whatsoever -- moral or technical or wikipolitical or otherwise -- to explain anything to me, nor to follow discussion on this talkpage.  I say this with full sincerity; if wikipedia obligated me to do it all myself, or even, I will state flat out, obligated me to do anything beyond license my contributions on the same terms the rest of wikipedia is licensed back to myself, I would never edit!  :-)     Please, lose no sleep over any sense of duty you have to defend this article about a true classic against the evil dilution by copycat-books-about-dogs.  There is a larger issue here, though; wikipedia  will die, if we are not careful to be truly nice to each other.  In that vein, I will hereby promise to abstain from any WP:POLL, which may at some point be held on this issue, so that my support and your decline are effectively cancelled out, without you needing worry about keeping this talkpage in your watchlist.  David_in_DC can be the witness, and report back to your talkpage if I err.  Sound good to you?  Silence I'll take for agree; if you disagree, and have the time to offer one, please suggest an alternative.  ((update: despite this being a 'former' paragraph with some strikeouts the promise still holds that I won't vote in favor of putting Cain in but will simply abstain.))  Anyways, please accept my apologies for having put you out.  I did not mean to.  74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:07, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
 * David-in-DC and/or MontanaBw, regarding creation of Vicki Cain, barring her publishing a second book and gaining a second round of reliable sources in the future, I guess I have to fall back on WP:BHTT as the relevant guideline here, for writing 'some other article' ... since you both were seemingly unconvinced by my pointing to WP:BLP1E, WP:SPIP, and especially WP:PERMASTUB.  Either a thing is reliably sourced, and thus belongs in wikipedia, or it is not.  Nobody can say with a straight face that nothing can be mentioned anywhere in wikipedia, unless that something  already has a dedicated article about it alone.    There's a possibility we disagree on the correct handling of WP:SPIP -- to me, having a separate article about the Judy book (which in and of itself would necessitate having a link to that book's article in the see-also section of *this* article since one is a copycat of the other) is a clear violation of WP:UNDUE and WP:SPA.  Most humans, and most products, and nearly all canines, fail to deserve their own wikipedia article; but just because they don't get their own article, does not mean they don't get mentioned *in* an article, about the company they work for, the manufacturer that produced them, or the movies they starred in (Lassie was in so many movies she has her own article... but most movie-dogs just get mention in the movie's article).   Anyhoo, wikipedia has one very clear pillar, which you both know already:  material in wikipedia should be encyclopedic.  David-in-DC thinks the Cain book is too trivial, for this article at least.  MontanaBw thinks the self-pub nature of the Cain book demands additional encyclopedic-strictness, which Stegerwald surpasses, but Cain does not, presumably based on the fame of the New York Post in NYC NY versus the fame of KOLN-TV in Lincoln NE.  My position is simple:  the book has reliable sources giving it coverage, in multiple states, which means it is not simply WP:TRIVIALCOVERAGE, though it *might* be WP:15MINS and WP:NOT.  Nobody has yet argued that, however... we're stuck on completely unrelated stuff. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:07, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Dear David, thank you so much for the link to amazon, and their wonderful collection of dog-in-a-car books! :-)     Here's hoping I will never be required read 99% of them.  Yes, I know there are a lot of books about dogs, and a lot of books about cars.  I'm suspicious there are a lot of books about dogs in cars following Steinbeck's route.  In my quick initial search for this subset, Amazon says five [update: seven] books, besides Steinbeck.  As you point out, we can only take these things half-seriously.  This is partly because search engines are a notoriously flaky in their counting (especially google which lies about the hit-count until you've gone through *all* the pages).  But amazon is a decent proxy, in this case, especially since they started life as a book-retailer (plus they don't estimate *cough*cheat*cough* on hit-counts AFAIK).  This is kinda-sorta policy, see WP:GOOG.  But like the page says, search-results are no replacement for the five pillars.  They have to be treated carefully. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:07, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

As you can see from the book-y-ness column, anything we searched on here with 'steinbeck' in the keywords is strongly literature-oriented. (A bit surprising, actually, since there was plenty of travel in Of Mice And Men, which is possibly more famous as a movie now than it was as a novel, not to mention The Grapes Of Wrath which was decently movie-ized and almost *entirely* concerned travel.) As a check, I also did some search queries using "charley" as a keyword, and "lassie" as a keyword, and they were significantly different (Lassie is clearly not a book-thing... presumably a movie-n-teevee-thing is the correct category... and for lassie+steinbeck there was almost nothing... whereas Charley is clearly *only* a book-thing when specifically hooked to "Travel" ... and otherwise is not really a book-thing). May I now present table #2, of the total of two.

Conclusion: at least according to amazon, 'steinbeck dog travel' is where the Cain book stands out as conceivably-notable, but even ignoring that column of the amazon-keyword-ranking-metric, she does better than Steigerwald in 'steinbeck travel' and also in 'steinbeck dog'. So maybe Cain belongs in wikipedia, maybe not. Her sources are reliable, but not 'as reliable' as Steigerwald... and she only has 9 amazon reviews to 40... but she doesn't work for a major newspaper, and her dog-in-a-car-travel-book is not as controversial as his expose-critique-book. Another conclusion is that, as DavidInDC was trying to suggest, there are a *bunch* of copycat books out there. Steigerwald's copycat-book is notable, due to decent sources and shedding light (or heat depending on your viewpoint) on the original book. Among the other copycat-books, Cain's does seem to be more notable than most of them, if we wanted to trust amazon-figuring -- which demands a very large grain of salt. (Personally, the book that looked interesting to me was the Steinbeck Country 1973, reprinted 1979, which is a photography-book with landscape pictures of most places Steinbeck wrote about. Cool.)

As for the Charley article, I do not recommend inserting my table. But a sentence about copy-cat works, or if you prefer a more charitable take, homages to the classic, seems unlikely to violate NPOV. Under the InTheArts section, it could say something like "following early homages such as the 1973 photomontage of all of the settings of all Steinbeck's works, and in 1991 a book about Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez, there has been a spate of recently-published books mimicking Steinbeck's classics; in particular, between 2005 and 2013 there have been at least seven books published that copycat Travels With Charley alone, roughly one every year -- and some of those, such as one which critiques the veracity of Travels With Charley, have themselves become the subject of significant coverage." Of course, since this is just my own sentence, not one backed up by the Economist, we'll have to wait until somebody notices that to print the factoid that publishing is literally exploding... and reminds us people aren't very creative, they just repeat what has already been done. I'd pay good money for a book about somebody traveling with their dog to a near-earth-asteroid and back, for instance. Why don't people do that instead of retrace Charley's tracks?


 * Inserting a partial answer: City features dogs travelling in space. Towser and his person got to Jupiter somehow. And 10,000+ years later Jenkins abandons Earth for safer environs in the company of a whole civilization of dogs. No dogs ever make the return trip, though. And who could blame them. David in DC (talk) 03:25, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Still, maybe such a sentence could be written; we have reliable sources for Stegerwald, Cain, Zeigler, maybe a couple more ( Barich 2010 && Sleeping 2005), demonstrating reasonable notability, and showing that "at least N" copycat books have been published is not WP:OR if we can agree it is simple WP:CALC. p.s. Got a reply from a nice lady at the New Haven library, about one of the sentence-fragments which does not happen to currently be under discussion, in this sub-section of the talkpage anyways. There is no computerized copy of the newspaper which is supposed to have the 2004 article about Cain, because only a couple days of Sep'04 are digital. They say it should be in their microfilm archives. Anybody feel like driving to New Haven? I hear Steinbeck slept there, once upon a time. ;-)   The librarian also says that it is possible to request the microfilm -- or a photocopy thereof via interlibrary loan presumably -- from Connecticut State Library, through one's local library, gratis; you can also pay for an immediate microfilm search by NHFPL via credit card.  Interestingly, this pickle perfectly illustrates both WP:TIAD and simultaneously WP:TIND.  &mdash; 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:07, 22 October 2013 (UTC)


 * In my view, the Stegerwald book is not comparable with any of these others because of the Parini foreword to the 50th edition of Travels with Charley.


 * But, especially because of the Shackleton angle, I think an article about books featuring travels with dogs is becoming a pretty good idea.


 * I also think it's time to move the discussion off of this page and onto one of our talk pages. David in DC (talk) 04:44, 22 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Sure, we can adjourn to a user-talkpage and hammer some things out. I vote mine, so I can easily get the new-message-popups.  I'm not sure creating a "category: books about $foo and $baz" will be useful, since categories like that are usually supposed to give *added* relevant info.  Ditto for a new article "List of books about $foo and $baz" although that is an improvement, because it can be a sortable table that lists the year published, author nationality, author gender, and other details that are sortable.  Prolly suffers from same prob as categories, though.  (On the other hand, of course, there is already the List Of Presidents With Facial Hair.)  Maybe a better category/list is along traditional literary lines, such as List Of Books With Protagonist Against Nature?  That's what the Shackleton book is, and to a much lesser extent, what Charley is partly about -- changing that flat in the rain, right?  But Charley would also fall under Protagonist Against Society-Slash-Government, given all Steinbeck's musing about the individual.
 * As for the applicability of Steigerwald being particularly high, sure -- his book is not a homage, so much as it is an academic-slash-journalistic critique. Steigerwald's book is *about* the original book by Steinbeck, so it deserves a place in this article, just like a scholarly analysis of Steinbeck's hidden metaphors would, and to a lesser extent, just like book-reviews of Steinbeck's original belong.  Most of the copycat books are similar to the Steigerwald book, in that they retrace Steinbeck's route (and some are 'more similar' aesthetically... because Steigerwald did not bring a dog along).  But none of the other books, Cain or Ziegler or Barich, was *about* Charley, like Steigerwald (side note -- wasn't the Sleeping With Steinbeck in 2005 basically the same as Steigerwald in 2012 i.e. an expose?), the pure-copycat books are merely *inspired* by Charley.  It's the difference between a (good-sized) section on scholarly analysis of the amplifier technology the Beatles used when recording the White Album, and another (one-line-per-notable-copycat) section of the article called List Of Bands That Have Covered Songs From The White Album.  Steigerwald is both an analysis of Charley, and a copycat of Charley, so he would be listed in both subsections.  The question is, does the Charley article *need* a section about inspired-by-copycats.  Which can only be answered, by deciding whether Cain/Ziegler/Barich/etc have enough reliable sources proving the notability of their copycat-works, to justify the inspired-by-copycats section, aka in-the-arts section. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 06:15, 22 October 2013 (UTC)


 * User: 74.192.84.101, based upon your NOT-AGF comment that "silence means assent," I am only posting to say two things: 1)  Your post is tl;dr and so do not assume I agree or disagree with anything in particular here.  2)  Methinks the rapidity at which you are throwing policy and guideline pages around means you've been around a while, and hence a re-read of WP:SOCK may be advised.

colon before subtitle
Is there supposed to be a colon? Amazon does not use one in their listings, and neither does the cover-photo here on wikipedia. The way the text on the cover-photo is using different fontsizes, it is a pretty clear argument that there is an implied colon. What did the original book-jacket look like? Do library-card-catalogs use the colon? (This is more of a curiosity I have, than an intent to edit the article... I was planning on being WP:BOLD and slicing out the colon found in the intro-sentence, but the colon is also in the article-title, which is a pain to get changed.) Anybody know the origin and controversy of the dastardly colon? Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:44, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The 50th Anniversary edition does not have a colon..

Neither does the image of a cover on this page: nor this one:. A colonectomy might be in order, but I'd like to see wha others think. David in DC (talk) 12:48, 22 October 2013 (UTC)


 * SCOMN! (Snorted coffee out my nose)!  Must remember that one!   Montanabw (talk) 02:16, 24 October 2013 (UTC)


 * You know, if we change the colon back and forth enough times in mainspace, people will show up to complain. Lots of people.  I sense undying fame here.  *None* of the previous candidates to the throne were for punctuation in the actual title of the article.  Lamest_edit_wars/Spelling_and_punctuation.  But I'm not starting this war, and if none dare lay down the gauntlet, p'raps we shall all avoid infamy.... :-)    &mdash; 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:53, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

travels with charley corrections and clarifications ...
To the editor: Several things are wrong relating to the discussions about the veracity of "travels."

Bill Barich did not retrace Steinbeck's trip, but he was inspired by 'Travels.' Barich drove across the USA east to west on US 50; he did not follow Steinbeck's 10k-mile route or fact-check him in any way.

Geert Mak followed me in the fall of 2010 as we retraced Steinbeck's trip -- we both (unknowingly at the time) left Steinbeck's house in Sag Harbor the same morning, Sept. 23, 2010 --exactly 50 years after Steinbeck set out on his iconic trip.

But because I was traveling alone I quickly left Geert in the dust (I did not know of his or his book's existence until 2012). When he wrote his fine 2012 Steinbeck book, he effusively praised my drive-by journalism skills and acknowledged that it was my daily road blog in the fall of 2010 that had tipped him off about the fictions and fibs in 'Travels.' He corroborated my findings and subsequently agreed with my conclusions.

In 2012 Penguin Group asked Parini to re-write the intro to "Travels" that he first wrote in 1997 to reflect my findings and warn readers that what they were about to read should not be taken literally. Parini cautioned readers that they were about to read a highly fictionalized book, not a literally true one, which it had been touted/sold/reviewed and marketed as for 50 years. He mentioned a former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter (me) in the new intro who did some 'fact-checking' and stirred up a controversy about the fictional nature of 'Travels," but he never mentioned me by name. He apologized when I called him on his sloppiness/cheap shot, but the damage was long done.

As the writer of 'Dogging Steinbeck,' and as the old-fart retired journalist who 'exposed' Steinbeck's fictions and lies, and the lies and deviousness of Steinbeck's publisher, I obviously have a dog in this fight. Suffice it to say that without my mad but careful journalistically honest chasing of Steinbeck's ghost, and my discoveries in libraries and on the road, Steinbeck's book would still be considered a work of nonfiction and an accurate account of his trip.

All I ask is that the editor make sure that what is written is accurate and that it gives me the credit for "outing" Steinbeck that I am due.

Thanks much Bill Steigerwald (FYI, Susan Shillinglaw is writing a book about Travels with Charley because of me -- I kind of shamed her into doing what she or another Steinbeck scholar should have done decades ago: Read the original draft of 'Travels" and compare it with the book and then with his actual trip. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa0eWdeLJDY ) 184.14.211.194 (talk) 19:04, 10 September 2023 (UTC)