Talk:William H. Gass

Untitled
I found this article quite funny. I looked up William H. Gass after reading his introduction to the Vintage Paperback edition of Rilke's "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge." I would not normally have done such a thing, but Gass's writing was so conspicuously bad that I couldn't resist finding out just who he was- turns out he's the best prose stylist living!

This is, in a nutshell, why contemporary lit is such a joke. This guy is the most pretentious, untalented, awkward writer I've ever read. It leaps off the page. He's a no-talent Nabokov, from what I can gather, indulging in alliteration in a way that echoes Nabokov, but that Nabokov himself would never have done, having been blessed with an ear for language. May God have mercy on the soul of anyone so lost as to praise this nitwit.

Or maybe he just phoned that one in. Who knows? I might read more of him to find out. But that introduction is the single worst-written thing I've ever read. I could teach a class on how not to write using only that introduction.


 * After choosing to make his living as an academic, Gass necessarily had to learn the academic way of writing. The worst thing that an academic could do would be to write as a popularizer. He must employ hieratic, not demotic, prose. If the writing is extremely bad, it is considered to be very deep and the product of genius.Lestrade (talk) 17:09, 18 April 2012 (UTC)Lestrade


 * FYI, this page is for discussing improvements to the William Gass article, not discussing your personal opinion of William Gass himself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dzgoldman (talk • contribs) 19:08, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

For the poster who doesn't seem to grasp Gass
I would recommend that you get a better sense of the genius of William H. Gass by reading the essay "Carrots,Noses,Snow,Rose,Roses" and the short story "The Pedersen Kid" in juxtaposition. Crito54 18:49, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Copyright problem
This article has been reverted by a bot to as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) This has been done to remove User:Accotink2's contributions as they have a history of extensive copyright violation and so it is assumed that all of their major contributions are copyright violations. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. VWBot (talk) 06:26, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Copyright violation?
Much of this article does not read like an encyclopedic entry, but more like a personal essay. I found a webpage out there with substantial duplication. The material in question was added in a burst of editing by Special:Contributions/Yeshua_Tolle in 2009. He does not seem to have lifted any other material in his time here. Choor monster (talk) 15:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Copyright violations could date to December 2003
This page may have been in violation of copyright for a decade, and despite revisions and tags it may remain in violation of copyright. When compared to the ronpriceepoch.com webpage, we see an entire paragraph (at least) in common with thes revision here.

As of right now the article has sections, sentences and paragraphs woven throughout, all identical to elements of that webpage. IF our page is a copyright violation, it seems impossible to avoid a complete rewrite, as no one could plausibly sort out the article to determine what is in violation and what is not. On the other hand, how can we determine whether the ronpriceepoch.com page may have lifted much of its material from the Wikipedia article? SOMEONE has plagiarized, so the question is 'who?'zadignose (talk) 05:27, 23 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, that is the problem. I assume there are people more talented than I am in checking Internet archives and the like, and at searching to see if Ron Price perhaps plagiarized other material from somewhere.  My gut feeling is that the Ron Price page reads like a coherent essay, while the WP article comes off like things were picked out and put in together somewhat helter-skelter.  (Of course, we get a lot of trashy articles like that perfectly legally.)  In addition, the main WP contributor to the problems here was the one who posted his "own work" photograph of Gass to the Commons, yet it was a clip of a larger unsourced photo out there.  On the other hand, he didn't seem to do much of anything else. Choor monster (talk) 11:41, 23 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Evidence suggests Wikipedia came first. Content used by Price was added by multiple editors over an expanse of years. You can see more in the template now at the top of the page. :) (If you have any questions, please come by my talk page. I am visiting this only as an uninvolved admin from the WP:CP listing and won't be watching it.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:51, 23 April 2013 (UTC)