Talk:The Feast of the Goat

older entries

Adamk, nice article. A couple of things:

• we don't use HTML for basic formatting; pls see: Wikipedia:How to edit a page. The reason for this is that it makes the system easier for people to use who don't know HTML.
• don't overdo the wiki links for basic nouns, etc.
• I also removed the following paragraph:

The Feast of the Goat is destined to become one of the classics of 20th-century Latin American literature along with some of Gabriel García Márquez's finer works. Indeed, it is written much like a reworking of Márquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch, a superb novel which used Trujillo as one of the many dictators in its composite protagonist.

it isn't encylopedic. If you want to quote other reviewers, that would be ok, but we need to maintain a neutral voice ourselves.

-- Viajero 19:47, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It is worth mentioning that those people Vargas Llosa interviewed in the Dominican republic as well as many historians denounced the book as a total work of fiction, not the ´historical´novel he promised them it would be. Although inspired in real characters, they are but a pale specter of the historical facts and personalities. Currently, Vargas Llosa´s popularity has been low (as per book sales) in the Dominican Republic, as the general sentiment in the press and the media, is that he presented a distorted story based on the goodwill of many old timers who overcame many traumas to talk about their experiences during the dictatorship of Trujillo.

Just a excerpt from The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde:

The artist is the creator of beautiful things...To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim...There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written...That is all...

Structure

This article needs some kind of structure, with subheadings etc., that can be filled out as we come up with documented information about the book. You could look at the Novels project guidelines, though note that other feature articles on books and novels don't necessarily follow the structure given:: there's a list of them here and here. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 10:36, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Murder Madness and Mayhem and the FA-Team

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We're all really enthusiastic about this project, and looking forward to working with you. All the best, The FA-Team 11:17, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

B-class rating

Ok, first you guys should read a post that I left a few minutes ago for your classmates at: Augusto Roa Bastos, with an explanation of the rating system. Now concerning this article, it also needs expanding. The Characters and especially the Major themes sections need to be expanded. The article definitely needs more sources to go along with the expanding and after that’s done the Lead section needs to be lengthened, Ideally it should be a short summary of the rest of the article. You guys add a few more paragraphs to this article and I'll be happy to up rate it :) Acer (talk) 11:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Hey under MAJOR THEMES i think there is a mistake but its cited so i dont want to change it without checking with whoever put it in. it says "throughout this book, llosa paints a picture of peruvian society that is both tender and severe."... however, the book doesnt take place in Peru, its in the Dominican. (I think the mistake is because he is Peruvian himself.) Please fix! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sunnybeddow (talk • contribs) 20:18, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

B-class. But needs work. For example, the WP:LEAD. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 20:45, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Andrew B. Wolf reference? Plus other sources

Good to see that this article is up and running now. We need the full Andrew B. Wolf reference. And more generally, we still need a bunch more reliable sources. Though I recognize that there will be fewer for this novel than for others, and that you'll be relying relatively heavily on reviews: it's only been out a few years. But no problem: it can just be a shorter article! Still, there will be journal articles out there, too, for instance. And references for the historical background --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 07:48, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Sunnybeddow (talk) 20:42, 27 March 2008 (UTC)hey prof i updated the andrew wolf reference. i have a few more references similar that im working on, but they are dissertations (and thus like 300 pages each) and there is very little info on this book at all. i have no idea what happened to our notes section, we just noticed it. no idea how to fix it. sunny

Excellent on the Wolff reference. Thanks! Dissertations are good references! And I fixed the notes section; don't worry. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 21:49, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

References

The following references were on the article page, but not doing anything. I'm putting them here in case they can become useful. You'd have thought some of them would.

• Moses, Michael Valdez. "Big Daddy: the dictator novel and the liberation of Latin America.(The Feast of the Goat)"

• Paz Soldán, Edmundo. "Deconstructing Dictators" Foreign Policy 130 (May - Jun., 2002): 88+90.

• Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Cultures. Editors: Daniel Balderston, Mike Gonzalez, and Ana M. López. Volume 3. Routledge: New York, New York. 2000.

• Encyclopedia of Latin America. Editor: Helen Delpar. McGraw-Hill: New York, New York. 1974.

• Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. Editor: Barbara A. Tenenbaum. Volume 5. Charles Scribner's Sons: New York, New York. 1996.

• A review of the film available at http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/opinion/2006/3/14/11317/Film-The-Feast-of-the-Goat-reviewed

• Current Productions available at: http://repertorio.org/productions/index.php?area=ind&id=52&PHPSESSID=d2e08f5ebfc601fa907e31643fddb287

--jbmurray (talk|contribs) 08:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

And the following are poor sources, which should be replaced:

• http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/vargas/fiestac.htm#ours
• http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/feastofthegoat.html

In any case, the second one is down at the moment. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 08:41, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Lead

If the Lead is exanded, this article probably will be advanced enough to be considered for a GA nom. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 01:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Sources

Gareth was mentioning that you guys are having problems finding scholarly sources on this book. Obviously, as it's relatively recent, there is less available. In some ways that's a good thing, of course! This can be a somewhat shorter article and still refer to most or even almost all of the existent sources. You should mine those doctoral dissertations, which will also have bibliographies: what's useful there (unlike regular books) is that you can download them and search for key words.

Here are a couple of other sources, from the MLA Bibliography:

• Vargas Llosa's Leading Ladies By: Walford, Lynn. pp. 70-80 IN: Fuentes, Yvonne (ed. and preface); Parker, Margaret R. (ed. and preface); Leading Ladies: Mujeres en la literatura hispana y en las artes. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP; 2006. xiv, 204 pp. (book article)

• Radical Evil: Literary Visions of Political Origins in Sophocles, Sade, and Vargas Llosa By: Fradinger, Moira Inés; Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 2003 Sept; 64 (3): 891. Yale U, 2003. (dissertation abstract)

• The Burden of History in the Contemporary Novel: National Pain and Narrative Techniques By: Chiguluri, Rachel Roth; Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 2002 July; 63 (1): 175. Vanderbilt U, 2001. (dissertation abstract)

as well as perhaps:

• The Inventions and Reinventions of Mario Vargas Lllosa By: Bell-Villada, gene H.; Salmagundi, 2007 Winter-Spring; 153-154: 148-67. (journal article)

• Exilaration & Completeness: An Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa By: Boyers, Robert; Salmagundi, 2007 Summer-Fall; 155-156: 212-40. (journal article)

• An Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa By: Chang, Jorge Villanueva; World Literature Today: A Literary Quarterly of the University of Oklahoma, 2002 Winter; 76 (1): 64-69. (journal article)

But again, you're doing well already. I think you're close to a GA nomination. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 10:09, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

More sources. Mostly book reviews.

• Guardian Unlimited, http:// books.guardian.co.uk/ (May 1, 2002), Jonathan Heawood, review of The Feast of the Goat.
• The Feast of the Goat by Liliana Wendorff, review of The Feast of the Goat. Library Journal, , p. 126; June 1, 2001, p. S31
• The Feast of the Goat By: Shreve, Jack. Library Journal, 9/1/2001, Vol. 126 Issue 14, p236,
• The Feast of the Goat By: Hoffert, Barbara; McCormack, Heather; Miller, Rebecca; Roncevic, Mirela; Ward, Nathan; Williams, Wilda. Library Journal, 1/1/2002, Vol. 127 Issue 1, p52,
• The Feast of the Goat By: Tomasula, Steve. Review of Contemporary Fiction, Spring2002, Vol. 22 Issue 1, p120,
• The Feast of the Goat By: Zaleski, Jeff. Publishers Weekly, 7/30/2001, Vol. 248 Issue 31, p55,
• The Feast of the Goat Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer2002, Vol. 78 Issue 3, p91,
• The Feast of the Goat Essay by: Harold Branam. Magill’s Literary Annual 2002, 2002.
• Thirty-one years of solitude. By: Bell-Villada, Gene H.. Commonweal, 11/9/2001, Vol. 128 Issue 19, p20,
• Novel of the week. By: Shakespeare, Sebastian; Cowley, Jason. New Statesman, 3/25/2002, Vol. 131 Issue 4580, p57,

Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 14:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Suggest GA nomination as next step

I suggest that you nominate this for GA. You'll get a review, by the weekend at the latest I hope, which will give you a more detailed list of issues to work on. I don't know if it will pass, but it's close enough to nominate. Mike Christie (talk) 10:27, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Done! --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 16:08, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

GA review

GA review (see here for criteria)

---

Though comprehensive and employing a high quality of references, much of this article needs to be rewritten and appropriately cited to meet encyclopaedia standards.

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   This article has issues with encyclopaedia tone. Some important features of the latter are never address the reader and attribute all opinions. Understand that we are not writing original research, or trying to get at the truth of a question; we are here to mindlessly parrot what published sources have to say about the topic, in as transparent a manner as possible. The Major themes section suffers quite badly from this; Statements like "They can help us understand some irrational forces of Latin tradition..." are inappropriate; instead, write "Dr. Academic, in his review of the book (Latin American Review, pg34-55) comments that the development of the novel's themes "can help us understand insert phenomenon here"."<insert reference here> "Trujillo is unable to control his bladder and his penis" is not appropriate encyclopedia tone; stick to the facts, leave the lurid descriptions to the reviewers.The prose can be choppy in places; paragraphs on or two lines long should be merged where possible. With regard to Manual of Style, the only major problem is that the article is chronically underlinked: the Major themes, Fact or fiction and Critical reception sections, which make up the bulk of the article, contain only 3 links between them. Names of people, places, publications and any terminology or concepts that might be unknown to the layman should be linked (though not repetitively); "senate" "puppet president" "realist" "narrative structure"? See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) for guidance. "See also" sections are for related articles that are not already linked in the article; as both of the see also links here are previously linked, the section is superfluous and should be removed. Given the paucity of images, the prose can be monotonous at times; you might want to break it up by using inventive quotation; {{epigraph}} {{bquote}} and {{quote_box}} are particularly good ways of doing this. See Pattern Recognition (novel) for an example of how these may be used effectively. The final quote of the Fact and fiction section might be an appropriate candidate for highlighting.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   The Imdb is not a reliable source and must be removed; that aside, the sources used are of a high quality. However, many questionable statements are presented as fact without inline citations. "The two important parts of machismo are aggressiveness and hyper-sexuality." - says who? "Vargas Llosa systematically links each conspirator with a specific historical event..." - this is presented as a quote, but readers are forced to go to the references to see who it is from. Instead say, "Susie Jenkins, in her 2004 paper "Paper name"<reference here> notes that Vargas Llosa "significantly links...etc." Failure to attribute statements (quoted or not) is pervasive in this article; as such, much of it appears as original research. The Critical reception is a good example of where you have got this right; just remember that Wikipedia needs this sort of attribution and referencing for regular claims as well as critical comments. There are two existing {{fact}} tags that need to be addressed.The bracketed references in the "Trujillo regime" section should be converted to notes like the others. The question marks should be removed with prejudice - if you do not know a given piece of information, highlighting your ignorance does nothing to help the reader; use WorldCat to find ISBN's.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   The Plot section ends somewhat abruptly; it mentions significant plot points without having introduced them first, and wraps things up more quickly than the topic deserves. Secondly, the characters section has an {{expand}} tag, which ordinarily would cause the article to quick-fail GA criteria. The tag needs to be addressed one way or another; either be more selective with which characters are described, group several characters under one description, or do it the hard way and expand each character description to the requisite length. Please list the name of the film adaptation, and any relevant material about it (did it have the approval of the author? how was it critically/popularly received?) This article does not stray into unnecessary detail, and is well-focussed throughout.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   Exemplary, very well balanced. It was very difficult to parse what opinion the writers of this article had of the novel, for which they deserve much praise!

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

   Commendable collaboration, no edit warring or content disputes.

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   Image:Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.jpg has no fair use rationale explaining why it is acceptable to use this copyrighted image in the article. The caption is quite instructive, however. It would be nice to see more images, but I understand the difficulty of finding relevant free images in book articles.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   I am placing this article on hold for one week to give editors a chance at making improvements. Skomorokh 00:24, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks for this, which is most useful. I'd just say one thing about "tone." You say "'Trujillo is unable to control his bladder and his penis' is not appropriate encyclopedia tone; stick to the facts, leave the lurid descriptions to the reviewers." I'm not entirely sure what is lurid about this; it's certainly far less lurid than the book itself! This is also an important element of the book. I wonder if you could suggest some other wording? --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 00:31, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

It's a lyrical description; great for a critical review or academic paper, not so great for an encyclopaedia, which aspires to be as boring as possible. As a standalone statement it can be interpreted as "Trujillo is a bed-wetting raging sex maniac"; if what you mean is "Trujillo is incontinent and sexually impotent", you should write just that, and do so in the same sentence as the mention about "physical failures". It helps to assume idiocy, unreasonable tendency to take things literally and lack of sympathy on the part of your readers. Some of us lack university educations and speak your horrible language less than fluently. :) Feel free to ask about anything else and disregard anything I say. Skomorokh 02:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm not sure what's "lyrical" about that sentence! It's much simpler (less clinical, less academic, and so more accessible), and yet at the same time more accurate, than "Trujillo is incontinent and sexually impotent." Anyhow, it's a detail I know. And I'm not sure that encylopaedic = boring! Quite the opposite: the very first criterion for featured articles, before all others, is that the prose should be "engaging." But again, your review is very useful and gives us a lot to go on. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 02:35, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Physical disabilities should be referred to using their medical titles, to avoid the impression that you are using terms like "unable control his bladder/penis" as an opaque analogy. I'm all too familiar with the FA criteria; the FA process tends to strip interesting articles full of entertaining original research and incisive observation into a laundry list of sanitized prose. But that's a side point, of course. Skomorokh 02:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, just one other little detail, too. You say "The Imdb is not a reliable source and must be removed." I've looked into this, and it seems there's consensus that the IMDB is indeed reliable for some details, if not for others. I.e. for instance, for titles, dates, cast etc. (because those things are reviewed by IMDB editors) if not for critical opinions (because they are user generated). It's the former that are at issue for this article. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 02:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I am very pleased to here that; my attempts at using the resource as a citation in past GA efforts were rebuffed. You may still want to consider replacing it to avoid undue attention at WP:FAC at a later date, and in any case, the Imdb ref needs to be properly referenced using {{cite_web}} or similar. Regards, Skomorokh 02:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Afterthought: In the absence of an article for the film, its Imdb listing should be included as an external link in this article. Skomorokh 02:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok Team: I've made some changes to the plot, characters, and themes sections that I hope will satisfy some of our reviewer's suggestions. Some of the aspects I am less capable of fixing are as follows: the linking issue, the fair use of image issue, the use of IMDB and the reception of the film, and the issue of "creative quotation". Most of this is over my head and I'd love it if someone could help us out here, this is our last day after all. If there's more you'd like me to change or re-write, don't hesitate to say so. Thanks everyone. Garethshort (talk) 12:28, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I've added a fair use rationale for the image of Trujillo, Image:Rafael_Leonidas_Trujillo.jpg, so I hope that is now taken care of. Mike Christie (talk) 13:01, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I've also gone through and linked what I could find to link; I'd suggest we say this is addressed unless the reviewer has more specific comments. It was a little underlinked, but there are sections of the article that don't have much that can be linked, such as the discussions of the plot.

The article does need a copyedit; I will try to get to this tonight. I think if you get very close to GA, you might ask for an extension of a couple of days -- that's often done when the editors are working actively. It's up to the reviewer to agree, but many do, if the article is close. Mike Christie (talk) 13:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, running out of time to do this tonight; I was working on another article. If y'all think you can fix the other problems Skomorokh identified in his GA review, I suggest you ask him (on his talk page, or here) for an extension of two or three days. I'll do some copyediting tomorrow evening, if I can. Mike Christie (talk) 04:07, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help folks. It seems pretty close to me. Garethshort (talk) 04:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)