Talk:Women and Men

This article was nominated for deletion on 16 September 2012 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

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Untitled[edit]

This is going to be an ongoing project! It's going to be quite ragged for some time. If other readers want to help, I'd be very grateful, but I suspect this might be nearly a solo effort. I would appreciate that fine-tuning by non-readers be limited to infoboxes, links, and the like. Sure, you can make my organization better, and I'm not going to fight anyone, but the nature of this novel is that it's probably better to clean it up when there's a really big mess nearing some kind of critical mass. Just because it reads like trash for now, well, Don't Panic.

Choor monster (talk) 19:23, 16 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The book is extremely notable. Don't turn into a pointless redirect just because you haven't read it or haven't heard of it. There was a special Joseph McElroy issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction shortly after this book came out. It is usually praised alongside Pynchon or Gaddis big books.

Choor monster (talk) 20:34, 16 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In checking "What links here", I found there used to be a red-link, meant for a 1990 made-for-TV movie "Women and Men: Stories of Seduction". I changed the link to give the full name (which a quick check revealed the actress page had the full name given in her filmography, but not wikified). The show seems to have been a one-off, so I assume the novel takes precedence. I don't think we're supposed to disambiguate with a red-link for something so marginal. (I could be wrong about the TV show, of course.)

Choor monster (talk) 16:52, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is an appropriate reference for information about the limited-edition? The limited-edition itself? I mean, I own a copy, but I assume that unlike ordinary copies, it is extremely difficult for third parties to verify for themselves what's in it. For that matter, I assume it's difficult for most people to verify the differences between the first and second printings. My local big library has a Knopf first printing, while I own a Knopf second printing.

Choor monster (talk) 14:30, 11 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Minor changes[edit]

The bare sentence "divided into numerous chapters" is factual, but close to meaningless, not worth mentioning. My point of the original "... three kinds" is not that there are numerous chapters, but that there are three kinds of chapters, and that McElroy thinks this division is important enough to indicate in the very format of the chapter titles.

McElroy has done this before: In A Smuggler's Bible, the chapter titles are all-caps (one of the eight manuscripts) or are all-small (the David/David split personality framing tale).

So I've rewritten this to reflect this intention, and not sound awkward as you noticed.

The use of all-caps is actually standard. In fact, that's the name of the WP page on the topic, and I've wikified the text to indicate this. Apparently, though, the adjective is never all-cap.Choor monster (talk) 16:18, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's better. Your original said something like "chapters of numerous sorts", which made it sound somewhat as if you were only listing a few of the kinds of chapters. Other than the change of genre to direct readers to the postmodernist literature entry rather than postmodernism, mostly what I did was delete redundancies ("author Joseph McElroy") and clarify a few sentences. I'll be back for more once I've read the book.

Speaking of, is there a particular reason you've written the plot summary as a timeline of what happens chronologically rather than talking about the events in the order that they occur in the book? I haven't read it, so I can't be sure, but I doubt it is a strictly linear novel. Unless there is, I would suggest moving the timeline to its own section perhaps providing a simple one or two sentence summary of what happens in particular years, and writing a plot summary of the events where you elaborate more on the events in the order of their occurances in W&M. Or something like that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.27.89.164 (talk) 00:16, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let's just say the novel is highly non-linear, practically spiral-shaped but also multiply interlaced narratives, with lots of chapter long detours. I agree that the existing arrangement, when completed, is probably inferior, and your suggestions are things I'd like to eventually do in part. However, I'd much rather wait until the timeline, character summary and other aspects are achieving some sort of semicompletion (at least 50%) before rearranging things. For example, I'm thinking it best that for a book-order summary, the small-cap titles (essentially, the short story excerpts) get plot summaries since they are pretty much all linear narrative and are set in 1976-7 (they are simply the detours I mentioned above), but that the other chapters are summarized by key timeline/character summary references. Trust me, it's difficult trying to think your way through this novel, and at the moment, lots of stubby subsections seem to be the best way to get a foothold and slog forward to a reasonable quality article.

I speak as someone who has read McElroy's novels twice, and I'm thinking ahead, say in 5-10 years, to reread them again: what sort of cheat sheet would I like to have? Choor monster (talk) 14:08, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]