Talk:Frederick Exley

Chronology

Wouldn't it be more helpful to integrate the chronology into the main bio section?

Yes, it would. Inoculatedcities 03:49, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

"His Family Now" section

No offense to the user who added this but how is this information -- largely a list of names and places -- relevant to a biographical article about Exley? Does the Saul Bellow article conclude with a paragraph about what his relatives are up to, where they vacation? It just seems entirely inappropriate for the article. I'm going to remove it but if there's some compelling reason that it should be reverted to include this information, please engage me here. Inoculatedcities 03:49, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

John Jay High School

The original article stated, as do many sources, that Exley spent some time (one source says it was in 1948; see http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=874) at John Jay High School in Katonah, NY. However my understanding is that the school wasn't built until the 1950s (and see this source: http://bedford.patch.com/groups/editors-picks/p/facebook-group-reconnects-kids-of-katonah-past where it is dated to the Eisenhower administration, i.e. 1953 or later); before then he would have attended Katonah High School. Moreover, John Jay High School is not located in Katonah, NY, but in Cross River, which is part of the same school district. This needs to be clarified. 850 C (talk) 02:03, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I undid your revision, since you did not give a source, and everywhere I've ever read, most notably p. 56 of Jonathan Yardley's Exley biography Misfit, states that he attended John Jay High School in Katonah in the fall of 1948. As you say, it seems that John Jay HS is in the Katonah school district. I suppose it is possible that John Jay HS used to go by the name Katonah HS, but I would say that without an actual source for Exley having attended Katonah, it should remain as John Jay.--Bernie44 (talk) 02:23, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Francis Duncombe's Katonah: The History of a New York Village states that "the John Jay School, opened Oct. 1, 1956, in Cross River, is the only high school" [in the Katonah-Lewisboro District]. Moreover, she explains that the district was created in 1952 by the consolidation of Lewisboro District No. 1 with Katonah's District No. 10. John Jay H.S. was built in Cross River, which is part of the town of Lewisboro, and wouldn't even have been part of the same district as Katonah when Exley attended high school. The Katonah school (sometimes called the Huntville Road School) was K-12 until the building of John Jay, and since then has only been an elementary school. Yardley — who seems to have simply taken Exley's word for it — was misinformed, but this may be the source of the confusion: the yearbook was called "the John Jay" (see: http://www.classmates.com/yearbooks/Katonah-High-School/107075) even though the high school was not. No surprise there, as John Jay's yearbook was "the Statesman." Moreover, the school is still referred to as Katonah High School in a source from 1956 (http://books.google.com/books?ei=0sVKUt9l5-LgA_uBgdAO&id=xBS5AAAAIAAJ&dq=%22katonah+high+school%22+yearbook&q=katonah#search_anchor). Exley may have accidentally muddled the facts about the school's name (he only attended for a year, and may have known that the district's school was later called John Jay), or he may deliberately have decided, for whatever reason, to say that he went to JJHS. In any case, no one not dependent on Exley thinks that JJHS existed in 1948. 850 C (talk) 11:47, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Interesting! Nice work. I wonder if there's a way to incorporate into the references the fact that the school was at the time named Katonah HS.--Bernie44 (talk) 13:08, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I guess we could do one of several things: we could state in the main text that he went back for an additional year of high school in Katonah, NY, and not give the name of the school (which could be discussed in the footnotes); we could leave it as it appears at the moment; or we could say something like "Exley stated that he spent a year at John Jay High School in Katonah, New York, although he was probably referring to Katonah High School, since JJHS wasn't opened until 1956." The whole "post-graduate" thing is confusing, but I gather the idea is that he graduated high school but didn't have the necessary credentials to get into college, so he went to JJHS for an additional year to complete the required courses. 850 C (talk) 19:29, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Your last idea sounds good to me, although I think it should be in the footnote, explaining why it says Katonah HS. I agree that the term post-graduate is confusing in this instance, since it normally is not used to mean someone who attended an additional year of high school. I'll add your suggested phrase to the footnote now.--Bernie44 (talk) 21:52, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Looks good. 850 C (talk) 22:30, 1 October 2013 (UTC)