Talk:Growing Up Absurd

Latest comment: 20 days ago by Czar in topic Tochterman
Featured articleGrowing Up Absurd is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 18, 2023.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
July 5, 2021Good article nomineeListed
November 5, 2022Featured article candidatePromoted
Current status: Featured article

GA Review

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Growing Up Absurd/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Tayi Arajakate (talk · contribs) 01:01, 5 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

  • Hello Czar, I'll be taking up the review for this nomination and will be presenting it shortly. I hope my feedback will be helpful and I get to learn something new from it. Tayi Arajakate Talk 01:01, 5 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
    Czar, I have completed the review. That was an interesting read, it is pretty well researched and more or less fulfills the good article criteria so I'm going to promote it. But I think the prose can be improved, it is a bit dialect-ish which can be hard to follow sometimes. I've left some criticism and suggestions below, with respect to the section on publication which I think needs improvements in particular. Tayi Arajakate Talk 10:10, 5 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
    Thank you! Addressed the below points, save for those with indented comments. Open to feedback on the dialect—not sure if that's referring to the jargon associated with Goodman's niche interests or to my own writing. czar 19:11, 5 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
    Czar, on a second look it's probably the topic although I wouldn't call it niche per se. It's just with words and phrases like "successively traded favor", "bohemian beatniks", "indictment" used outside a legal context, "as well" at the end of a sentence. I am not suggesting any of this needs to be changed, I just re-read the article and think it's actually well written especially after some of the sentences were rephrased, maybe I'm not that used to American English is all. Tayi Arajakate Talk 04:06, 6 July 2021 (UTC)Reply


Comments

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  • In the section called "Publication", the book is initially called "book" and then shifts to "manuscript" and then to "book" again after publication. I would suggest just keeping it as manuscript before its publication.
  • "Goodman, in his journals, struggled to name this fight and blamed his own cowardice as blocking his ability to see his own, personal fight to then insert in the story." The sentence can sound confusing, I would suggest rephrasing.
  • "Also significant, where his prior writing had qualities of hectoring insistence and recklessness, Goodman tried a new style that was powerfully earnest, direct, and patient." This sounds pretty subjective. I think this needs to be attributed, it's also missing a comma.
    Might sound subjective but it's uncontroversial, coming from his estate's literary executor. Where is the missing comma?
Nevermind about the comma, I thought hectoring and insistence were supposed to be separate qualities.
  • "He believed that the cultural issues of conformity and alienation that he described were in truth political issues and so wanted the book's political message to be read in advance of the 1960 presidential campaign." This sentence can sound confusing as well. It could be split into two sentences.
  • The section talks about Podhoretz encountering an excerpt in Dissent magazine. Is there any information on the circumstances it came to be published in the magazine?
    How it came to be published in Dissent? Nothing remarkable that I've seen—I imagine it was the same as any submission process.
  • Is there more information on Goodman's search for a publisher and how it got rejected by 19 of them? A single line stating it was rejected by 19 of them after the rejection by the sponsor seems a bit incomplete.
    Not that I've seen or can recall. Book rejections are common, for what it's worth, and the "19" is more trivia than anything else, to show how publishers were uninterested in the work about to become a best-seller.
  • "Goodman and Podhoretz extracted three long articles from the manuscript—more than half of its length—for the editor's revised Commentary magazine. Epstein of Random House planned the book's release to follow the serialization." This can sound confusing as well, suggest rephrasing.
  • The book also appears to have extracts published in a number of other magazines, maybe they should have mentions?
  • I think the section could be better described as "Development and publication" rather than just "Publication".
    Typically book articles include the entire writing process as the "Publication" rather than "Development"
  • The image of the publisher doesn't align with the passage about him. The caption should also be present in the text and not in the caption.
    Image spacing usually takes precedence, in my experience. Our caption guideline doesn't speak to the second point.
  • I find it a bit odd that the article has an image of the publisher but not of the author.
    Well, we don't have a free use photo of the author! :)

Assessment

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  1. Comprehension: The article has adequate comprehension.
  2.   Pass
    Criteria Notes Result
    (a) (prose) The prose may have some minor issues, but it is understandable to an appropriately broad audience.   Pass
    (b) (MoS) The article is complaint with the manual of style.   Pass
  3. Verifiability: The article is verifiabiable.
  4.   Pass
    Criteria Notes Result
    (a) (references) The article is cited with in-line citations.   Pass
    (b) (citations to reliable sources) Sources used are reliable.   Pass
    (c) (original research) No original research was found.   Pass
    (d) (copyvio and plagiarism) No copyright violations found.   Pass
  5. Comprehensiveness: The article is comprehensive.
  6.   Pass
    Criteria Notes Result
    (a) (major aspects) The article has a comprehensive coverage.   Pass
    (b) (focused) The is focused on the subject for the most part.   Pass
  7. Neutrality: The article is neutral.
  8.   Pass
    Notes Result
    Follows neutral point of view with use of sources, lacks editorialisation.   Pass
  9. Stability: The article is stable.
  10.   Pass
    Notes Result
    No content dispute, edit warring or major changes.   Pass
  11. Illustration: The article is adequately illustrated.
  12.   Pass
    Criteria Notes Result
    (a) (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales) Images are tagged with their appropriate copyright statuses.   Pass
    (b) (appropriate use with suitable captions) No policy issues with use and caption.   Pass

FAC review

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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Growing Up Absurd/archive1

@A. Parrot and Lee Vilenski, did you have any outstanding concerns that kept you from supporting the article, or did we just run out of time? Trying to see what I would need to improve for the future czar 16:46, 9 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Looks like it was closed. Apologies, I didn't get back to this one (had a lot on). I'd have supported, but probably wouldn't have stopped it being archived. If you do renominate, drop me a ping and I'll take another look. Lee Vilenski (talkcontribs) 18:51, 9 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
My opinion is the same as Lee's. I didn't have time to re-examine the article thoroughly after your revisions, but I will keep it in mind and be on the lookout for its next nomination, if that's what you choose to do. A. Parrot (talk) 21:18, 9 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Vance Packard book title cited

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I believe the title of this book was "The Status Seekers" not "Status Society." I remember reading the book 50.102.153.239 (talk) 20:01, 18 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

[1][2] Nice catch! Thank you. czar 22:10, 18 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Tochterman

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Brian Tochterman wrote in The Dying City: Postwar New York and the Ideology of Fear, p. 225:

On the influence of Goodman's book [GUA] in the 1960s, see Howe, Margin of Hope, 239–45; Gitlin, The Sixties, 102–4.

The Internet Archive is down right now so I cannot confirm but I had it on my list to leave a note that I looked at this some months back. From what I recall, there was disappointingly nothing in these citations that wasn't already better covered elsewhere. czar 16:42, 25 October 2024 (UTC)Reply