Talk:Guy Davenport

Here we go again: Re-appearance here of disputed OR and NPOV plot summaries by one editor who insists that the world see Davenport as a writer of fiction about pedophilia and child sexual abuse

I'm weary. Please see Discussion ("Talk") page associated with the APPLES AND PEARS entry -- if that page can be accessed, once Tony deletes it.

After months of discussion, his OR summaries of "Apples and Pears" were deleted.

Now he brings them back here, along with others from other disputed pages.

I can't imagine going through all this again, but it appears that we will have to. SocJan 22:48, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

A second thought: So as not to lose the A + P discussion, which is likely to be highly relevant here soon, I have imported it to this page (see above). SocJan 05:34, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe that talk pages do remain after pages are deleted. --Neon white 16:42, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks; good to know. Let's leave the A + P discussion here at least until we resolve what to do with Tony's A + P "plot summary". SocJan 02:31, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe put on OR tag on that section? --Neon white 02:10, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. I have left the OR warning at the top of the entire article, and added OR and POV tags to the individual book sections that are in dispute. The rest of the article is in pretty good shape.

Incidentally, I followed the links to the references cited in the Cardiff Team section and recommend that other interested parties do the same, and decide for yourselves whether the excerpts quoted here are representative, or not, of the articles from which they are taken.

I hope we can take action on these inappropriate OR and POV book summaries by next weekend (Nov.12, 2007). SocJan 04:45, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

ok, 19 (dalkeyarchive.com) is fine, the other are not proper citations one of the them, reed business, is a communications company and has no obvious link to the book. I'll removed the ones that aren't cited properly until they are. --Neon white 16:32, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Nine days having passed without any third-party defense of the recent posting to this page of OR/POV summaries of three collections of Davenport's fiction, I have deleted those summaries. I agree that a balanced discussion of the role that child sexuality plays in Davenport's fictions would be useful. I hope someone can write one, based on reputable published criticism (the references given on the Davenport page include several possible sources). Please let's have no more original summaries of these fictions by editors with an axe to grind. SocJan 05:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Bologna

I doubt this is the most, or only, fact about him in Davenport's book. I really dont think this fact about his eating fried bologna with campbells soup is notable, in light of who he was. if julia child did this in public, yes. if davenport advocated this in his book as the perfect diet, and it was the source of one of his works (say, a book on bologna, a poem on bologna, or even if its the source of the book its taken from: davenport tries this food, decides to write about food, and credits this event a la proust in remembrance of things past vis a vis madeleines), yes. Its interesting and quirky, but thats all. please provide some context for adding this back if you do so. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 19:46, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

A previous discussion on this topic can be found at Talk:Guy Davenport/Archive June 05 - May 07#Davenport bought Oscar Mayer bologna, fried it, and ate it with Campbell's soup. Personally, I tend to think (as my contribution to that discussion may suggest) that the detail is too insignificant for inclusion in the article; one gets weary of attempting to deal with the one or two editors who want to establish their ownership of this article, though. Deor (talk) 21:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Aww, let's have a big flame war about it! It'll be just like old times! SethTisue (talk) 02:53, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

sometimes the bizarre behaviors of editors here amazes me. why cant the silly phrase be put into a better context? it seems to just get added back repeatedly with no modification at all. i dont have the book where this comment appears, but if someone does, how about CHANGING the wording of the sentence to make it encyclopedic? heres an example: "While primarily known as scholar and essayist of serious subjects, Davenport was known for taking a contrarian position on some issues. For example, he admitted to eating fried bologna with canned soup regularly, and wrote about this habit in his essay collection **, which included incongruous and bizarre, but researched, comments on other notable author's eating habits. He admitted to enjoying this apparent contradiction between his reputation as a member of the intelligentsia and his lower class diet." of course this would need references. BTW, while i think most bologna is disgusting (nitrates, etc) i do fry up any deli meats i get to improve the flavor. Campbells soup, however, is worthless. i believe Anthony Braxton is noted for eating fried bologna. and davenports collection of aphorisms from diogenes and heraklitos is one of my all time favorite books. I am a fan of him and a fan of eclectic and bizarre information. i just want the sentence to be encyclopedic, im not interested in an edit war, and i wont revert again. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 16:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Guys! I hadn't noticed this discussion before tonight. Since I'm the latest reverter on this one, let me provide a little context.

The poet Ronald Johnson who was also a celebrated author of regional cookbooks was one of Davenport's close friends. Johnson stayed with Davenport for weeks, and cooked, and Davenport reported appreciatively that he had never eaten better. However, Davenport was also a staunch opponent of oppressive regimentations of all sorts, including what he called "food snobbery".

One of Davenport's least known essays appears in JUNK FOOD (1980, Dell Publishing Co, New York; ed. by Charles J. Rubin. ISBN #: 0440-54276-6, p.47; other contributors include Harry Crews, Bruce McCall, R. O. Blechman, and Stephen Jay Gould).

Davenport's title -- "A Moral Lecture for Food Snobs, Gourmets, Epicures, Health Food Nuts, Gourmands, and People Who Pick On Their Children for Gulping Rock & Roll Jelly Kings" -- gives a pretty good idea of where he stood. His essay is very short, paralyzingly funny, and stuffed with bizarre facts about famous people's eating habits -- but says nothing about his own.

When the former Davenport students who did most of the work on this entry in Wikipedia included the sentence we are discussing, I found it appropriate, amusing, and important. I was confident that Davenport would have approved. It serves to remind readers who do not know Davenport's oeuvre that even erudite polymaths can have foibles -- and, in Davenport's case, can have a sense of humor about their foibles. That's why I have defended it.

Granted that encyclopedia entries should be factual and should include matters of significance, surely we can acknowledge that not all facts in every entry require ponderous explanations. Readers may well find this particular sentence amusing and/or puzzling; we could hope that some might be curious enough to do a little independent spade work (such as seeking out and reading the material on this comments page).

Surely it is not bad for an encyclopedia to include the occasional short, sweet, enigmatic comment, to amuse -- and perhaps motivate the occasional reader to seek more information? SocJan (talk) 05:47, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, its actually quite bad to do this, davenport would probably not have approved of this (unless he hated reference books), and your stating that this one of his least known essays shows it doesnt belong in the article. nothing you have said here makes the specific case for this sentence to be in this article. if we want to motivate a reader to explore davenports work, there are many other NPOV ways to do so. a one sentence quote from an essay, a quote from a review by a major figure, which refers to his eccentric and entertaining style. WP is not in the business of recommending authors. I dont want a reader of this article to feel like ive put my arm around his shoulder, escorted him into my library, and said "oh, you simply MUST read davenports essays on food, they are perfect examples of how a highly cultured, literate critic can be down to earth. please, borrow it as long as you like. and when youre done, come back and sit down with me over some bologna, soup and a bud light, and we will wax rhapsodic about the man!" it takes away from the power of the encyclopedia to have the author of the article (you and i) inject our passions into the article itself. our passion should be in the craft of the article, not the advocacy of the subject. but again, im not interested in deleting the line, just in trying to stimulate some more creative approaches to documenting this writer that are NPOV. wait, did you say that former students of davenport included this statement? how POV can you get? come on, call a spade a spade, admit bias. for my part, i admit that im probably overly incensed by this, and i apologize for any apparent personal slights. but i am really really really willing to go along with ANY inclusions that document his style, along the lines of what i have suggested. peace, Mercurywoodrose (talk) 01:49, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

(1) All evidence suggests that Davenport loved reference books -- especially ones with a touch of style. And he was a stickler for accuracy; indeed, he wrote several essays documenting foolish (and one would have thought easily-avoidable) errors in highly-respected reference books. But he also loved odd facts, sometimes finding convincing significance in apparently minor details that others had overlooked.

One of his interests was eating customs -- so it's his "passion" (your word), not that of any editor of this entry. The sentence in question alerts a reader to that thread in Davenport's work -- if the reader is Davenportian enough to wish to go there. The sentence also points to Davenport's anti-authoritarian stance in general, his habit of challenging conventions that he found pretentious or oppressive.

(2) The present version of the Davenport Wikipedia entry strikes me as superior to those that most encyclopedias manage even a decade after the death of an important if lesser-known author. Its accuracy, concision, and balance I attribute in large part to weeks of revision by several people who knew Davenport personally and also are excellent and scrupulous scholars. Why would their efforts be a bad thing? What is POV about former students contributing facts to an encyclopedic entry about their professor? Do you believe it impossible for someone who happens to have studied under a particular figure to contribute to an encyclopedia entry about him or her?

Note that the Davenport entry in its current form absolutely does NOT take the reader by the arm and twist it. Your proposed elaboration (back there a bit) in place of the simple sentence to which you have objected would do just what you now say should not be done.

(3) Is it obvious that an essay that happens not to have been collected is automatically inferior? Davenport wrote so many essays, book reviews, and other short pieces that dozens are little known. I cited the one in JUNK FOOD because Davenport does there, to others, what the sentence in question does here to Davenport. A nice little symmetry. A touch of style. Must every sentence in every encyclopedia entry be pedantic and pedestrian? The authors of the 11th edition of the Britannica didn't think so, and we still read and enjoy their entries today, a century later.

(4) Does NPOV mean to you what it means to Wikipedia? I can't quite follow your suggestion that the sentence in question somehow violates the NPOV injunction. It's true, it's economical, and it adds to our understanding of Davenport's habits of mind and style of life.

I do appreciate your willingness to tolerate a tiny bit of serious humor in this essay. I didn't write that sentence. But from reading Davenport I happened to know it to be true; the instant I first read it, I felt it added something useful. So I have defended it. But I, too, have no intention of falling on my sword over it. Someday someone will delete it and we, its defenders, will all be gone. That's probably the fate of every sentence in Wikipedia.

The only thing we might continue to discuss is how the Wikipedia NPOV injunction relates to the legitimacy of contributions from people who actually know something.

I would hope that we would welcome help from anyone willing to do spadework, back up each contribution with appropriate, recognized, references, and defend the significance of each contribution on a talk page like this, if need be. I thought that was what Wikipedia was all about. SocJan (talk) 06:11, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I admit now that im simply confused and doubtful of my ability to understand the process here, and would like to politely bow out of any discussion of this article. thanks for the chance to work here. goodbye. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 21:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Guy Davenport/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)

Press [show] to view →

I've reassessed this article and think it is still B class. However, it has several strengths and not much work should be needed to get it up to A class. There is an excellent, comprehensive collection of references and sources but the article itself needs to be fleshed out a bit more. More headings and sub-headings are definitely needed and some of the information in list format needs to be expanded into paragraphs. This is glaringly obvious in the commentary section, where there is no summary or explanation of critics' views. I recommend contributing editors divide the existing information into relevant sub headings and attempt to provide at least a brief summary for sections currently in list form, where appropriate. Gruffle Gaw 17:30, 17 September 2006 (UTC) The B grade stands. The article doesn't even have an infobox or persondata. It needs serious work to come close to an A rating. It should pass GA before even being considered for an A. - Duribald 08:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 08:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 16:53, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Guy Davenport. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050530232015/http://www.designobserver.com/archives/003092.html to http://www.designobserver.com/archives/003092.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041212170328/http://elimae.com/essays/purdy/wereldbeeld.html to http://www.elimae.com/essays/purdy/wereldbeeld.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Y An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 14:20, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Guy Davenport. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060110233153/http://www.nplusonemag.com/davenport.html to http://www.nplusonemag.com/davenport.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Y An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 05:53, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Just read history. It is amazing. I am a proud survivor of paternal incest. 67.83.136.95 (talk) 01:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I need to read more to determine if his writing is sexual abuse. 67.83.136.95 (talk) 01:12, 22 February 2024 (UTC)