Talk:The Cardiff Team

The creator of this page (and apparently of its unreferenced "plot summaries") created a similar page last summer for Guy Davenport's novella APPLES AND PEARS. Rather than repeat here the discussion that led recently to the deletion of most of the content of that page, I refer interested parties to the APPLES AND PEARS discussion page where the reasons for tagging earlier versions of it with NOR and NPOV warnings are laid out in considerable detail.

I applaud inclusion this time of book review excerpts that appear to give some support to the author's usual POV, which emphasizes content that deals with child sexuality at the expense of a rich variety of other material in these stories. But I point out that these are excerpts and I do not have time to verify that they accurately reflect the final judgment of those reviews.

I must object, as I did in the case of "Apples and Pears", to the summaries presented on this page of some of these stories. Another editor could write very diifferent summaries, ones rarely or never mentioning child sexuality, that would be equally faithful to Davenport's ideogrammatic, collagist, style -- but they would be equally in violation of OR and POV Wikipedia rules.

Please let's agree to delete all OR material and allow readers to encounter Davenport's stories on their own and decide for themselves what they are "about".

Encyclopaedias like Wikipedia inform people about books through brief plot summaries. It is strange to suggest that Wikipedia should "allow readers to encounter Davenport's stories on their own". That implies that there should be no articles on works of fiction.Tony 15:29, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Tony

Let me be clearer: I am trying to say something simple and hard to dispute: Especially when dealing with controversial material, if one cannot find a BALANCED, and if possible sourced, plot summary that is representative of a consensus of critical opinion, it is better to offer no plot summary than to create an OR summary, especially not OR work of the sort that Tony has been inclined to provide for Davenport stories in which he finds the material he is looking for.

It's fine for an editor to be on the lookout for texts that include comments or events that seem to fit a particular category of interest to that editor; it is not fine for that editor to then write original summaries of those texts that unduly emphasize that one type of material to the neglect of other material that is equally or more central to the works in question. Nor to search for, and quote selectively from, reviews that happen to share his POV. If the published critical literature has not reached a consensus, Wikipedia articles should not be offering summaries that appear to be neutral and undisputed but that are in fact neither.

As someone said cogently elsewherein discussions involving Tony's plot summaries, anything in Wikipedia that someone might challenge should be sourced. I dispute Tony's descriptions of some of these stories. Others familiar with Davenport and with the literature on Davenport agreed with me. No one (in the case of Apples and Pears) supported Tony.

If he can find published discussions of these stories that reflect the critical consensus among published critics and reviewers, and quote them in an NPOV fashion, the problems to which I have called attention will disappear. If he cannot, he should not continue to post NPOV and OR material that he then challenges the rest of us to "improve". SocJan 22:30, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

In summary, this time around I believe the most efficient way to deal with what is undoubtedly an honest and well-intentioned effort, but one several readers have judged to be quite wrong-headed, is simply to insist on adherence, from the start, to Wikipedia standards regarding point of view and original research.SocJan 01:45, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Example of NPOV violation in quotation from book review

I present below the entire (short) review of THE CARDIFF TEAM by Robert McLaughlin from which the author of this page has extracted this comment on the page he has created: "A family based on sex between adults and children seems far from idyllic, and the constant talk of erections, masturbation, and so on is more tedious than revolutionary."

Reading the entire review will illustrate how this Wikipedia editor tends to reduce everything to his own chosen topic. He wants to believe, and wants us to believe, that he is sticking to a neutral point of view. Judge for yourselves whether this is true.

Guy Davenport. The Cardiff Team. New Directions, 1996. 192 pp. $22.95.

Not a lot happens in most of the stories in Guy Davenport’s The Cardiff Team. Instead of focusing on plot, Davenport focuses on moments that beautifully evoke innocence, experience, desire, or fulfillment. The stories can stand alone, but, read together, they overlap in characters and incident and interact thematically. The characters long for connection with others in societies that encourage alienation. From George Santayana seeking to connect with a British army officer, to Robinson Crusoe desperately striving to return to the deserted island he sought to escape, to Swedish boys at summer camp trying to accommodate their feelings of love, Davenport’s characters attempt to form make-shift teams, to become ad hoc families, to find a meaningful home. Indeed, the form of the book is a model of such connections. Davenport incorporates other texts, from poems to Scientific American articles, and characters from fiction and history. More complexly, the various stories bleed into one another, as characters from one story appear in or are discussed in others and whole episodes jump from story to story. The result is that as we read we’re treated to tiny revelations when we make connections and that we’re asked intellectually to create the bonds that the characters seek emotionally. This connects to a second shared theme: Davenport’s characters seem over and over to act out the conflict between the intellectual and the physical. Many of the main characters live in their minds and are contrasted with the men and boys around them who, while intellectually mundane, live in their bodies and with nature.

These themes come together and are supposed to be resolved in the long, troubling title story. Set in contemporary Paris, the story presents a twelve-year-old boy, Walt, as a synthesis of the intellectual and the physical: he is an acclaimed genius who is remarkably in touch with his own and others’ bodies, with the smells and the sights of nature. He is also the center of an odd ménage à cinq made up of Walt, his mother, her lover and Walt’s tutor, Marc, Walt’s friend Bee, who appears to the world dressed as a boy named Sam, and Cyril, an unhappily repressed rich boy who learns the joy of sex. Walt’s polymorphous perversity breaks down societal codes and replaces them with a structure in which the characters relate happily, guiltlessly, and selflessly. Marc tells Cyril, “Polycrates burnt the gymnasiums of Samos because he knew that every friendship forged in them were two revolutionaries. Our real families are our friends.” Unfortunately, this conclusion is problematic. A family based on sex between adults and children seems far from idyllic, and the constant talk of erections, masturbation, and so on is more tedious than revolutionary. Despite this reservation (and considering the story’s length, it’s a major one), the other stories in The Cardiff Team have much to recommend them: they are beautiful, intelligent, and thought-provoking. [Robert L. McLaughlin]

McLaughlin's review strikes me as reasonably fair and balanced. The out-of-context quotation from it is clearly at odds with the bulk of the review. SocJan 02:48, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah! The article quotes another, more favorable, passage from McLaughlin: "Instead of focusing on plot, Davenport focuses on moments that beautifully evoke innocence, experience, desire, or fulfillment." I missed it, above, because it was given a separate citation and McLaughlin was not mentioned as the author, implying that it came from a different review. SocJan 03:20, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I am requsting 3rd opinion on this dispute.Tony 15:11, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Tony

The quotations from the reviews were to reference the sexual aspects of this work and to show this is not OR as SocJan states. SocJan doesn not wish the brief plot summary to mention that adults have sex with children.

The previous sentence, as Tony well knows, mischaracterizes my central objections to his work: please see the Discussion page associated with the APPLES AND PEARS article. We should not repeat all that here. SocJan 22:30, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

The reviewer's comment "A family based on sex between adults and children" confirms what is obvious in the text of the book that an adult enjoys sex with children and is sexually attracted to them (it is all 'consensual' sex and the children are pubescent boys). SocJan has also deleted this work from Pedophilia and child sexual abuse in fiction (boys). The inclusion of this book in that article is entirely appropriate. Wikipedia should not refuse to mention sexual acts with children just because one editor feels it is OK because it is a work of fiction. SocJan has also added 'citation needed' to a number of places in the article plot summary. Factual Wikipedia plot summaries do not need a citation on every statement.Tony 15:24, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Tony

Third Opinion

I've looked closely at the article. My first question was regarding the notability of the book. The notability of the author is established. However, while this collection of stories has attracted some reviews, and incidental mentions in articles on the author, it may not pass an AfD discussion. Certainly the parent article, Guy Davenport, could handle discussion of Davenport's output quite comfortably without the need to spill out into a standalone article for this, and Apples and Pears, and it may be considered merging the best content of this and Apples and Pears back into Guy Davenport and putting redirects in place.

I agree. SocJan 22:30, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

The next question is then how to deal with discussion of content. Well, that always has to come from sources. I've looked at three reviews and they all mention the sexuality in the stories, so it is appropriate that mention is made of that in discussing the text. However, such mentions must be neutral. An inference taken from the source material that the text deals with "Pedophilia and child sexual abuse" would be slightly problematic for me, as I don't see that strongly in the sources. I am not concerned with the actual content of the text. I am concerned with how sources have dealt with the text. The sources make mention of sexual content, and the sources have views on this. Mention of the views of the sources on the sexual content is entirely appropriate. But going beyond that would not be appropriate.

I agree. SocJan 22:30, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

It would be wrong to keep removing appropriate and verifiable source commentary. At the same time there needs to be a balance so that commentary is not selected in order to put forward an unbalanced view. However, I am persuaded by the reviews here and here that the sexuality in the text is prominent and is dealt with seriously. I find it highly appropriate, given that all the reviews I have looked at make deliberate and extended comments on the sexuality present in the text, that these views are reflected in a discussion of the text in the article.

Again, I am in agreement. SocJan 22:30, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I do, however, find the current state of the article to be rather messy, and I see little advantage in the listing of the plot lines of each story. The sources do not go into such detail. A few well chosen sentences to sum up the text would be more appropriate, and that could possibly be done in a paragraph within the Guy Davenport article. SilkTork *SilkyTalk 19:29, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

For the record: I will never object to a neutral description of a fictional work that includes reference to the sexuality of the fictional children, including instances in which that sexuality is observed or expressed with/by other fictional characters who are not themselves defined as children in legal statutes prevailing in our non-fictional real world. But I will object forever to any automatic characterization of such material as "child abuse" -- especially if the fiction in question includes nothing that fits the ordinary dictionary meaning of "abuse". As for "pedophilia", I find the subject so poorly defined and definable as to be a dubious subject by which to categorize fictions. My main objection has been to the portrayal of Davenport stories as showing "child sexual abuse", as Tony has repeatedly tried to assert. This characterization of his could not be further from a neutral, established, critical consensus. Besides being OR and NPOV, it happens to be wrong-headed. But I should not have to argue that. OR and NPOV violations should be sufficient to get such material taken out of Wikipedia. SocJan 22:30, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Following this 3rd opinion, the Davenport article has been expanded and this article can now be deleted. Tony 21:56, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Tony