The Reading Room

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Bookworm

00:03

Q: What does Edith Warton mean by "democratic principles" in The Age of Innocence

Please help. I'm only two paragraphs in with The Age of Innocence and already I'm having trouble, specifically with this sentence: To come to the opera in a Brown coupé was almost as honourable a way of arriving as in one's own carriage; and departure by the same means had the immense advantage ...

12 hours later…

DVK-on-Ahch-To

12:20

From Russian joke site: A sign that you are now a responsible adult: reading "The Three Musketeers" by Dumas, you start rooting for Cardinal Richeleau: a man working for the benefit of his country, bedeviled by four drunks, a useless moron in a crown and three women of loose morals.

1 hour later…

user185131

13:44

@Tsundoku I think it would be better to provide the permanent link to the current revision of the Wikipedia page when asking for the sources of these uncited statements, instead of linking to the page that is constantly updated. What do you think?

Tsundoku

14:24

@Brahadeesh Wouldn't you always want to have the updated results? Also, I don't see a way to link to the original state of that search; searches are not like articles.

I know how Wikipedia works. I have edited pages on at least 5 language versions of Wikipedia :-)

user185131

Only after I sent the messages I realized how incongruous my explanations were, sorry about that :) I realized you would surely have been active on Wikipedia, but 5 languages...! Wow!

user185131

14:44

@Tsundoku What do you think about linking to the original state of the articles in those questions on our site asking for the sources, though? In case those statements later get edited out — or, best case scenario, if the question helps find a source and thus the Wikipedia page is updated — linking to the original revision would be better, don't you think?

Tsundoku

I assume you are referring to the articles about Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School. There are two versions that might be referenced: the version that was current at the time the question was posted and the current version. I haven't made up my mind about which one to pick.

user185131

I'm thinking more generally about the series of questions you've posted related to the [citation-needed] portions in Wiki articles, for instance the Lovecraft one and the Maugham one.

Tsundoku

15:09

@Brahadeesh In the Maugham question, the link was already to the dated version of the Wikipedia article. I have now also updated the links in the Lovecraft one.

user185131

15:38

@Tsundoku Ach, I just picked two out of your recent questions list and didn't realize that the Wikipedia link was already to the dated one in the Maugham question. Thanks for making the change in the other one, though! Will you also be taking a look at your other recent questions when you get the time? Maybe the French Wikipedia articles that you've cited could also have their links changed.

Tsundoku

16:18

@Brahadeesh Done.

Rand al'Thor

16:36

@Tsundoku I've never been much involved in Wikipedia except as a passive reader, but I've often wondered how moderation differs between there and SE. You're not a mod there too, by any chance?

Knight

Where can I find the exact reason for king of England to exile Archbishop Thomas Beckett?

I mean did any other writer ever mentioned such events?

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor I am just a normal author there. Wikipedia has administrators, sys ops and an arbitration commission. I believe I have voted once or twice for the arbitration commission on the Dutch Wikipedia and I have met one or two admins of the German Wikipedia, but that's about it.

Tsundoku

17:01

@Knight I assume you mean any author other than T. S. Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral?

Eddie Kal

My impression is that Wikipedia is much less moderated. I was once an irregular editor. I don't edit as much since I had some distasteful experiences there.

Knight

@Tsundoku Yes.

Tsundoku

@EddieKal I also have some unpleasant experience there, e.g. an influential user on the Dutch Wikipedia reverting my accessibility improvements with an edit summary saying "crap removed".

And then arguing against accessibility improvements with claims that anti-discrimination had facilitated the rise of Nazism, or something to that extent...

Eddie Kal

My understanding is arbitration is only relevant when some serious issues arise, say edit wars. But most people just give up if the other party is stubborn and/or belligerent. I once got ganged up on on Wikipedia when I tried to roll back on an edit that removed a huge chunk of information that I considered useful. The other person just pinged in their chat group, and the next day my Wiki IP page (I didn't log in) got bombarded

So I just put my hands up and left

@Tsundoku Sigh...

Knight

@EddieKal "next day my Wiki IP page got bombarded" means?

Eddie Kal

17:09

@Knight So if you make edits on Wikipedia your username or your IP address will generate a hyperlink to a page. It is your personal homepage, so to speak. If you make an anonymous edit, that page is anchored on your IP address.

Knight

oh kay

Bookworm

Q: Evidence for the claim that placing Gide's works in the Index of Forbidden Books scandalised the author's admirers?

The French author André Gide (1869 – 1951) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947. The author died in February 1951; in the following year, the Vatican placed his works on the Index of Forbidden Books. The French Wikipedia article about the author contains additional unsourced statemen...

french-literature censorship andre-gide

Tsundoku

It appears I have contributed the second-highest number of questions to this site (193), after Randal'Thor, who leads with a large margin (337 questions so far).

@Knight If you are looking for other works based on Thomas Becket's life, there is also Jean Anouilh's play Becket. I have not read that play, however, but the author is well-known in French literature.

^ And there is a "[citation needed]" tag in that Wikipedia page :-)

I once read that after Thomas Becket's death, waves of lice and other vermin could be seen creeping out of his robes. Standards of hygiene weren't like today, you know.

(I think the book in which I read that was Arthur Allen's The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis (2014). A few years ago, I made a presentation based mostly on that book.)

1 hour later…

Tsundoku

18:47

Do people here think that the question What is Cultural Marxism? contains enough evidence for its relevance to literature or literary theory?

In my opinion, the claim that the work of the Frankfurt School is "rooted in literary criticism" is questionable.

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku While I personally consider it is well within the scope of literary theory, I don't consider that question a serious question or in a format that invites good answers as opposed to opinions.

Tsundoku

It's also two questions in one at the moment: "What is Cultural Marxism?" and "What is Critical Theory"? One is related to conspiracy theories, while the other is related to social theory.

Eddie Kal

19:02

Prefacing a question about literary theory with an extremely bigoted statement from a hate site shows anything but seriousness. I would never go to, say, Christianity.SE and say "According to the principles of Judaism, Jesus was a crook. What do you think?"

Tsundoku

Right. It's ironic that one of the comments accuses me of closing it for "personal ideological reasons".

2 hours later…

DVK-on-Ahch-To

20:42

mises.org/wire/cultural-marxism-real

It's ironic that people who don't know what they are talking about argument their faith with "this is a conspiracy theory".

Tsundoku

Right, the Mises Institute. That settles it, doesn't it :-P

So New Criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction and New Historicism are all supposed to be examples of "Cultural Marxism"? Groan

DVK-on-Ahch-To

20:59

Oh I see. Is that a hate site too? I rest my case.

Tsundoku

"Given estimates that communism killed over 100 million people , we must openly and honestly discuss those currents of Marxism that run through different modes of interpretation and schools of thought." Some people seem to have forgotten that the term marxism was abused so much that even Marx pointed out that he was not a marxist.

@DVK-on-Ahch-To I didn't claim that the Mises Institute's site is a hate site. But it's been classified as Neo-Confederate and has anarcho-capitalist and paleolibertarian scholars. I don't see how you can expect an objective view on "Cultural Marxism" from that institute.

@DVK-on-Ahch-To And what is actually your "case"?

That question about Cultural Marxism says "Frankfurt School is sometimes described as an evil agenda of the left to destroy western civilization by destroying its culture". How does that article from the Mises Institute support that claim?

Eddie Kal

@DVK-on-Ahch-To Is 4chan a hate site, pray tell.

splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2003/…

This site is so over the top. I mean the Southern Poverty Law Center

They even publish white supremacist groups and their members' personal info. How dare they!

KKK hates their guts

They must be biased

1 hour later…