Talk:Donald A. Wollheim

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[edit] Tolkien debacle

Guys, I seem to remember credible people telling me that Wollheim's thinking in the Tolkien debacle was -- he was unaware of the Houghton Mifflin editions until after the Fellowship came out. Since at the time any book not published in America within a year of its English publication entered the public domain here, he acted believing these books to be in the public domain and had one of those horrible 'oops' moments when Houghton Mifflin contacted the publisher. I do not believe in objectivity, and frankly admit to being biased in this matter, and most of my sources on this subject are either dead or explicitly not talking to me for reasons irrelevent here (Don D'Ammassa). Does anyone have information which would explicitly contradict this? What is on the article page is speculation as to his motives, I'm not -- given my biases -- about to challenge without more concrete evidence than I have. I think there should be more evidence or it should be dropped. --Jplatt39 18:06, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The consensus in the industry is that he knew there was no loophole (which was the courts' ruling, too) and just hoped to get away with it. The current version of the article is much more polite about his role than some of the earlier versions, which were less polite/forgiving and more denuncatory in tone. --Orange Mike 20:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that any such consensus existed when this occurred and imputing criminal motive, as the earlier versions of this text did, without specific facts skates close to defamation. People played a lot more fast and loose with copyrights back in the 60's. The court case referenced here was almost 30 years after the fact. Beamdriver 00:29, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd have to check the fanzines of the era, but the people I know who were active back then seem to agree that he thought he'd get away with it, rather than he thought he was right. We're agreed, I see, that the current version is much safer and polite than the earlier versions. (The court case was 30 years after the fact because of "the law's delay"; but that's irrelevant to the question of the original act and motivation.) --Orange Mike 14:49, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conservative?

Also, I don't think he was conservative. There's certainly no evidence of conservativism on the page, while there is evidence against, in the fact that he was part of the Futurians and in his fighting against the censorship of books with homosexuality. -fourpoints

Huh? There's nothing in the article asserting that he was conservative. --Orange Mike 20:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)