Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fun Home

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 04:55, 3 September 2007.

[edit] Fun Home

Self-nomination. The article is comprehensive, well-referenced and (I believe) meets all the FA criteria. A peer review led to only minor amendments; LuciferMorgan talk%3AJosiah Rowe&diff=149832810&oldid=149490645 suggested that I should "bite the bullet and go for FAC", so here I am. It's my first time, so be gentle! :^) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:34, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment: Erm... hello? Anyone there? When I said "be gentle", I didn't mean "be silent"! I can take it, really... —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:50, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Support: Your first time at FAC, my first time even voting at FAC, but it seems very well-written and comprehensive with good citations. I suppose some people's concern would be the length (25K compared to the most recent Main Page articles which are 58K, 51K, 29K, 88K, 54K, 73K) but I don't know what else would be appropriate to cram in to the article. Mauna Loa was also Main Page at <24K so it's not an unheard-of length. The sentence "His death at age 44 may have been a suicide, possibly motivated by his wife requesting a divorce" seems dangerously speculative but, since it's in the plot summary, I assume the speculation comes from the novel and not from Josiah. If so, it's fine, but a clarifier may be a good idea. Nice article! —Wknight94 (talk) 12:29, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Yep, the speculation is from the book; in fact, the matter of whether and why Bruce Bechdel killed himself is one of the central questions of the memoir, and the author more or less comes to the conclusion that the possibility of divorce was a trigger, while still recognizing that she'll never know for certain. I'll see if I can adjust the wording later today, to make it clear that the speculation is from the source. Thanks for the support, and thanks for replying! —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 15:40, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
      • I've adjusted the description of Bruce Bechdel's death, giving an important detail and dropping the divorce mention, which really isn't as key as the question of whether his death was accidental or volitional. I've also added a mention of two visual artists whose work is referenced explicitly in the book — I should have remembered to mention them before submitting the article for FAC. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:37, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: I've added a section on the numerous allusions used in the book. I was slightly concerned that my summaries of how the allusions are used would lean towards original research, so to limit that I've included citations to the pages in Fun Home on which each reference occurs. I hope that I've avoided making an original synthesis of the way Bechdel uses each reference: I tried to be as neutral as I could without being repetitive or boring. Still, if it skids too close to OR, the article can be reverted to a Home&oldid=150611361 version before this expansion. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:57, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I restructured the article. Very interesting so far. It could use a Themes section. Anyways, I'm reading Fun Home right now. Just started reading it, and I'll follow this FAC along with my reading. I haven't seen an Allusions sections before, which is interesting. Don't let OR paralyze you from writing a good article. I hope I can finish Fun Home before this FAC closes.-BillDeanCarter 04:58, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Also, I would look at the Watchmen article for a guideline to follow. These are both Time magazine favorites so it would be interesting to compare and contrast the two articles. Don't worry about achieving the same article length as the Watchmen article, that would be silly, but some of the sections could offer a guideline.-BillDeanCarter 05:08, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
      • Additionally, the lead has to go. Some of the stuff in the lead is only reported in the lede. The lede should summarize the article and not introduce anything that isn't in the body of the article. Move stuff in the lede to the body. The lede should talk about the removal from the public library (most definitely) and summarize all the important stuff to know. Number of pages is not important.-BillDeanCarter 05:13, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for replying! I'll try to see what themes I can derive from the reviews — you're right that it was fear of OR that prevented me from writing such a section. I'll work on it (and the lead) tomorrow, and also see if I can get any ideas from Watchmen. (Actually, I just checked it and Watchmen has a section on allusions too! Here I was worrying that it was OR, and there's already a comics FA with such a section!)
One question about the restructuring: why did you place the section on reception in France under "publication history" rather than "reception"? I suppose that the fact that it was serialized in Libération and subsequently published by Éditions Denoël is part of the publication history, but the rest of that paragraph is really about reception and academic criticism. Should I split the Popular and academic attention in France section up? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:17, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I actually puzzled over that. It was a quick restructuring. I've seen sections such as "Publication and reception history". If the section leans more towards reception then it could go there. Hard to say. The fact that the novel was serialized in french is an important part of the publication history, but the fact that it was peer-reviewed in a french journal is also reception.-BillDeanCarter 05:29, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  • With Pascal's reordering, I found a simple solution: rename the section "Publication history and reception" and move the former "reception" section under its aegis, renamed as "reviews and awards". I hope that works. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:05, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Weakly object Fantastic work (on a fantastic book). As an experiment, I've reordered the sections to get a more logical flow to the whole thing (and I agree that the France bit should go in the Reception section). I have also added a fact tag in the lead. The comparison to the Watchmen article is interesting and brings up the sole objection I currently have with promoting to FA status: comprehensiveness. The article's current content is as polished as one might hope but it does seem to be lacking in terms of critical commentary. In particular, there's been quite a bit of scholarly commentary on Fun Home and this is not showing enough. The references (which are excellent by the way) sort of reflect this: there are many references to the book itself, to reviews and to news stories but relatively few to sources analyzing the book, its impact and so on. Pascal.Tesson 05:43, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I'll see what I can do in the next few days. I assume that sources like the ones listed here are the type of thing you're looking for? The only scholarly sources I'd been able to access at home were the three papers from the French conference, and The Comics Journal (I bought the relevant issue). I'll have to see if I can get into the Yale library, where I assume they'll have subscriptions to the relevant journals. If I'm going to the Yale library, are there any print journals I should look for, which might not be available online? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:05, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) Not sure I have time to help out but I'll see what I can do. If some of these journals are available by subscription online, I may have access to them. The other advantage of tracking down such references is that it avoids the potential problems of OR mentioned earlier. Pascal.Tesson 17:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
    • By the way, what's the current thinking on citations in the lead? I know that at one point there was some debate about whether facts which are cited later in the article also need a footnote in the lead. I ask because the "best of 2006" info is covered at Fun Home#Reviews and awards; I can move those notes up to the lead when I rework it (per Bill's suggestion), but that's got eight citations of different publications naming Fun Home in their "Best of 2006" lists. (And that's not all that did so, as you can see from the back cover of the paperback edition.) How many citations would be enough to support "was named one of the best books of 2006 by numerous sources"? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:09, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough. Perhaps that sentence can be cut down anyways. (I've tried something, let me know how you like it!) Pascal.Tesson 17:16, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Update: I've restructured the lead slightly per Bill and Pascal's suggestions. I found one source which can be used for the "numerous sources"/"best of 2006" sentence: the author's website! (I kept Pascal's "popular and critical acclaim" phrasing, but I think that the "best of 2006" is a fairly important aspect and merits inclusion in the lead; I also mentioned what I think are the most noteworthy awards. I hope that it's not redundant, or repetitive, or saying the same thing twice. :^) )
Because of the non-linear structure of the book and the narrator's highly self-aware voice, it's hard to disentangle "theme" from "plot", so instead of writing a separate section on themes, I've tried to expand the thematic discussion in what was the "plot" section and is now "Plot and thematic summary". Let me know if you think it works. I still plan to go into New Haven at some point in the next few days to see what the Yale library can provide in the way of academic sources. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:03, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Support - I've seen this evolve from B-class to what I now consider FA-class in a remarkable manner. It's a testament to Josiah's hard work. Well done. The Rambling Man 08:09, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Support I've made some minor tweaks in the format but I really can't argue with the overall quality of the article. There may still be room for growth in the article which of course is perfectly fine. But as it is now, I think it can reasonably be described as comprehensive and the prose and referencing are impeccable. Kudos to Josiah Rowe: this is fine work indeed and I sure hope you have plans for other articles. Pascal.Tesson 14:38, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
If you're now supporting, could you please strike your previous objection? Thanks, as only the voter can strike their own previous vote. LuciferMorgan 12:48, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Done. Pascal.Tesson 02:43, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Comments I've been looking through the FAs and I found this one which is similar to Fun Home: The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall. One the surface this 1928 novel has some similarities to Fun Home. I think it's great that you have elevated this article to FA quality. Graphic novels these days are doing some pretty cool stuff and more people should read this one (as well as Blankets which is my personal favorite). Definitely this should go on the main page but before that happens here are a few of my comments. I may be off-base here and there so to be read with a grain of salt:
  • I would break the lead into 3 parts. Some parts of the body are not discussed in the lead but I can see that some effort has been made to rectify this.
  • How does it look now? I tried a 3-part structure, with one paragraph describing the book itself, one describing the critical response from the literary and comics worlds, and one for the contrasting responses in France and Missouri. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Mention this in the lead: "Bechdel wrote and illustrated Fun Home over the course of seven years."
  • Break this lead sentence up "The book's artwork consists of black line art with a gray-green ink wash; Bechdel used extensive photo reference, posing herself as different characters." and explain in plain english what photo reference is. I found this very interesting and it really is one of the most insightful parts of the article. For me I had no idea that comic strip artists ever did this and I wouldn't quite get what you mean from this brief phrase in the lead. The section in the article that goes into detail is perfect though. It also ties into why it took 7 years.
  • I would rename "Publication history and reception" to just "Publication and reception"
  • "This emotional distance, in turn, is connected with his homosexual relationships in college, the military, and with his high school students, some of whom were family friends and babysitters" This sentence should be more descriptive. How is it connected? And did he have relations with family friends and babysitters or are you just describing his high school students?
  • I've reworded and expanded this slightly; does the mention of the closet suffice to explicate the connection between Bruce Bechdel's familial dysfunction and his sexual orientation, or do you think that needs to be made more explicit? (I'm slightly hesitant to do so because the nature of the connection is largely implicit in the book.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:30, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm also not sure about the Plot and thematic summary, as well as including the Allusions section. There was some discussion about having spoiler warnings in Plot Summary (don't know how that discussion ended) but there were some voices that reasoned the Plot Summary section was a clear sign of a spoiler warning. Maybe have a really short Plot Summary of a paragraph and break off themes and allusions into an article by itself.
  • I'll think about the plot section some more, but the prevailing thought at Wikipedia:Spoiler seems to be against the inclusion of spoiler warnings. That page specifically says "it is redundant to warn of significant plot details in the section titled "Plot summary". —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Does this sentence really need to be in brackets?: "(Bechdel chose the greenish wash color for its flexibility, and because it had "a bleak, elegaic quality" which suited the subject matter.)"
  • I suppose not. I had put it in parentheses because the previous sentence was part of the description of Bechdel's step-by-step process, which is referred to in the following sentence; by putting the sentence about the wash color choice in parentheses, I was hoping that the referent for "this detailed artistic process" would be clearer. But it's not essential. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • "At this conference, papers were presented examining Fun Home from several perspectives: as containing "trajectories" filled with paradoxical tension;[50] as a text interacting with images as a paratext;[51] and as a search for meaning using drag as a metaphor." If you could make this sentence more accessible that would be great. I didn't know what you meant by drag, so maybe drag clothing, because I figured it was some kind of visual thing. Also, what kind of trajectories? Narrative trajectories?
  • "Drag" in this context is drag clothing, which is why the word links to drag (clothing). However, I think that in queer studies the meaning of the word "drag" is extended to any sort of performative gender play which is in tension with normative gender roles or societal expectations; so, in this context, it's not just the young Alison Bechdel putting on her father's dress clothes, it's also her father's pursuit of gardening and home decorating. At least, that's my understanding, but I'm far from a scholar of the subject. That sentence was an attempt to summarize three highly complex academic papers, so some compression of meaning is probably inevitable. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • "Trajectories" in that paper does refer to narrative trajectories, but also psychological trajectories (such as Bruce Bechdel's desire for aesthetic order and his contrasting, chaotic sexual desires) and even physical trajectories (the limited geographical sphere in which Bruce Bechdel was born, lived, worked and died, contrasting with the geographical liberation symbolized in the book by visits to New York and Paris). I'm afraid that further elucidation of these papers may require the contribution of someone who's active in academia and au fait with the terminology of cultural studies. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:47, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • "These papers and others on Bechdel and her work were later published in the peer-reviewed journal GRAAT." Is it possible to link to mention of GRAAT in the French Wikipedia? This is off the top of my head but would be interesting if possible. Kind of like linking into Wiktionary.
  • "Fun Home was positively reviewed in many publications, including The Times of London (which described it as "a profound and important book"),[61] Salon.com ("a beautiful, assured piece of work")[62] and the New York Times, which printed three separate stories about the book.[4][63][64]" I would cut-off this sentence after "in many publications" and work the rest into prose using quotations and no brackets (in fact I went and tried out an edit;you could revert it) Great piece of info about how the NYTimes covered it thrice.
  • Your split works; I tweaked it only slightly, in part because of the NYT articles only two were actually reviews; the third was a feature piece in the "Home" section, in which a reporter accompanied Bechdel back to the house she grew up in (it is, or was, on the market, and most of Bruce Bechdel's decorative touches survive). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Does one write the New York Times or The New York Times? I tend to do The New York Times but I don't really know.
  • Is it Salon.com or Salon magazine? You have both.
  • Overall I think the article is pretty excellent. I'm leaning towards supporting after my comments are addressed one way or another.-BillDeanCarter 03:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Most of these were very easy to address. The few that I haven't taken care of yet will require a bit more thought, but I'll have something within the next 24 hours. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I've made a few minor adjustments to the section on plot and themes, but I'm not quite sure what you're looking for with regard to that section. As you know, the narrative of Fun Home is non-linear and keeps returning to the same events, showing them again from a new thematic perspective. Because of that, I'm really not sure how to describe the plot as distinct from the themes. As for the "Allusions" section, it's worth noting that Watchmen also has an allusions section (although that one may be structured better than the Fun Home one; I'm open to any suggestions on how to present that information better). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:56, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Support Excellent. It meets all the criteria for FA and is a great companion to Fun Home.-BillDeanCarter 09:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose by — BQZip01 — talk The beatings will continue until morale improves... (just kidding, but it's a funny quote from Animal House)

  • Images need to be sized as default, not sized by pixels IAW WP:MOS#Images. Good use on the fair use rationale though.
Done
  • Mid-sentence references should be moved to the end of the sentence.
Done (hopefully I did not miss any
  • All dates need to be done IAW WP:DATE, so make sure all dates in the article and your references are appropriately linked, but only if necessary.
Are there any which do not conform to that?
Yes — BQZip01 — talk
Oh, fine. I won't make you guess (I thought about being a little testy, but I'll be nice today). Reference 16 and I thought there was something else, but I guess I was wrong or it was fixed already.
I've taken care of that minor omission. (Some of the citation templates automatically wikilink dates and others don't — I occasionally slip up and don't link a date that I should, or vice-versa.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
  • There should be no spaces between superscript references and each other and punctuation (big problem throughout...see my sample I changed on the page).
Taken care of, I think. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Fixed. The problem originated from citations being moved up in the article, or from the citations which were mid-sentence being placed in the order in which they occurred (for example, each of the various publications which included Fun Home in their "Best of 2006" lists being cited in the order they were mentioned in the sentence, instead of the order their reference first occurred in the article.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
  • The Artwork section seems to be unnecessarily broken into a lead section and another. Combine the two into a single section. I recommend cutting the first sentence from the second paragraph and making it the first in the first paragraph.
Done as far as the sectioning goes. But the "seven years" sentence makes more sense when describing the laborious process.
  • I think the Publication and reception section's subsections do not need their own separate headings. By definition, each paragraph should cover a slightly different topic. Making them all subsections is overkill.
Reworked down to a single subsection. Indeed, it improves the flow
  • I am personally not a big fan of citations in the lede. By definition, they are not NEEDED, but also are not specifically excluded. Since each sentence in the lede needs to be expanded upon in the article, the citations aren't needed and it seems to me that the citations clutter the lede. Again, this is merely a preference, not a requirement.
Then out of laziness, I did not change it!
Fine by me. Exclamation marks not needed. — BQZip01 — talk 05:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I did ask about this earlier. Where is the discussion about citations in the lead, by the way? (Just so I know which way the wind is blowing.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
See WP:LEDE — BQZip01 — talk 02:15, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Needs to be cited in some way:
  • "His two occupations are reflected in Fun Home's focus on death and literature."
  • "On one level, the memoir traces Bruce Bechdel's obsession with restoring the family's Victorian home. His concentrated pursuit of this long-term aesthetic quest is connected to his emotional distance from his family, which he expressed in coldness and occasional bouts of rage. This emotional distance, in turn, is connected with his closeted homosexual tendencies. Bruce Bechdel had homosexual relationships in college, the military, and with his high school students; some of those students were also family friends and babysitters. At the age of 44, two weeks after his wife requested a divorce, he stepped into the path of an oncoming Sunbeam Bread truck and was killed. Although the evidence is equivocal, Alison Bechdel concludes that her father committed suicide."
  • "The story also deals with Alison Bechdel's own struggle with her sexual identity, culminating in the realization that she is a lesbian and her coming out to her parents. The memoir frankly examines her sexual development, including transcripts from her childhood diary, anecdotes about masturbation, and tales of her first sexual experiences."

Other than that, wow. This appears to be well-referenced and well-structured for the most part. I have to admit, I am NOT a fan of the subject material of the book, but that is not a criteria of the FAC process or Wikipedia, so, best of luck. — BQZip01 — talk 03:34, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Note on the above. I think it's an overkill to cite the second and third of the above. In any case, if we want to do that, it's pretty simple to just cite specific pages of the book (although I just leant it to a friend, so it's on you Josiah) or pretty much any review (that'll work for the first). Sure, OR and all that, but really this seems superfluous and just clutters the article with references. Pascal.Tesson 04:17, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Also note that the above italicized comments interleaved in BQZip's list of complaints are mine. Pascal.Tesson 04:52, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
And the comments indented to here are mine. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
If it is that easy, then it should be cited. IAW Wikipedia:Verifiability, "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable" As it currently stands, it is an unsourced claim. "Clutter", such as citations as you so deem it, is irrelevant. If I think punctuation is irrelevant, I can't claim that is how Wikipedia should be run because it runs contrary to WP:MoS, a requirement for an FA. — BQZip01 — talk 04:45, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the second paragraph you cite is the plot. It's not a claim, it's what's in the book and typically these are not cited to specific pages. This is the standard in other FAs and in fact in any scholarly work on a book. The first sentence does make a claim about the focus and that needs to be cited. In the third, the only thing that can be considered original research is the adjective frankly. Pascal.Tesson 04:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
"Frankly" is the sticking point since it appears to comment on the material in the book, I concur. I would also say that "deals" seems to be a comment as well, or at least a summary. I'll be honest, I don't care too much about the specific reference. IMHO, simply putting the book as a reference is fine by me, I just think it should be referenced. If you are claiming it is cited by its existence, then I think that falls under original research, not "verifiability". It's like me saying the Vietnam memorial has 66,000 names (I don't know the actual number, but that seems high and this is an example only). Sure, the memorial has that many names, but it needs to be verifiable. — BQZip01 — talk 05:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
While you two were having this conversation, I was looking up the relevant pages in the book. I've cited reviews which discuss the themes, and indexed the relevant bits of the book for the things which were merely summary. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Fixes needed. Why is youtube listed as a source, there are WP:DASH breaches throughout (no spaced emdashes), and why is there bolding in footnotes? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:47, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I can check the YouTube link but boldface is common to indicate periodical volume numbers. Can you fix the dashes though? I have no clue what you're talking about but it would seem trivial to fix. Pascal.Tesson 02:43, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Update on the YouTube link. The video was submitted by Alison Bechdel herself so I would think there's no copyright issue and therefore nothing wrong with linking to YouTube in this particular instance. Pascal.Tesson 02:46, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Yep— the YouTube link is a video posted by the author of the book, demonstrating her artistic process; I'd have thought that was a reliable source, but if it isn't the same video is available on the publisher's website release/bechdel/#video here. I actually chose the YouTube source over the Houghton Mifflin one because I thought it would be more accessible — the HM page has the file in RealOne Player and Windows Media formats, neither of which I find as easy to use as the Flash videos on YouTube. However, that may have been an error; if so, I can change the reference.
The bolding comes from the "volume" field of the {{Citation}} template. The journal GRAAT has both print and online editions, but both use the name GRAAT (see here and here). I used the "volume" field to distinguish the online version from the print version. Is there a better way to do that?
As for the dashes, I found only three mdashes which were spaced, and I've fixed them. Is that all? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:36, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm copy and pasting below comments made by Awadewit on the talk page of Fun Home. (and again, at the risk of creating confusion I'll comment in italics. Pascal.Tesson 05:45, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions

This is a very good article - it is well-written and engages the reader (I am now going to check out the book from the library). However, I do think that the article could benefit from a slight reorganization and some concentrated efforts to connect everything together. Here are my suggestions (take 'em or leave 'em):

  • The first and third paragraphs of the lead feel a little choppy. The sentences move from one topic to another without a real connection. Could you perhaps try to tie them together more?
I did try, not sure about the result though
  • I find the infobox unsightly. I don't think it adds anything to the article since you mention all of the material in it in the article.
The infobox should stay. I understand the concerns, but this is the common practice
  • In the "Plot and thematic summary" section, I would start with a simple description of the book and then offer the detailed analysis. For readers unfamiliar with the book, it might be a bit jarring to jump right into something like "non-linear and recursive". The reader needs to be familiar with the book before embarking on a thematic analysis. In fact, I would separate this off into an "Overview" section, since memoirs don't really have plots in the traditional sense.
True, "plot" may seem akward but in the case of Fun Home it does make some sense, especially because of the construction. But it's true that the first paragraph might be intimidating. Perhaps we can swap the first and second paragraphs so that the reader unfamiliar with the book is not scared away. I'll let Josiah handle that though...
  • Saying that the book draws allusions from the "visual arts" is a bit broad - at least give an example, even if you are not going to launch into a full-scale analysis at that point.
  • You must have studied literature at some point - I see the word "lens". :) This word might not be the best kind of diction for an encyclopedia, as its meaning in literary studies has not become very common.
I'm not so sure. I haven't studied literature and this feels like the right word.
  • I think that perhaps you could spend more time describing the genre of the memoir and its relationship to fiction. To what extent is Bechdel attempting to tell the "truth" and to what extent is she telling a "story"? (You can only do this if some reliable sources do, obviously.)
  • Linking abstract concepts inside quotations is not generally a good idea, as such things can easily mean different things to different people. Let the quote speak for itself.
  • I generally think "Allusions" sections are a poor idea. Most allusions are part of a larger theme or a smaller motif and are usually better presented when that theme is presented. It makes the article more coherent. I wonder if placing this material under a "Themes" section that is subdivided into smaller subsections (such as "Sexuality", "Suicide of father", etc.) might work out better. Right now the "Allusions" section is sort of a list. (I have tried to do this myself in Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman.)
  • Have you thought about combining references, so there aren't three and four in a row? It would make the article easier to read.
What I think would make the article easier to read is to stop insisting that references should be used only at the end of sentences. :-)
  • I wonder about cutting some of the material from the "Reception" section. There is almost as much on reception as on the book itself, which seems a bit off kilter. I might mention the academic conference in passing, but I would not, for example, describe the papers. Those are pretty ephemeral. I would also condense the story of the one library who tried to censor it - it is just one library, after all.
Interesting comment. You have a point about the relative size of the sections but I'm sort of reluctant to cut through the Reception section. Ideally, this balance should come not by cutting it but by expanding the other sections (for instance your suggestion above about truth) but this is proving to be a bit difficult without falling for OR.
  • The beginning of the "Reviews" section is a bit listy (so-and-so said this, another person said this, yet another said this...). Might you find a way to make that paragraph cohere a bit more?

A very interesting article. Let me know if you have any further questions. I'm sorry that it took me so long to get around to reviewing it. Awadewit | talk 03:41, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.