Talk:Helen DeWitt

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The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Edofedinburgh 02:09, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suicide note

I x'ed out most of the phone number in the suicide note. I haven't yet looked up the official policy, but putting someone's cell phone number on Wikipedia cannot be a good idea. This article seriously needs reworked. 66.212.135.123 04:30, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I removed a lot more of that - a lot of details about somebody's personal life that don't belong on wikipedia unless it can be shown to be directly relevant to her work. The later comment about her familiarity with the "machinery of madness" perhaps now is unclear, but could be explained without such an outrageous violation of someone's privacy. Is there even any reason to believe her personal experiences were relevant there? Is this documented or just somebody's impression?DianaW (talk) 18:08, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
"She works with a small number of her collection of books, the majority of which are in storage in Leeds, London and Washington, DC." - What does that sentence mean?DianaW (talk) 18:09, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the extremely specific details do not belong to an encyclopedia. But I really don’t think that the fact she attempted suicide should be completely left out – that is relevant biographic information (if properly referenced by secondary sources, of course). --Mormegil (talk) 20:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Me too. I restored my original two-sentence description with sources. — brighterorange (talk) 04:03, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I still think it would need to be shown to have some relevance to her work - by an academic source - to warrant mentioning here. I understand everybody assumes that if she writes about suicide and she tried to commit suicide herself, that there is obviously a connection, but in fact, this is an error. It's not something that's so easy to show if you actually committed yourself to *showing* it and not just assuming you know and you are entitled to put it on the internet. I'm not up for a big fight about it here, however, and don't plan to keep editing the page - I just felt that a person really is still entitled to some personal privacy even if they write novels. It's not like she is someone in government or in a position of grave responsibility and the public has some right to know of all her psychological problems. Would you want it all over the internet, the details of the text messages or emails you sent or what you said to your mother or best friend if you were suicidal, what motel room you were found in blah blah, - this is just gossip, it's really not literary criticism folks.DianaW (talk) 15:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
My opinion is that a single sentence - as it stands now - about an incident that made it to the press is fine. Once Helen DeWit is deemed notable enough for an article, every sourced information about her is relevant (within the bounds of a well-written, balanced article). This is an article about Helen DeWitt, after all, not just about her work. Goochelaar (talk) 15:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't agree that "every sourced information about her is relevant." Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not People magazine. If there are any criteria at all for what goes in an encyclopedia article about a novelist, surely relevance to her novels is a big one. This is the reason she's a noteworthy enough person that there's a wikipedia entry on her. And the standard at wikipedia (admittedly very spottily upheld, yet nevertheless it's the standard) is that the relevance needs to be shown in some source that is of a respectable academic or professional standard. I don't find the notion compelling that if we can find it printed somewhere, we ought to put it in this article. Other than basic biographical facts, relevance to her work is, well, the whole meaning of "relevance" here.DianaW (talk) 18:39, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Your point is very interesting, but quite hard to enforce (even if one agrees with it). Of course the sources we use have to be reliable, as WP policy suggests (no tabloid, no gossip magazines); but asking for just academic or academic-like sources is a bit too restrictive. More to the point: yes, I was rash to say "every information etc." What I mean is, if we have an article about a person (novelist, serial killer, juggler, whatever), who is to say which episodes in his or her life are relevant to his (let me use "his", please) main career and which ones are not? My view is that the article about John Doe is not an article about John-Doe-as-a-novelist (or as-a-serial-killer or whatever): it is an article about him and the whole of his life and works. A suicide attempt, and the travels and experiences connected are undoubtedly a major event in one's life. Goochelaar (talk) 19:05, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes indeed, and also clearly interesting to someone researching the author who might want to make connections between life experiences and the subject matter of her stories. In this case the sources are quite reliable, by the way (NY Times and Daily News). — brighterorange (talk) 21:00, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
"Your point is very interesting, but quite hard to enforce" - LOL. Yes, apparently so. Like I said, I'm not going to edit the article any more, so you win. But think about it. "What I mean is, if we have an article about a person (novelist, serial killer, juggler, whatever), who is to say which episodes in his or her life are relevant to his (let me use "his", please) main career and which ones are not?" The answer to "who is to say" is not supposed to be you or me - it's supposed to be a credible source.DianaW (talk) 23:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)