Talk:Nelson Algren

Virtually every use of quotation marks in the accompanying article is improper, more than simply as a matter of correct punctuation.

1. The article attributes the quotes to specific authors or publications, and supplies respective references to different publications by different authors. We cannot attribute to, e.g., Art Shay without seeing Nelson Algren's Chicago. In theory, we could say, sentence by sentence,

   According to Art Shay, Algren said ...

   and

   According to the Chicago Reader, Zgoda's editorial suggests the general tone of the campaign, and can be selectively quoted as saying....

   but it's clumsy, looks lazy and unsound (bcz it is both), and is a bad idea. I'm replacing all such quotes with indirect-quote ("... says that ...") paraphrases of them, footnoted as at present.

2. Several passages, most flagrantly the one beginning "The author is ... " and ending "... directed by Nazi money." are especially problematic, bcz they cannot even theoretically be fixed into the lazy and unsound bad-idea mode. The reason is that that passage is not a quote, but a partial paraphrase of a quote, via (explicit) elision of words where the "...." appears and (equally explicitly, tho ambiguously) either substitution of "[and]" in place of something else, or supplying of "[and]" where something was deemed missing.
   When B paraphrases something written by A, a new work is created, even tho it is not an independent one. (If B lacks permission from A, it doesn't seem implausible for B to be unable to enforce any of B's exclusive rights. But even so, that would be remediable without our being able to know it's been remedied: B could obtain after-the-fact permission from A (perhaps in consideration of a fee or a cut of B's profits), without any notification to us.) Even if we and the users-for-commercial-purposes of WP can assert fair use in using A's words in discussing A's work, any claim that we are discussing B's work would be a transparent sham: discussion of B's paraphrasing work would be off-topic in the Algren bio and either off-topic or unencyclopedic nearly everywhere else; in fact we'd be infringing B's exclusive rights to their own paraphrasing of A's work, period, where copyright requires us to get permission (not enuf for GFDL) or do our own from paraphrasing the original. For that reason, their removal is a matter of WP:COPYVIO, and simply tinkering with the surrounding wording (rather than going to the original presumably used by the authors of the currently quoted paraphrases, and citing those sources) cannot be tolerated.
   BTW, "ironic" tho it is, i note without ironic meaning that the bad idea would have the virtue of increasing visibility of the fact that the primary reference for the "...Polonia" section is based almost entirely on a self-described "alternative weekly" with insignificant paid circulation, and apparently started by then recent graduates with insignificant professional experience. The alternative press has a place in our ref sections, but an article with its largest section based so heavily and apparently slavishly on such a pub may well be overrated in being a step above Start quality.

I am tagging the accompanying article as "in use", while i undertake replacement of quotes as i described at the end of point 1 above.
--Jerzy•t 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The article credits Algren's The Devil's Stocking being quoted by "Asteron" in the Southern Television hoax, but the bibliography says that the novel in question was published six years after the hoax took place. Either Algren was quoting the hoaxer rather than the other way round, or the bibliography's dates are wrong. 84.69.53.157 (talk) 16:22, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

This caused me some head-scratching - I discovered this quote while researching the Southern Television Hoax, and had originally included it in that article before everyone started moaning that it wasn't relevant. One possible point of confusion is that The Devil's Stocking, published [in 1983] posthumously after Algren's death [in 1981], was apparently based on a real-life story which Algren had written an article about for Esquire in 1975. The passage in Algren's book is near-verbatim to the published accounts of the 1977 hoax, either in the Fortean Times or the other American newspapers which printed reports of the incident. There is some doubt as to the accuracy of the reported transcripts of the hoax broadcast, which would seem to suggest that Algren was quoting the reports rather than the hoaxer or reports quoting (unpublished) Algren. Bonusballs (talk) 23:27, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this information about the hoax belongs in this article at all. It is only barely relevant to Algren's life. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 04:52, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I see no reason for this to be a section all of it's own. It is one line and Purdy really barely questions Algren's sexuality at all. So... I'm gonna be bold and merge it into something else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.139.125.228 (talk) 19:43, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Appears as himself in Goldstein (film), otherwise important for its director, and Second City cast. won a Cannes award. I dont know where this might fit in the article, if at all.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 00:26, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

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It's too bad that The Neon Wilderness is missing, so Draft:The Neon Wilderness is available. 62.147.25.99 (talk) 00:19, 1 April 2018 (UTC)