Talk:Pierre; or, The Ambiguities

message: This entry suggests that pierre was the last "conventional" novel. But what about Israel Potter? I think the whole line should be reworked. OrangeYouGlad 04:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After ten years this response will have little use, but you are right, and I have some other objections as well: Pierre itself is even less of a conventional novel than IP is, and the lead of an article on a novel should concentrate on that novel and is no place to describe the author's further literary career. If any contextualizing is necessary at all, which for this particular work seems indeed reasonable, it is the preceding career that led up to Pierre that should be touched upon rather than what happened after Pierre had already been written. MackyBeth (talk) 09:36, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

message: It bears mentioning that there is a shorter "Kraken Edition" (restored in 1995), which is purported to be what Melville had originally intended to publish.  Upon reviewing the manuscript, his publishers allegedly forced him to write some additional material; this was most likely the sub-plot regarding Pierre's failed attempt at becoming an author.  It has been speculated that these additions were satirical about the publishing industry, in response to the harsh reviews of Moby Dick which were coming out while Melville was working on Pierre.  
Here is a link which provides a little more details, if someone else wants to follow this up with factual references... 
http://bltnotjustasandwich.com/2012/05/11/maurice-sendak-and-melville-redux-pierre-vs-pierre/
It should also be pointed out that the 1995 Kraken Edition was published with 30 full-color illustrations by Maurice Sendak.
--130.20.185.186 (talk) 05:43, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Kraken Edition

message: I'm not tagging it, but this article is in serious need of references! --Midnightdreary 22:08, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: (deleted August 2008)
"The book certainly dares more than almost any other above-ground work of the nineteenth century, and it challenges the reader in ways suggestive of post-modern literature."
--When I wrote this as part of the original entry more than 3 years ago, I had in mind incest, atheism, homosexuality, nihilism (not to mention seduction, murder, and suicide, but those are less unusual); and as for precursors of post-modernism: the intense irony, the interpolated texts, the tortured syntax, the focus on the scene and origin of writing. I am not meaning to push a particular reading of the work, but rather to suggest that it has greater depth and importance than the "rural bowl of milk" that HM ironically termed it. 
What is gained by deleting this sentence? 
Is it the deleter's opposite point of view that the book doesn't attempt anything unusual and is a backward looking traditional romance?
I believe both parts of the sentence are factual and can be proved.Proyster (talk) 06:49, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Point of View?

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Pierre: or, The Ambiguities. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070323125628/http://www.critiquemagazine.com:80/article/pierre.html to http://www.critiquemagazine.com/article/pierre.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 15:31, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Why does the title of this article contain the obvious typo of having a colon in place of a semi-colon after "Pierre"? An image of the title page of the first edition, which shows the correct punctuation, is at the beginning of the piece. AnthroMimus (talk) 12:09, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Typo at creation in 2005, perhaps? In March 2007 an edit was made changing the semicolon to a colon at first mention in the lede, perhaps to be consistent with the title of the article. More important than the reason for this error is that the current title clearly is wrong and should be changed from colon to semi-colon. MackyBeth (talk) 16:43, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The lede also misspelled the title character's surname, which I corrected, but I do not know how to correct a title. AnthroMimus (talk) 20:29, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Good work! I checked with the Northwestern-Newberry edition, which has a nearly exhaustive listing of all textual problems, and the semi-colon is correct. The only way to changed a title is to move the article. If there is no grounds for controversy, any registered editor may do so (see WP:RM). I will do it.ch (talk) 01:08, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The page move seems to have worked with no problem, but there are many MANY articles which use the old punctuation. This is an annoyance rather than a major problem, since the links still lead to this article (through an automatically created redirect), but it would be good to get an administrator or someone with one of those powerful bots to change them in one swell foop rather than one by one.ch (talk) 01:29, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title 

message: Now that I look at it with new eyes, I believe that the article has undergone development and is at least "B" class: "The article is mostly complete and without major problems, but requires some further work to reach good article standards." 
Although I have made edits to the article, I do not see on the WP:CLASSES page that this disqualifies me as a member of the Novels taskforce from changing the rating. At any rate, if I am wrong, I apologize. Please undo if you disagree.ch (talk) 01:40, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Still looks halfway Start Class and C to me. If you check the body of the article against section 3 "Article body" of Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Novels you'll see that "mostly complete" does not apply yet. C says the article is "substantial, but is still missing important content". For a novel, I wouldn't call a 13,000 bytes article substantial. For comparison, Melville articles recently upgraded to B are Benito Cereno (45,000 bytes) and The Piazza Tales (25,000). Good thing is, the Pierre article does not have unsourced sections as Start Class articles usually do, that's why I would rate it halfway Start and C. ch doubled the size of this article in 2014 which makes ch the main editor, and it can go to B pretty fast if someone makes an effort for some days or a week, because it takes more to get it from Start to C than from C to B. MackyBeth (talk) 07:17, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: On second thoughts, let B stand as an incentive to simply work on the article until it meets B-grade requirements.MackyBeth (talk) 17:03, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Start to B Class 

message: Today I added some information about the books that influenced Pierre. All of the information credited to Murray (1949) was picked by checking what Sealts in 1988 found worth quoting or incorporating from Murray's work. What is and what is not outdated in an edition from 1949 can only be determined by looking at more recent scholarship, and to me it seems a reasonable assumption that what was still standing forty years later will probably still hold up.MackyBeth (talk) 16:55, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sealts and Murray