Wikipedia:Peer review/The End of the Road/archive1

The End of the Road[edit]

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because…

I've completely rewritten, restructured and fully referenced it. I'd like to get some input on how to improve it, with the goal of getting it ready for GA review.

Thanks, CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 23:08, 28 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Done Hat note link to the film needs to be corrected.
Done I think also that you need the other part of the hat note to say "End of the Road (disambiguation)".
teachers college should be teachers' college.

That's what I originally thought, but it appears that colleges for teachers prefer "teachers college". It makes me wonder what these colleges are teaching... CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 21:31, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done "he gets entangled" -> "he becomes entangled"
Done " by critics and Barth " -> "by both critics and Barth himself" or similar.
Done " were written in 1955 and are available" odd tense change, was it a one-volume edition originally?

Barth's first two novels are now available in a one-volume edition together. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 21:31, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done You link metafictional and postmodern but not fabulist, why not?
Done " Barth's LETTERS, most" perhaps " Barth's epistolatory novel LETTERS, most..."?
Done "rated X," normally X-rated?

Uh...I went and changed this, and then someone went and changed it back...

Done "two novels. Barth ..." -> "two novels. He..."
Done "The Floating Opera found a publisher" a little passive...
Done "with a new author's introduction" perhaps "a new introduction from Barth" as opposed to "a new (i.e. different) author"?
Done "October 4, 1955[5] " would recommend a comma after 1955.
Done conteporary - typo.
Done "on the Fabulist Giles Goat-Boy.[14]" why capitalise Fabulist?
Done Why use "black" and link to African American? Just stick to fact?
Done "rôles" no need for that diacritic, role is perfectly English nowadays.

Awww..... CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 21:31, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done "Jake" or "Jacob" or "Jacob Horner"? Don't abbreviate his name unless you've explained why or at the very least that you have.
Done "Joe and Jake enjoying intellectually " just "enjoy".
Done " Joe with Colt .45[22] in hand. " put the ref at the end of the sentence.
" of his Scriptotherapy on the Remobilization Farm" a lot of capital letters...

"Remobilization Farm" is the name of a place; all the therapies (Mythotherapy, etc) are capitalized in the book. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs

Done Image captions that are complete sentences need to take a full stop.
Done I would avoid squashing text between the two images.
Done "Jac Tharpe saw this change of style as evidence that the chapter had originated as a se@arate " not sure about Jac Tharpe and the @...
Done "pp. 182." for a single page ref, that should be p. 182
Ref 30, don't include the page numbers in the link.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying here. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 21:31, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done Ref 16 page range needs an en-dash.

The Rambling Man (talk) 16:44, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for the feedback! CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 21:31, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting article about an early work by an important 20th-century author. I'd like to see it advance to GA, and I hope my comments below will help nudge it in that direction.

Publishing history

Done "While attending Penn State... " - This suggests that Barth was a student at Penn State. I don't think that is correct. He taught at Penn State, but his earned degrees were from Johns Hopkins.

Done "which they felt" - Perhaps "which the publisher felt". I would say that a company is an "it" rather than a "they".

"A revised edition was published in 1967, restoring material originally intended to be in the book, with a new introduction by Barth." - Rather than leaving this as a one-sentence orphan paragraph, I would suggest expanding it to include something about the changes. What material was restored? Why?

I haven't had luck with this one. I know that the ending was restored in THe Floating Opera, but I haven't found out what was restored in The End of the Road. The sources I have access to don't say, and the only copy I have of the book is from after 1967. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 20:44, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Overview

"Controversial contemporary issues are presented in the book, such as abortion (which had yet to become widely accepted socially) and segregation." - I'd take this a bit further by adding (with citations to reliable sources) that abortion was then illegal in most states under most conditions. This changed dramatically in 1973 after Roe v. Wade.

Themes

"Horses and their symbols permeate the text." - So what? What is it about horses that's relevant or especially important? Cars, trees, and other things also "permeate the text", presumably. By the by, Morgan is a kind of horse, so the horse stuff may well be intentional and meant to be meaningful. But how? Also, what does the cited source mean by a symbol of a horse?

I've expanded this a bit. I'm surprised I missed the bit about Morgan's name, as it's mentioned right there in the source.

There are at least two essays that deal explicitly with the symbol of the horse in the novel: Jack David's "The Trojan Horse at the End of the Road" (1977) and Robert V. Hoskins III's "Swift, Dickens and the Horses in The End of the Road" (1979). Unfortunately, I don't have access to either of them. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 20:44, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Jake Horner takes Jean-Paul Sartre's famous existentialist line, "Existence precedes essence", saying "existence not only precedes essence: in the case of human beings it rather defies essence." - Could if be made more clear what "existence defies essence" might mean? Surely Jake Horner was not born with cosmopsis.

Style

"He sometimes indulges in bursts of eloquence: "A turning down of dinner damped, in ways subtle past knowing, manic keys on the flute of me, least pressed of all, which for a moment had shrilled me rarely." - I don't know what Harris says about this, but the syntax in this sentence goes beyond "eloquence" into a kind of playfulness with language that readers might not expect in "realistic" novels by Hemingway or Steinbeck, let's say. Even in these early novels, Barth can't resist showing off his linguistic dexterity. This sentence is like a little jazz riff in the middle of an otherwise familiar tune, metaphorically speaking. Perhaps one or more of the critics have something to say about this.

Done "to which Jake is witness and finds himself unable to conquer his emotions with reason." - Grammar. Maybe: "to which Jake is witness and after which he is unable to conquer emotion with reason."

Done "Jack Tharpe saw this change of style" - Who is Jack Tharpe? He is not mentioned in the bibliography.

Jac Tharpe wrote John Barth: The Comic Sublimity of Paradox, which was quoted in the source given. Unfotunately, I don't have access to the book itself. Added to "Further reading". CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 20:44, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done "one that was prepared for in the previous chapter with the subtle introduction of some accidental naturalistic detail" - This seems contradictory. Can something that is subtly introduced be said to be accidental?

"Accidental" in this case was meant to mean, I think, "in passing" rather than "not consciously". Reworded. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 20:44, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Joe Morgan

Done "Despite Jake's making fun of her, he likes Jake for appearing to take her seriously, as few men would take a woman seriously." - Instead of "her", perhaps "Rennie" would be more clear, followed by "Joe" to eliminate ambiguity. I also wonder about "as few men would take a woman seriously". Perhaps something like, "as he believes that few men would take a woman seriously" would be more accurate.

"voyeuristic in the rationalized probing of his wife" - Ouch! "Probe" is probably not the best word to use here. Maybe "seems to take voyeuristic pleasure in the details of his wife's affair with Jake."

Well, a lot of the probing does happen in bed... CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 20:49, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rennie Morgan

"Joe's wife, she looks up to her husband, who has twice knocked her out cold in the past." - This is not a complete sentence. Deleting ", she" would make it a complete sentence, but it would still express something odd. Does she look up to him because he has knocked her out cold? This seems doubtful.

I'll have to find something about it in the sources I have, but Joe knocking her cold is presented as a key point in their relationship.

Sentence reworded. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 20:44, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done "She is treated and observed like a patient... " - Better if flipped to "observed and treated" since that is the normal order.

Really? okay. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 20:44, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Doctor

Done "An elderly black doctor, specializing in immobility and paralysis, who works outside the law." - For consistency, I'd make this into a complete sentence. As it stands, it's merely a fragment.

Peggy Rankin

This is the first mention of Rankin in the article. Shouldn't she be mentioned at least briefly in the Plot section?

This did bug me. I'll try to hunt down more on her, but she didn't get much notice in the sources I had access to. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 20:44, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reception and legacy

Done "Jonathan Lethem has written about the influence The End of the Road had on his novel As She Climbed Across the Table." - Almost anyone reading this will want to know something more. How was Lethem influenced?

This section is too thin to qualify as broad in coverage. How have feminist critics regarded this novel, which sounds misogynistic? How have critics concerned with social issues regarded this novel? (Does it really deal with segregation, abortion, or anything political in any meaningful way?) What has the more mature Barth said about the book?

Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 02:17, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is helpful, and I've made a number of changes based on your input. A lot of it will be difficult for me to do myself, however. I live in Japan, so my sources are limited to what's on my shelf and what's online. Alas, I can't just pop over to the library and put in a request for an inter-library loan for more sources. It would be awesome if someone else (with access to more sources) could motivate themselves to contribute more substantially. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 01:24, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You might be able to team up with someone in the U.S. who has an interest in Barth. If you're looking for particular articles, I might be able to track them down for you. I have access to JSTOR, for example, through my local library. The language and literature section of JSTOR includes 290 journals, and some of them probably contain articles about Barth. Just let me know if you have a specific title in mind. Tracking down everything ever published about The End of the Road goes beyond what I'd be willing to do. Somebody might, though. If you can figure out a way to do that kind of in-depth research, you'll be in a better position for GAN and eventually a shot at FA, which requires comprehensive treatment of the subject. Finetooth (talk) 02:01, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]