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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/F. Scott Fitzgerald/archive1

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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 archived by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 20 December 2021 [1].

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Nominator(s): Flask & ~ HAL333 06:28, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about... F. Scott Fitzgerald. He very well may have written the Great American Novel, but Fitzgerald was no one-hit wonder. This was my first Good Article, back when COVID first hit and I had endless amounts of time. More recently, Flask has done some tremendous work revamping it. And after a peer review, we feel it's fit to be a FA. ~ HAL333 06:28, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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  • File:F Scott Fitzgerald and his mother St Paul Minnesota.jpg Why is this image free in the US?
According to the Minnesota Historical Society, it is in the public domain, but I have been waiting two weeks for them to respond to my emails with written confirmation. If they do not respond within the next few days, I'll remove the image. — Flask (talk) 18:44, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fine with relying on copyright determinations by reputable institutions but if so that should be stated in the image description, eg: "According to the Minnesota Historical Society, this image is in the public domain in the United States". (t · c) buidhe 01:18, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
UPDATE: File:F Scott Fitzgerald and his mother St Paul Minnesota.jpg - On Monday, November 29, 2021, I again e-mailed the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) regarding the copyright status of this 1897 photograph. On Tuesday, December 7, 2021, at 12:56 p.m. CST, MNHS librarian Jenny McElroy replied to my inquiry and confirmed that "the photograph was produced in approximately 1897" and is in the public domain. Although the photograph is in the public domain, McElroy nonetheless requested that their digitized version be credited to the Minnesota Historical Society. Based on this information, I have updated the image license on Wikimedia Commons. I can also provide screenshots of the e-mail correspondence if needed. — Flask (talk) 20:12, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:F. Scott Fitzgerald - World War I Uniform - 1917.jpg Claim "published in 1917-1918 periodicals such as Prince" How do we know it was published in Prince? Did someone check the source and if so could they state the issue, page number, exact date etc. so it's verifiable?
  • File:F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Passport Book Page 4 Retouched.jpg File:Ernest Hemingway 1923 passport photo.jpg US passport photos are not necessarily public domain. They are not created by the federal government and passports are usually unpublished documents.
  • File:Downtown Saint Paul roof with Fitzgerald Theater mural in background.jpg The mural is copyrighted and since the photograph is included in the article precisely because of this mural, it cannot be argued to be incidental. (t · c) buidhe 07:09, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Removed. — Flask (talk) 18:44, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment
  • Some sections especially "Early life and education", "Early struggles and meteoric success", and "New York and the Jazz Age" are inordinately long. It would improve readability, especially for mobile viewers, to split them up or add subheadings. (t · c) buidhe 07:25, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Buidhe: Per your feedback, I have split up several larger sections and added new section titles. — Flask (talk) 02:30, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • IMO there are too many notes, which could be profitably deleted or moved to other articles (as I did with the material on Max Gerlach). For example, "Ginevra King married William "Bill" Mitchell on September 4, 1918.[58] Three days later, Fitzgerald declared his love for Zelda on September 7, 1918.[59]" It just duplicates what the article already says without adding new information. In general, if the info is important enough to include at all, it should not be in a note, conversely if it is not important enough to include in the article text, it should most likely be excluded entirely. (t · c) buidhe 01:18, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Buidhe: Per your feedback, I have culled many of the EFN notes. I'll do another pass tomorrow. — Flask (talk) 02:30, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Lost manuscripts" section seems WP:UNDUE especially since it is sourced to news coverage of the finds. The section is discussing apparently non-notable and it seems less important Fitzgerald works. I would axe the section and instead cover these works in a dedicated bibliography article. (t · c) buidhe 20:08, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Buidhe: Done. Shifted that section over to the F. Scott Fitzgerald bibliography article. — Flask (talk) 00:13, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose from DMT

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Sorry to be the one to usher a negative start. My biggest grievance is divvying. The intersection of Fitzgerald: the man and Fitzgerald the writer is negligible – the word theme is used once, by the man himself; prose is absent. I concur with Buidhe that a lot of material is superfluous. For example, the initial material concerning Ginevra King could be one paragraph. For example:

'Amid his sophomore year at Princeton, Fitzgerald returned home to Saint Paul, where the 19-year-old Fitzgerald met 16-year-old Chicago beauty and debutante Ginevra King with whom he fell deeply in love. The couple began a romantic relationship that would span several years. Their relationship was not without hindrance, chiefly Fitzgerald's lower class. Their relationship ended in January 1917; a distraught Fitzgerald requested she destroy his romantic letters professing his love, although he never destroyed King's letters which would eventually enter King's possession until her death.'

Summarised, more encyclopedic, less of a Xerox of a Xerox of a book biography – I'd recommend discussing the literary relation to King alongside the similar occurrence with Zelda. Elsewhere there's material that's simply trivial: "Four of the University's eating clubs offered him a membership at midyear, and he chose the University Cottage Club where its library still displays his desk and writing materials." Interesting, certainly, but also beckons that eternal question: "Did you know?"

Further examples of excessive material: "The affluent granddaughter of a Confederate senator whose extended family owned the White House of the Confederacy Zelda was one of the most celebrated debutantes of Montgomery's exclusive country club set." For this article's purpose, this can be summarised by noting Zelda as a much-celebrated southern belle. In that paragraph, I'd exercise removing the mentions of King; she has her own article, after all.

I'm not going to continue and highlight specific material; I don't like grandstanding, no more than is inherent to these hallowed halls. I merely recommend a reevaluation, perusing and deciding upon material that is essential and/or cannot/shouldn't be further summarised.

Returning to the point about themes, I think the lack of a section solely dedicated to discussing Fitzgerald's writings is unfortunate. The sections: "Critical reevaluation" and "Literary influence" are great starts. But they concern the reception to writings I know - assuming my only understanding is this article - little about. Of course, the specific articles on the novels befit in-depth analysis of that which pertains to them but there still must be overarching and recurrent matters: developing style, clingy themes and motifs, akin to the green light; use of grammar and differences in short story and novel writings. Fitzgerald's mate Hemingway provides a pretty good example.

All that being said, there's still a lot of very respectable craftsmanship here. The prose is high quality throughout – sojourned, what a great word. The images are similarly appropriate, embellishing the material throughout. And, frankly, given the Fitzgerald's entangled life and legacy, it's most commendable to be able to compile a detailed - if a little too much and a little lacking - biography. I just think that there are a few missteps.

All the best. DMT Biscuit (talk) 15:10, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@DMT Biscuit: Thank you for your feedback. In response to your concerns, I will do several passes and cut any details which seem superfluous. I also will try to compress several sections as well as expand the "Critical reevaluation" and "Literary influence" sections. However, I do not believe the sentence regarding Zelda's ties to the state elite and the Confederacy should be cut. The point is that Zelda was far more than a much celebrated Southern belle: Her family were among the foremost political elite which dominated the Alabama, and her father's uncle was the head of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan during Zelda's own lifetime. Removing that sentence both reduces Zelda to a wealthy flapper stereotype and, worse, whitewashes both her and her family. Given the ongoing reckoning in historical scholarship on this subject, that is something I do not feel we should do. Nevertheless, I understand you chose that sentence as merely one example among many, so I shall do my best to excise or compress other superfluous details. Hopefully, after these changes are undertaken, you can reassess the article. — Flask (talk) 18:22, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Flask: this is a perfectly sufficient rationale. Sometimes the analytic mind is solipsistic. Upon what you consider an ample assessment, I'd be happy to look over the article again. DMT Biscuit (talk) 19:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks DMT for bringing this up, I was going to mention it myself. Anton Chekhov was delisted last year for similar reasons—it contained no analysis on the works themselves. In addition to the Hemingway article recommended above, Ezra Pound and James Joyce (which was just recently rewritten) manage to fit much of this kind of information in the actual biography sections, so that might be an option to some extent. You could go the more direct route as Chinua Achebe and Edgar Allan Poe do with having specific sections dedicated to such information. Plenty of options. Aza24 (talk) 01:53, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Flask: I noticed a problem with one of the citations. You'll be able to see the problem and my resolution in the edit history. I sussed the problem out with this user script: User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors. I'd recommend it to circumvent other problems; for the record, there are no present problems. DMT Biscuit (talk) 13:07, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@DMT Biscuit: Thank you for fixing the citation error. On a side note, I have drafted new sections which focus upon Fitzgerald's fiction, and I will be adding them to the article within the next two days. Then I will do a full pass on the whole article. — Flask (talk) 23:56, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from The Most Comfortable Chair

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  • Citation error at reference 137 (<ref name="Max Gerlach"/>).
  • General observation, and I have not read the sources yet — While I don't see anything technically wrong with the way sfnms are used, there is some potential to reduce the amount of multiple sources cited to sentences. Take "Fitzgerald spent the bulk of his income on Zelda's psychiatric treatment and his daughter Scottie's expenses at Vassar College" for instance, which is referenced from four different sources — Graham & Frank 1958, p. 188; Ring 1985, p. 115; Mizener 1951, p. 290; Turnbull 1962, p. 303. Similarly, "One day, on a whim, they jumped into a water fountain at Union Square while sober" could probably be referenced from just one source, or less than four sources that it cites — Mizener 1951, p. 117; Turnbull 1962, p. 134; Bruccoli 2002, p. 131; Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, p. xxvi. Multiple sources in and of itself should not be an issue, but it is preferable to have specific attribution wherever possible, especially if the fact that is being cited is not a consensus or controversial opinion.
  • Since locations are used universally, "Edwards, Ivana" and "Metro's New Pictures" are missing them.

— The Most Comfortable Chair 06:00, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@The Most Comfortable Chair: Thank you for your feedback. I fixed the citation error; culled a number of redundant citations, and added the missing locations for Edwards and Metro Pictures. Let me know if you have any other suggestions, and I will implement them as soon as time permits. — Flask (talk) 01:36, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from blz 2049

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HAL333 tapped me on my talk page a little while ago for help with sourcing some additional public domain images of Fitzgerald, if possible. Working on that now and will touch base with the nominators elsewhere as I find images they might like to use. In the meantime, some quick comments:

  • I haven't reviewed the article in any serious depth, but I do have to echo some of DMT Biscuit's big-picture critiques. There's plenty about Fitzgerald's life and plenty about his legacy, but the absence of a section about his work and literary style is conspicuous. There's a hint of it in "Literary influence", but it's indirect—that section's primary focus is who his writing influenced, but nowhere is there a section on who influenced his own writing. I had this thought while searching the Internet Archive library for information about photos of Fitzgerald; I happened to come across the reprinted 1923 article "Prediction Is Made About James Joyce Novel: F. S. Fitzgerald Believes Ulysses Is Great Book of Future", which finds Fitzgerald opining on not only Joyce but also a whole other swath of authors and philosophers he admires. He called Conrad's Nostromo the novel of the preceding 50 years and Ulysses the novel of the next 50 years. His admiration for Nostromo is reflected in the lead of the article on that book, but the word "Conrad" only comes up once to note a similarity between the two authors but without noting Fitzgerald's intense admiration. The word "Keats" is missing too.
@Blz 2049: First, thank you very much for adding pictures to the article! The Scott and Zelda photo in particular is great. It is amazing how much different images can change the appearance of an article. Thank you also for your detailed feedback regarding the article's lack of literary and thematic analysis. I am currently writing a draft version of a Literary Analysis section to be appended to the article, and I will take your suggested sources into account. I hope to finish a rough draft of the section by this weekend. — Flask (talk) 20:49, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Done. — Flask (talk) 20:49, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The "Selected works" section could probably be subdivided into lists of novels/short stories. Also I think I see the intent behind putting the year first then the title, since the years form an easily scannable vertical column that way, but that format nonetheless strikes me as pretty irregular edit: I've now seen that this year-first list style is in use at Ernest Hemingway § Selected works, so that's fine (and was no big deal to begin with). —blz 2049 ➠ ❏ 07:59, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Blz 2049: For the ordering of the Selected works, I mostly imitated the ordering style of the Ernest Hemingway Featured Article. But, if others find the ordering too odd, I can change it. — Flask (talk)
  • This has been open for three weeks and shows no sign of gaining a consensus to promote. There seems to be agreement that outstanding promote, so I am archiving this. The usual two-week pause will apply. Gog the Mild (talk) 10:40, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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