Talk:Anthony Burgess - Misplaced Pages

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Conflict of Information

Under Tax Exile, Burgess' son is listed as killing himself, however, under Death, it claims that he died of natural causes. Neither statement has a citation. Njj4 (talk) 07:14, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Brinsford Lodge (places of residence)

Citation provided, and Brinsford Lodge page updated.

Quest for Burgess image

It seems that a public domain photo of Burgess remains elusive. Can anyone advise whether it would be permissible, under Misplaced Pages rules, to include on the Anthony Burgess page an image of the front cover of the Roger Lewis biography of Burgess downloaded from Amazon?

New plea for a Burgess photo

A public domain image of the writer is needed for the Anthony Burgess Misplaced Pages page. Can anyone oblige?

Appeal for a Burgess photo

The page would benefit from a Misplaced Pages-acceptable, public-domain photo of Anthony Burgess, if such an image could be found.

The need for a Misplaced Pages-approved image of this important writer has become urgent. Is there not a single photo of Burgess anywhere in the public domain? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 145.246.240.14 (talk • contribs) 15:30, 14 April 2006 UTC.

Not that I'm aware of, no. Most of the images are owned by various media outlets, and those that are not are probably owned by Liana. I know some folks at the HRC in Austin, and I keep meaning to ask around about it. Microtonal 00:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Anything Microtonal or anyone else can do in the direction of tracking down a Burgess image will for certain be greatly appreciated by Burgess readers and scholars worldwide...

???

Didn't Burgess work with the british government making propaganda and whatnot? that's what i heard.

Why delete "composer" from the opening paragraph? Burgess was, in fact, a composer his entire life. A rather good one, at that. I'm re-inserting it. Microtonal 8 July 2005 04:16 (UTC)

He enjoyed a miscellany of sexual partners from other lands, however, including Buginese, Japanese, Welsh, Malay, Chinese, Siamese, Italian and Singhalese

Those links are ridiculous. Why should 'Siamese' link to 'Prostitution in Thailand'? That's beyond me. Such useless links have no reason to be. :)

Conflict of Information

It says Burgess's father died twice. In the beginning it says 1948, but later on under Education it says 1938.

Really?

Anthony Burgess, known in Argentina as the British Borges, and Jorge Luis Borges, known in Britain as the Argentine Burgess, each spoke both English and Spanish fluently. But when Burgess-Borges met, each decided it would be unequal and unfair to the other, and inappropriate, to plump for either of the two languages when conversing. So the polyglot pair forged a compromise, deciding to conduct their lengthy, wide-ranging philological and literary conversations in Old Norse.

Bollocks. Someone has made this up based on Burgess's story of reciting a poem in Old English with Borges. Monogloto 00:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Too Much Trivia!

The trivia section takes up over half the article. Delete or serious edit required (I daresay it 'trivialises' his achievements)

One of my pet gripes is the large amount of trivia and pop-culture references in Misplaced Pages articles, however having read through the trivia in this article, most of it seems pretty interesting, and much of it not so trivial. Perhaps we could break out some of the subsections into their own sections? For example, I find the work methods points quite interesting, and I think one of the things that makes Burgess notable is the sheer quantity of his output. Presumably this point could be made outside the trivia section, and the points included there. Perhaps we could take the following steps:

draft a new table of contents
move as many of the interesting trivia points as we can into the new sections
edit, prune, and tidy
if any sections seem disproportionately large break them off into their own 'main articles' (this is how, for example the articles Posthumous fame of Vincent van Gogh and Vincent van Gogh's medical condition came into being)

What do you think? Stumps 08:01, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I certainly agree. Perhaps a great deal of the 'trivia' could be inserted into the main biographical chapters? Such a task would be somewhat daunting though. Doktor Waterhouse 07:32, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

re Habits Section. Health is of cardinal importance to Man, but why don't we leave the farts aside? I sure am glad I don't have to read about Burgess's flatulence and bout of chickenpox (in 1969) in Encyclopedia Britannica. You are genuflecting to the Gods of Gossip, gentlemen. (I seem to remember he also picked his nose.) Lahoratius 14:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Health section/circumcision status

In view of Burgess' date and place of birth and his (Roman) Catholic origins, it is hardly surprising that he was not circumcised. However, two things occur to me:

1) how does the writer of the article know; and

2) what the <blank> does it matter?

Surely, this is hardly relevant, let alone being grist to any "normal" encyclopædia writer's mill!

Hair Commodore 21:52, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more! Alfista inglese 22:00, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, are we going to write that about everyone who isn't circumcised? But "A lot of talk, no workshop" as we say in Sweden,so I'll remove it and not just talk about it. Zeck 07:37, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I noticed it had crept back in, so I removed it again. Salmanazar 09:53, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Brinsford Lodge (odyssey)

I'm intrigued by the reference to Brinsford Lodge in Wolverhampton (1946). Can anyone offer any further information on this claim, as it may inform the history of the Brinsford Lodge WP entry, if subtantiated. RichardEll 13:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Book Cover Images Violation of Copyright Laws?

Aren't the book cover images listed in this article a violation of copyright law? Clearly book covers are copyrighted to protect the graphic artist... Stevenmitchell 23:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Linguistic gifts

Is there any document of just how many languages he spoke?

Fair use rationale for Image:AnthonyBurgess InsideMrEnderby.jpg

Image:AnthonyBurgess InsideMrEnderby.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Misplaced Pages articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 20:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use removal

The use of images not in compliance with our fair-use criteria or our policy on nonfree content is not appropriate, and the images have been removed. Please do not restore them. -M 07:47, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

POV-check

There has been a great deal of pop-world plagiarism from Burgess. Some examples:

Plagiarism? Sounds POV to me. Can this be rewritten to sound more objective? David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍) 02:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Paolo-Andrea

When adding info on Paolo Andrea, Burgess' step/son, I moved his death from the "Death" section (which is about Burgess' death), into "Tax exile", so all the info on Paolo was together. It has now been reinstated in "Death", so is in twice.

Don't think we should have a separate "family" section, as Burgess' family is integral to his life story and writings

Rather than just revert it, would welcome second opinion as to where Paolo's death should be noted? Arjayay (talk) 09:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Teaching post

Anthony Burgess (aka John Wilson) taught me English at Banbury Grammar School during the 1950s.Oyster24 (talk) 11:19, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

health

dengue is not sandfly fever. Sandfly fever is Leishmaniasis. Assuming that one was wrong about dengue being sandfly fever, I left dengue and erased the "sandfly fever".

201.17.56.112 (talk) 23:50, 10 June 2008 (UTC)Carlos Daniel Llosa

Article issues

I'm not well versed regarding Burgess, but I have tagged the article with several issues and removed a large block of what amounts to non-encyclopedic, irrelevant, uncited and in some cases, speculation that was grouped into subheadings such as Habits (smoking, sex, drinking, health (including he had problems with flatulence, a cyst on his back and had chicken pox as a child), finances, transportation, and an extensive listing of places he lived. None of this is appropriate for an encyclopedia article. The article does need a lot of work to bring it into an encyclopedic tone. Wildhartlivie (talk) 03:41, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't quite follow. Assuming that information is correct and properly sourced why would it be non-encyclopedic? Whatever of that is mere speculation has to be removed of course - however what is sourced and documented can be part of the article nevertheless.--84.174.200.44 (talk) 11:51, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The overriding point is that it was uncited and some of it was speculative. Beyond that, the topics covered in the sections I removed isn't appropriate content for an encyclopedia article about a writer and his written work. An exhaustive listing of places he lived has no relevance unless all the places are connected to his work. A health section that makes points of flatulence, chicken pox and a back cyst is irrelevant to an article about a writer and his work. All of that was essentially unsourced, irrelevant trivia. WP:TRIV states Avoid creating lists of miscellaneous facts and WP:IINFO states Misplaced Pages is not an indiscriminate collection of information. The sort of lists that I removed from the article fall squarely in these categories. I mean come on, flatulence? Unless Burgess was notable for his farts, this doesn't belong. Wildhartlivie (talk) 12:13, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The material I removed, for the reasons stated above, has now twice been returned with no citations added, nor any attention paid to cleaning up or even attempting to bring the quality of this article up. One reverted managed to add three fact tags to a large portion of unencyclopedic, irrelevant trivia and claimed it is sourced from his novels and memoirs. While some of this may have come from those works, they are not sourced and cited, per WP policy. I am removing it once more, piece by piece, and will give rationale in the edit summary. If it is again returned with no other work done to the content, I will place a request for comment on this "Habit" section and its appropriateness in a Misplaced Pages article. No one has bothered to respond to this attempt to discuss this article's problems. Wildhartlivie (talk) 21:15, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Please don't remove the material again--at least, not just yet. There's a good faith effort underway to add appropriate sourcing, and it would be in keeping with Misplaced Pages to give that a chance to happen. I'm sorry that I'm not moving fast enough for your taste--adding three fact tags just this morning--but I'm trying.

As to the content of these passages--with all due respect, I have to ask: have you read much of Burgess's work? The man is notable for a cold critical eye and a brutal self-honesty. What you, perhaps understandably, dismiss as "irrelevant trivia" is, in fact, the raw material of some of his finest work. Burgess himself discoursed at length upon his flatulence, his back cysts, his smoking habits, his taste for illicit sex, and so forth; moreover, he made a point of giving many of his characters similar attributes, and has also discussed that at length.

These things may seem petty, gross and mundane, but Burgess made art out of the petty, gross and mundane. These things are as relevant to his work as heroin addiction is to William S. Burroughs.

That being said, I agree with you that better sourcing is called for. I'm rolling up my sleeves. Hope we can work together on this.-- P L E A T H E R _talk 01:39, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

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