Talk:Artine Artinian

A fact from Artine Artinian appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 25 July 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Artine Artinian was used as a fictional character by two of the most prominent American writers of the 20th century?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/July.

Wikipedia

Biography

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles

Bulgaria Low‑importance

	Bulgaria portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Bulgaria, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Bulgaria on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BulgariaWikipedia:WikiProject BulgariaTemplate:WikiProject BulgariaBulgaria articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Please expand

The article never identifies who the "two of the most prominent American writers of the 20th century" are / were. It gives a quote from an honorary degree, but does not state what institution awarded the degree or when. This hardly seems worthy of the Main Page as a DYK in its current incomplete state. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. According to my Brittanica DVD "Artinian served as the basis for the character of professor Aristide Poncy in Mary McCarthy's 1952 novel The Groves of Academe and for the character of the psychiatrist Dr. Artinian in Gore Vidal's 1960 play The Best Man." Which raises the question: Is Mary McCarthy one of the most prominent American authors of the 20C? I'll leave that for those who know AmLit better than I. - clasqm

Thanks for answering the question missing from the entry itself, the only reason I followed the link at all. NickJones 21:00, 24 July 2007 (UTC)NickJones[reply]

How did this get on the main page?

I'm not even sure what this sentence is trying to say: "Artinian was an immigrant from Bulgaria who worked as a bootblack, Professor Artinian grew such a valuable collection of French literary manuscripts that he was able to leave teaching in his 50's."

Was he a "bootblack", or a Professor?

And this: "He spent his retirement to collecting his manuscripts and expanding the manuscripts, as well as portraits."

He spent his retirement time, collecting? Or he spent his retirement money on manuscripts? 216.158.51.82 20:07, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This whole entry needs to be rewritten by someone who knows something about Artinian (not me; never heard of him before today). Nearly the whole of the man's life and academic career and achievements are absent; there's no sense of why McCarthy and Vidal would consider him intriguing enough to fictionalize. From the dearth of information here, you'd have expected his NYT obit's subheadline to read: "Shoeshine Boy, Collector". NickJones 21:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)NickJones[reply]

There's a great deal more info at Armeniapedia. Donald Hosek 00:41, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Artine Artinian

Please expand

How did this get on the main page?

Navigation menu

Search