Talk:The Business Man (short story)

A fact from The Business Man (short story) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 15 February 2008, and was viewed approximately 3,300 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Edgar Allan Poe satirized the concept of a self-made man in his story "The Business Man" using a character that makes his fortune cutting the tails off cats?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2008/February.

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Notable enough?

Okay, as probably the biggest Poe fan Wikipedia has ever seen, I'm okay to say this: does "The Business Man" really deserve its own article? I wouldn't mind seeing this page deleted. --Midnightdreary (talk) 02:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was wandering through the new pages, saw that the copyright bot had tagged this article, the original author had subsequently removed the text but promised to return, and I figured that if I put in all the appropriate infoboxes and whatnot that it would prevent having to clean it up later. I'm not a Poe historian and I know not of the general Wikipedia guidelines for his short stories, so if this is deletion and/or redirection fodder, then delete and/or redirect on! CosmicPenguin (Talk) 02:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for not being hostile to the suggestion. Lately, I've been a fan of quality over quantity, so there's my bias. Tell you what, I'll dig through my Poe library (in a week or so, Poe's birthday this weekend is keeping me busy) and see if I can find evidence of significant scholarship on this story. If a cursory search turns up anything fruitful, it may be worth expanding this article. --Midnightdreary (talk) 03:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Prod for deletion

I went ahead and prodded this for deletion. In addition to the lack of notability and lack of significant discussion in scholarly sources, it seems the text is a copyvio. --Midnightdreary (talk) 17:50, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, the PROD has been removed so now is a good time to decide: should this be taken to articles for deletion or can we find ways to improve this? --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:26, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I found this minor length article when I was deciding what Edgar Allan Poe story to read next, and helpful again when I felt like reading a summary. It may not be the strongest article for a Poe short story but leaving it here and allowing time for someone to add to it or improve it I think is the right thing. No sense sacrificing quantity to quality when both, over time, are achievable. Might it be worth noting in the main article - to stress that it's not major short story of Poe's, as opposed to not having the article imply that it's not a major short story of his - that this story is often only included in complete collections of Poe's tales, and usually is dropped when essential or collected abridged works are assembled? Thanks MD for all you Poe work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.131.92.170 (talk) 22:50, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This attempt at discussion is nearly two years old. Nevertheless, my argument with Poe and Wikipedia is usually pretty simple: why add new, low-quality articles, when we could instead focus on fewer but higher-quality articles? --Midnightdreary (talk) 23:43, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Phineas Gage

This article in New Scientist story links to articles which discuss this story and compare it to the case of Phineas Gage. Note however that there are errors in the NS, and maybe even the academic articles, as Gage was not in a travelling freak show "by the end of his life", but rather did have roughly that occupation for a while, briefly, after his accident but he took up other work before he died. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:24, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here's [1] Altshuler's "Prescient description of frontal lobe syndrome in an Edgar Allan Poe tale" (Lancet, 2004). EEng (talk) 04:40, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

ERROR

The article states that story did not appear in the February 1840 issue of Burton's as "The Business Man." I have seen this issue and it does appear as "The Business Man." Issue available online and easy enough to verify. [[[Special:Contributions/2604:6000:DBC4:5600:4CA4:48A:2AE6:B80|2604:6000:DBC4:5600:4CA4:48A:2AE6:B80]] (talk) 19:15, 18 June 2017 (UTC)][reply]

Yes, I did look it up and, indeed, the story is titled "Peter Pendulum" in that issue. Not sure what the error is that you're seeing. --Midnightdreary (talk) 01:13, 19 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]