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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 promoted by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 19 December 2024 [1].

The Man with the Golden Gun (novel)

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Nominator(s): SchroCat (talk) 07:38, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fleming was an unwell man when he wrote The Man with the Golden Gun, and this affected his writing, cutting his energy from over four hours writing a day down to an hour or so. He died six months after writing it, and before it was published. This article has been through a re-write recently and I'm grateful to Tim riley for his subsequent peer review. (For those bored of reviewing the Bond series, there are only three more of them to go after this) - SchroCat (talk) 07:38, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose, which I cannot fault. (Thanks for an enjoyable read). Graham Beards (talk) 12:30, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I peer reviewed the article and my few quibbles were dealt with satisfactorily. On a further read-through for FAC the article seems to me to meet all the FA criteria, and I am happy to support its elevation to FA. Tim riley talk 00:25, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

SchroCat, my apologies for putting my oar in again, but I have just noticed that in the final sentence of your footnote h, you have repeated the opening words of the sentence at the end of it, which I don't suppose you intended to do. (Not, I need hardly say, that this affects my support.) Tim riley talk 13:05, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well spotted, young man. Now deleted. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 13:16, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support as all of the suggested edits in the peer review were done and the prose is excellent. My edits to the page were just to add some archived links. Jon698 (talk) 16:44, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ian

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Recusing coord duties to review (as if I could resist!), I've always thought Golden Gun gets a raw deal from critics; yes there isn't the rich detail but it moves like lightning and unlike Benson I find nothing robot-like in Bond, who has some cracking dialogue with Scaramanga, Goodnight, Leiter and co. Of course, being a perverse creature I also think Licence to Kill is sadly underrated... ;-) In any case my opinions are of as little account as sparrow's tears so onto the commentary:

  • It’s not often I read a lead section and find nothing I want to tweak – nice work.
  • wrote to her bother – "brother" I assume (or perhaps she did find it a bother)?
  • but also had two alternatives which he could offer: – perhaps trim to but also considered?
  • the novel was viable for publication – trim "viable" to "fit", which I think flows better too?
  • Similarly, Fleming used the name of the secretary of the Royal St George's Golf Club – I don't think "Similarly" is needed.
  • Benson considers the character to have different personality from the previous stories and is robot-like – aside from needing "a" after "different", I think "to be robot-like" might be better grammatically.
  • Successive sentences beginning "Benson also" – could we vary?
  • Amis thinks Bond's personality is rather like that in Moonraker – I wonder if Amis expands on that, as I've recently re-read both books and I'm not sure how he means it.
  • Black describes how the reference to the Gestapo serves as a frame of reference to readers – could we replace a "reference"?

Stopping at the end of Development for now. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:32, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks Ian: all done in these two edits. Looking forward to any more you may have. (ps. for all the holes and lack of "the Fleming effect", it's one of mine too: the (ridiculously forced) entry of Leiter is always a welcome edition into the books, too). Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 07:47, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tks, the only thing I'm not sure about is Amis thinks Bond's personality has regenerated into "a more mature stage" than the return to his previous state. Reads a bit oddly to me, although you could probably fix it by just dropping "than the return to his previous state". Also still none the wiser about just how Amis compared his character to that in Moonraker... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 02:59, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Done. (Ignore the MR bit - it was a misreading on my part and has now been expunged) - SchroCat (talk) 15:15, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing with Style and Themes:

  • Within the text Benson identifies what he described as the "Fleming Sweep" -- tense change, should it be "describes"?
  • keep the storyline moving along at pace without the novel dropping -- "without the novel dropping" sounds odd to me, do we need it at all?
  • With The Man with the Golden Gun, Amis wrote of that the lack of the effect was one of "the deficiencies of The Man with the Golden Gun" -- "With The Man with the Golden Gun," seems superfluous.
  • In contrast to Live and let Die (1954) and Dr No (1958), where Jamaica was still part of the Empire -- "wherein"?

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:49, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Ian, all sorted. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 10:40, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing with Publication history:

  • The artist Richard Chopping undertook the cover design again -- for the uninitiated, "again" begs the question, could we say "Fleming's regular cover artist" or some such?

No concerns with Adaptations but I'll spend a bit more time on Critical reception before signing off. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:55, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image and source review from PMC

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Well, prose appears to be well and truly covered, so I'll put myself down for the fiddly bits. Hopefully tomorrow night if work isn't too busy. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:58, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's great - thanks PMC! I look forward to your comments. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 13:03, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cover image is correctly NFCC with an appropriate rationale. Because there was a {{better source requested}} template on it, I took the liberty of swapping the source link from one that linked directly to the image, to the website URL and have removed that template. No concerns with the reliability of sources. Books and journals for analysis, contemporary newspaper reviews, and websites used judiciously for supporting facts. I took the liberty of very minorly fixing a few sfns, but otherwise everything in that regard looks solid. No spot checks performed - nothing at the PR or the FAC indicated concern. Passes both image and source checks, very nice work again Schro! ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:32, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, PMC - that's great. Thanks for taking the extra steps on the licence tweaks too! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 07:56, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Crisco

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  • "it was not as polished as other Bond stories. Much of the detail contained in the previous novels was missing," - You already gave "The novel was not as detailed or polished as the others in the series," above, so this is redundant.
  • bordello might be worth wikilinking; Eton and diastema as well
  • Despite Plomer's original thought about the state of the manuscript, Fleming's publishers, Jonathan Cape, were concerned enough about the story to pass the manuscript to the writer Kingsley Amis to read on holiday, paying him £35 15 shillings for his thoughts and advice, although Amis' subsequent suggestions were not used by Cape. - Might be worth splitting
  • The sentence starting "Tony Hugill, the sugar planter mentioned in the book" might be overly detailed and benefit from splitting, especially given that it's connected to the next sentence with a semi-colon.
  • One of these was the poison gun used in the scene of the attempted assassination of M.
  • He begins the novel having been brainwashed by the Soviets, but is soon deprogrammed by the Secret Service. - You use "de-programmed" above.
  • Both characters use their criminal expertise in the service of communist Cuba and investing in casinos in Jamaica. - "Investing" should probably be "invest"
  • possessing three nipples - Maybe a link to supernumerary nipple?

Overall, very tight and an enjoyable read. No going out like a lamb here.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 13:04, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]


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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