Talk:And He Built a Crooked House

disambiguation

As long as Wikipedia's own search engine does not work no disambiguation seems "needless". KF 13:48, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hrmm.... someone who gets to this article can't possibly be looking for the Agatha Christie novel, as far as I can see. Evercat 13:56, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Of course not, since the novel is called simply "Crooked House". No danger of confusion to the alert mind. -- 188.28.119.90 (talk) 13:55, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Crooked man

I wonder, if the heading of the story is connected to the nursery rhyme "There was a Crooked Man". Maybe there should be some reference to it? Aethralis 10:46, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Undoubtedly. But as it is now, the article has zero references. I don't think there is a huge critical literature, but there should be discussion by critics at least in the context of Heinlein chronologies.TCO (talk) 02:39, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I assume that the title is obviously a reference to that nursery rhyme. But what I wonder about is whether it was an intentional alteration, or whether Heinlein had actually mis-remembered the words of it. The nursery rhyme ends with "And they all lived together in a little crooked house". Tesseract12 (talk) 18:50, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Related stories, art?

This reminds me of a few M. C. Escher paintings, and a surprising number of cartoons or anime. Could this be (the? a?) originating story of a set of rooms where the topology of the rooms is messed up that all these pieces of art or entertainment came from? I see several of M. C. Escher's engravings that seem to be related, like 0ther World ('47), Relativity ('53) came after this story. I guess I ought to see if in my literature on Escher if he was ever inspired by Heinlein. But that doesn't explain the cartoon references. I don't know how many times it seemed Scooby-Doo encountered rooms where there was some rather interesting connections or you had a set of rooms that connected in a twisty fashion. Maybe it wasn't Scooby-Doo, but I swear it was some old cartoon. A filler episode of Bleach (anime) featured something like this recently. Root⁴(one) 04:11, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

The Scooby Doo stuff was probably just a running gag the creators thought of, or it was already in a cartoon. The purpose of it is just to be silly. I'm not sure about the Escher stuff though.216.186.210.168 00:46, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Mathematics fiction

Perhaps this article should be linked to the mathematics fiction list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mathematics_fiction_books unsigned

Yes, I agree. R. Creighton Buck, in his Advanced Calculus Book, third edition. page 4, makes reference to two of Robert Heinlein's books. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.183.110.20 (talk) 20:38, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

other editions

This story was also re-published in "The pocket book of science fiction" Ed. Donald A. Wollheim.Pocket books Inc., New York, 1943 eltonusp

I've seen it in at least half a dozen different anthologies, as noted on the Time-Gate page. -- 188.28.119.90 (talk) 14:18, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

change first image?

Why not just vertically rotate the double cross image rather than tag it with the comment that Teal's house had the extensions on the second floor? Seems like a simpler, more straight-forward way to get that point across. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.36.57.3 (talk) 05:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I'd rotate the image myself if I knew how. As it is I'll just change the caption to say it is upside down.Dalek9 (talk) 12:19, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

If you literally just rotated that image 180°, then you would get an unusual angle of view (looking up from below), and it would not seem too natural. I could make a little SVG, but it would have to be in Isometric projection, and would not be at all photorealistic... AnonMoos (talk) 21:34, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Managed to modify an SVG made by someone else... AnonMoos (talk) 02:26, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

address

The article says "In the story, it says that Quintus Teal lived at 8775 Lookout Mountain Avenue in Hollywood, across the street from the Hermit, the original Hermit of Hollywood. That address is actually across the street from Heinlein's own house at the time the story was written." The article on Laurel Canyon says "In real life, that address, #8775, was the residence of Mr. & Mrs. C. M. Kornbluth and later of Mr. & Mrs. Robert Heinlein." Which is correct? And is "the Original Hermit of Hollywood" a reference to Heinlein or to someone else? csloat (talk) 22:26, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

It's fairly well known that Heinlein put in "the Hermit of Hollywood" as a joke reference to himself. -- 188.28.119.90 (talk) 14:21, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Picard-Vessiot theory ??

What does differential Galois theory have to do with four-dimensional house building? Why does Teal refuse to discard it? And why should we think that he is supposed to discard a valid mathematical theory in the first place? This cryptic sentence in the plot summary does not seem to make any sense. —Emil J. 11:50, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not explained in the Heinlein story either (just a passing reference), and it's not actually that important... AnonMoos (talk) 14:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

edit wars are LAME

Main page: WP:LAME

We really don't need to have an edit war over punctuation. This is the kind of thing that gives Wikipedia a bad reputation. —And He Built a Crooked House is used here. www.amazon.com/dp/0312875576/?tag=tbook-20 Amazon doesn't even use the hyphen. At the very least, the quotation marks should not be part of the Wikipedia article. If someone wants the quotation marks to be part of the Wikipedia article again, let's form a consensus here on the talk page first. Heroeswithmetaphors (talk) 08:36, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

reference

reference 2 is to a link that does not work. Whether this is because the plans for a film have been cancelled or some other reason, the link should be either deleted or corrected.24.168.74.214 (talk) 21:06, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion it is very unfortunate that the film was never made. Tesseract12 (talk) 20:45, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Peter the Hermit

It appears that this article make reference to Peter the Hermit, aka the Hermit of Hollywood. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.183.110.20 (talk) 20:34, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

According to what I once read, a jocular reference to Heinlein himself when he lived there (see "address" section above on this page)... AnonMoos (talk) 23:39, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Joshua Tree

A bit of trivia:

At the time the story was written (1941), that place was officially called Joshua Tree National Monument. Heinlein had the truck driver refer to it as "Joshua-Tree National Forest". Since 1994, it has been Joshua Tree National Park.

Tesseract12 (talk) 20:32, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 7 December 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to And He Built a Crooked House (closed by non-admin page mover) Bensci54 (talk) 17:12, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

---

'—And He Built a Crooked House—' → "—And He Built a Crooked House—" – Outer quotation marks might be an integral part of this title, like "Heroes" (David Bowie album) (highlighted at WP:AT), but in such cases we use ordinary double quotation marks rather than single ones. Confusion over the proper formatting of the title is evident from the several bold page moves in the article history and the commentary by Heroeswithmetaphors at Talk:'—And He Built a Crooked House—'#edit wars are LAME, but there has never been an RM for this. The outer em dashes are also unusual, but for the moment I'm focused on the type of quotation marks. There is no unusual punctuation at all in the cited New York Times article. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database has no trailing em dash in its primary title, and shows six title variations in publications – including one with no punctuation at all. There are no other article titles that start with '— or "— or '– or "– on the entire English Wikipedia. See also "All You Zombies", which uses the same styling in its lead section and has similar redirects pointing to it (and was published in the same collection at least once, in 1959 and in paperback in 1961 – see The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (collection)). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 16:06, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Per MOS:MINORWORK, short stories are put in double quotes, so the proposed move would violate MOS:QWQ. Move to And He Built a Crooked House if anything, per NYT. Nardog (talk) 12:11, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

You may have missed the (four article) RM discussion at Talk:Marge Simpson in: "Screaming Yellow Honkers"#Requested move 13 October 2021. See also Talk:No More "I Love You's"#Requested move 2 July 2021 and Talk:"Slut!"#Requested move 4 December 2023. The way we title an article is not necessarily the way we reference it in some other article or in running text within the article. When we refer to an article, we can use a different type of quote marks and rely on redirects. When an article is viewed, there are no quote marks around its title, so that is not a MOS:QWQ situation, and the choice has been to format the title as if such quote marks are not present. These cases are rare enough that they are not a major maintenance headache.

Having said all that, I might be OK with moving this to And He Built a Crooked House. That would provide consistency with All You Zombies. It's just a question of whether to consider the punctuation marks part of the title or not. Currently, both articles say the quotation marks and dashes are part of the title.

—⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:34, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Oh, so we would be supposed to link to the redirect with single quotes in prose? That I can see, though it's preferably sorted out on the PAG level, and my preference is still the one with no punctuation absent evidence that it's not the common name. Nardog (talk) 21:43, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, correctly linking to it would use the single-quoted redirect or use a piped link (esp. in an infobox template, as discussed in WP:NOTBROKEN). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 03:51, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.