Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen R. Pastore

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete both. - Philippe 01:25, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Stephen R. Pastore

Stephen R. Pastore (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)
Never on These Shores (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Non-notable person. He is not mentioned by secondary sources. Steve Dufour (talk) 01:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Weak keep marginally notable [1], [2], [3]. JJL (talk) 01:45, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment concur with comments below about the Saturday Review link but still consider him marginally notable. There's no notability penalty for deception, is there? JJL (talk) 01:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete He is said to be an author yet there are no reviews of his books cited. Northwestgnome (talk) 02:12, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak keep if properly cited. Sgt. bender (talk) 03:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak keep Agreeing with JJL that it is "marginally notable". ·Add§hore· Talk/Cont 09:24, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete Any site that hosts a review of Pastore's work, other than Amazon, is most likely created and hosted by Pastore himself. In the first "Weak Keep" vote, the first reference is to "The Saturday Review" which has not existed since 1986, and the site linked is hosted by Pastore. Also, on Amazon, the editorial reviews are also faked. If the page is kept, I suggest noting that while he has made some donations to libraries, the items donated have yet to be verified as genuine, and every book he has published is self-published and is cites fictional and misleading reviews. Allumeur (talk) 14:41, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
  • DELETE. NO!!! 81.149.250.228 (talk) 13:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 02:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete All facts I tried to check on this author turned over evidence of misrepresentation by the author and or his claimed publisher. --Pleasantville (talk) 15:20, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete No secondary sources for 99% of material; links are to bogus sites; awards don't appear to exist; publisher phone number is the same as the author's. Before edits, claimed his book was nominated for the Pulitzer. ????? Not according to them...and what is the European Literary Critics Circle...does not appear to exist. To be fair, however, I did find out that Pastore was an attorney: http://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/attorney/AttorneyDetails?attorneyId=5383179 ontoyou (talk) 13:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete per Pleasantville. I edited this article extensively, and while there are many web hits to be found on the subject, they don't seem to have much substance behind them. I removed most of them from the article as being of unconfirmed validity, and what's left doesn't show notability. I also am going to add Never on These Shores to this nomination, as its notability is based entirely on the notability of the author, and on the validity of a award it claims. Finally, I don't know what it is about Mr Pastore, but there are too many SPAs around for me to feel altogether comfortable. I'm placing a warning template on this discussion. Xymmax (talk) 17:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  ATTENTION!

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scamdetective1 (talk) 13:32, 7 May 2008

  • CommentI would ask then that you immediately strike your comment until there is a verfiable source. Such a comment would be removed from an article under our biographies of living persons policy, and that policy is just as applicable to this space. Thanks, Xymmax (talk) 18:12, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your understanding and cooperation. Xymmax (talk) 18:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Xymmax (talk) 19:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep author and book! Found official award site which shows the book won the award in 2007 [4]; updated book's article. Other books by author More on Amazon! (Goodness people) Faith (talk) 19:44, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete The Award that this book is claimed to have won does not pass notability either.. with only one site that I have found mentioning it Fallenfromthesky (talk) 20:51, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Regarding the Aldous Huxley award. Here is the Whois webpage on the owners of the website domain that mentions Aldous Huxley....NetworkSolutions no less. http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=literaryawards.org Does the phone number for this company seem legitimate to you? Here is the website for Oxford Press, the owner of that domain name: www.Literaryawards.org. Here is the website for the REAL Oxford Press; type in Mr. Pastore's name to see if he's listed: http://www.oup.co.uk/ Ontoyou (talk) 17:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment I find it hard to believe that every site which has reviewed Pastore's books is a fake site from Pastore himself (isn't saying that without proof a violation of WP:BLP, anyway?). Rambles.net reviews heaps of books, including Pastore's NoTS [5]; NNDB an extensive database of noteworthy people has an entry on Sinclair Lewis listing "Sinclair Lewis: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1997, BY: Stephen R. Pastore" among the books about SL. Here's more:
    • James M. Hutchisson CV, Professor of American Literature and Southern Studies, Department of English, The Citadel, Charleston, South Carolina, lists Pastore as editor of "World So Wide: The Life Journey of Sinclair Lewis." Sinclair Lewis: A Descriptive Bibliography, ed. Stephen R. Pastore (New Haven, CT: Yale Books, 1997), pp. 21-36.
    • Oxford Journal, one of his books are cited in XVIII Bibliography and Textual Criticism, BAKER and WOMACK, Years Work Eng Studies.1997; 78: 968-987
    • Also cited by Reesman, Jeanne Campbell. Fiction: 1900 to the 1930s American Literary Scholarship - 1999, pp. 289-311 Duke University Press [6] "Stephen R. Pastore in ‘‘Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser: New. Letters and a Reexamination of Their Relationship’’ (ALR 32: 69–81)."
  • Also, Amazon and other reliable booksellers (Barnes and Noble, Tower Books, etc.) list at least 14 books by this author which alone makes him notable per Wiki guidelines. I'm at a loss here why this is even an issue. --Faith (talk) 21:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Searching google for "Aldous Huxley Prize" finds a review a Amazon by "Seano" which claims
Mr. Pastore is a scam artist. You'll notice the review above says it's from LosAngelesTimesBookReview.com. Try looking that site up. It's a parking page, not the LA Times Book Review. The "Aldous Huxley" Prize he supposedly won for this book is fictitious. He made it up, and a friend of his made two fake websites to make it look real. [...] His "publisher", Cohort Press, is listed at his home address. He made up his Wikipedia biography to say a book he hasn't published yet is nominated for a Pulitzer. [...]
(However, the page that google lists is not available any more, only Google's cache. Also, it seems to me that amazon reviewers are as anonymous as wikipedia editors.)
--The very model of a minor general (talk) 21:45, 10 May 2008 (UTC)


  • Comment: But is the author able to edit several major booksellers listings? Again, regardless of commentary on Google (BLP anyone?), there are 14 books listed on Amazon with ISBNs which correspond to other big booksellers. Also, I showed where respectable journals have papers mentioning this author's name (as well as the CV for the Citadel professor) as author/editor. I'm quickly losing interest because I saw this on the AfD list and only replied because I saw there was a problem as he's a genuine author, but it's not my thing, so this will be my last comment on the matter. Faith (talk) 22:12, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  • FaithF, I know you've disengaged, and I don't blame you, but for the edification of anyone else following this discussion let me reply briefly. Everything you've written about the subject's online links is correct - they are there, and normally I would be the first to agree that they point to notability. Here, however, as Pleasantville and others have noted, when you push behind the surface - such as Googling the author of a favorable review, or the source for an award, too frequently we can not verify it. The subject certainly is a real author, but there is a real question as to whether he's a notable one. My personal observation is that I think the Sinclair Lewis scholarship seems to be accurate, but the notable (in WP terms) fiction-writing career has been, to date, difficult to confirm. Xymmax (talk) 14:27, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: I did an analysis of those ISBN numbers. See my comment in the discussion of the Pastore biography itself for the details. Something doesn't add up.Ontoyou (talk) 17:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Repeat...delete: http://www.yalebooks.co.uk/yale/default.asp http://www.hup.harvard.edu/ http://academic.scranton.edu/organization/upress/forthcoming-releases.shtml http://academic.scranton.edu/organization/upress/current-releases.shtml http://www.oup.co.uk/search/ http://www.google.com/search?q=hamlin+house+press&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a Each of these websites can be used to see if they ever even heard of Stephen Pastore. Furthermore, these fourteen books are SELF published. There's nothing wrong with that, but Mr. Pastore is not the world reknowned author he purports to be. Mr. Pastore is president of Cohort Books.http://scifi.fictionfactor.com/sfmg1.pdf (Sorry you'll have to do a short download of the listing on sci fi publishers; Cohort & Mr. Pastore are listed on page 40....but there's the truth of it. Furthermore, the info is public and you don't have to pay for it.) Ontoyou (talk) 03:02, 11 May 2008 (UTC)


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.