[Next Production] My Four Weeks in France by Ring Lardner

[Jon Erdman]

Making a new thread just to keep everything under a more sensible title. I've already discussed the idea of producing this book with Alex in another thread that can be found here: https://groups.google.com/g/standardebooks/c/6b2agbTyHiE

Scans: https://archive.org/details/myfourweeksinfra00lard

Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73059

Repo: https://github.com/homestar92/ring-lardner_my-four-weeks-in-france

This book represents the entirety of Ring Lardner's truly nonfiction output that meets the SE requirements of "timeless". The entire remainder of his nonfiction corpus were ephemeral newspaper columns. The book documents his time as a field correspondent during WW1.

[Alex Cabal]

OK, David will manage with Weijia reviewing.

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[Jon Erdman]

I have a question about some of the headers for the sections in this book. The book is presented as a series of diary entries.

Occasionally he'll write the day of the week in French. These headers are already italicized and while setting these foreign words in Roman text, wouldn't cause the *whole* dateline to be Roman, it would cause the vast majority of it to be:

So my question here is, which route do I take for these? Leave the whole thing italic and put the xml:lang tags in a span instead? Set the French words in Roman text since it's not *technically* 100% of the dateline? Format all of the datelines in some other format than italics so that we can italicize the French words when they appear?

I'm leaning towards just leaving everything italic in these cases. Some of them don't have a location so the only non-italic part on those would be the actual number of the date, and I would prefer an approach that allows everything to be consistent.

[David]

That is a tricky one. My first thought was that these should be handled like epigraphs in which normally italicized strings become "regular" in an already italicized context. And perhaps that is still the right thing. It does make for odd looking headings, though.

This is type-setting (publisher/editorial) choice, though. Your suggestion to handle them differently is appealing (to me!). How about all these headings get small-caps (very common for headings of this kind) instead of italics, then the French strings can be wrapped with `<i xml:lang="fr">` tags as usual.

I see you've currently got (for this example):

    <span xml:lang="fr">Lundi</span>, 20 <span xml:lang="fr">Août</span>

I might be inclined to have:

    <span xml:lang="fr">Lundi, 20 Août</span> -> <i xml:lang="fr">Lundi, 20 Août.</i>

and assume one reads here "vingt" rather than "twenty". (And note also the final `.` is within the wrapper in this case.)

If I've guessed wrong here, someone will tell us shortly!

[Jon Erdman]

You basically read my mind. Smallcaps is basically exactly what I had in mind myself when I suggested "something else entirely".

As long as Alex has no objections to it, that's kind of what I was hoping you'd say.

Now, while I'm in here asking questions, is what I did with using divs to separate the entries OK? I basically started looking through the corpus for other diary-style books to see what they did and I emulated what I saw done in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

[David]

Using `div`s to separate the entries is just fine. _Gentleman Prefer Blondes_ is the comparator of choice, and that structure was prescribed by Alex, so should be good! :)

[Jon Erdman]

This may seem an unusual choice at first glance for a book that's ostensibly a WW1 travelogue. However, for the cover, I would like to use "Paris Through the Window" by Marc Chagall. It's already in the artwork gallery: https://standardebooks.org/artworks/marc-chagall/paris-through-the-window

While the book *is* about Ring Lardner's time as a war correspondent in WW1, the book never depicts an actual battle and barely even gets into the trenches at all. The events of the book mostly involve the author being railroaded by bureaucracy every time he tries to gain access to the actual front lines to actually write some proper war journalism, which he ultimately never really gets to properly write because what little material he has to work with doesn't pass the censors. It is very tongue-in-cheek in its tone and it focuses mostly on the absurdities of wartime government bureaucracy rather than the horrors of combat. So for that reason I don't want to go with a conventional "war" cover. I think this cover is fitting because it's clearly depicting early 20th century Paris, but through a chaotic and slightly absurdist lens.

[David]

Hmm... You make a reasonable case for this cover. Of course, it would be good to see a mock-up as this one looks like a challenge to crop for the 2:3 cover. The Eiffel Tower helps, as the title is _My Four Weeks in FRANCE_, after all.

You might run across something that works better, but let's see how this looks with the SE titlebox + crop.

[Jon Erdman]

Sure, here's my mockup:

If you don't care for that one, and believe that it's just too "out there", I can keep looking. Push comes to shove, I'm sure I can find a more generic painting of Paris to use. It has proven pretty tough to find paintings that clearly depict wartime in France, but back in the cities away from the actual trenches!

[Jon Erdman]

Another idea if you want something a little less... out there. This is a Delaunay piece, a somewhat abstract rendering of the eiffel tower (he did a whole series of these, this is the one that I was able to locate PD proof for):
https://standardebooks.org/artworks/robert-delaunay/tour-eiffel

Not yet approved, but the PD proof was submitted with the art, so I imagine it would be cleared for copyright purposes.

Here's a mockup of what the cover would look like for this one.:

[Robin Whittleton]

I was thinking of that Delaunay too (I’ve approved your submission) but for this case I prefer the Chagall myself.

-Robin

On 30 Nov 2025, at 19:56, Jon Erdman <homes...@gmail.com> wrote:

Another idea if you want something a little less... out there. This is a Delaunay piece, a somewhat abstract rendering of the eiffel tower (he did a whole series of these, this is the one that I was able to locate PD proof for):
https://standardebooks.org/artworks/robert-delaunay/tour-eiffel

Not yet approved, but the PD proof was submitted with the art, so I imagine it would be cleared for copyright purposes.

Here's a mockup of what the cover would look like for this one.:

<Screenshot 2025-11-30 135426.png>

On Sunday, November 30, 2025 at 9:06:15 AM UTC-5 Jon Erdman wrote:

Sure, here's my mockup:

If you don't care for that one, and believe that it's just too "out there", I can keep looking. Push comes to shove, I'm sure I can find a more generic painting of Paris to use. It has proven pretty tough to find paintings that clearly depict wartime in France, but back in the cities away from the actual trenches!

On Sunday, November 30, 2025 at 5:13:22 AM UTC-5 David wrote:

Hmm... You make a reasonable case for this cover. Of course, it would be good to see a mock-up as this one looks like a challenge to crop for the 2:3 cover. The Eiffel Tower helps, as the title is _My Four Weeks in FRANCE_, after all.

You might run across something that works better, but let's see how this looks with the SE titlebox + crop.

On Sunday, 30 November 2025 at 04:27:06 UTC Jon wrote:

This may seem an unusual choice at first glance for a book that's ostensibly a WW1 travelogue. However, for the cover, I would like to use "Paris Through the Window" by Marc Chagall. It's already in the artwork gallery: https://standardebooks.org/artworks/marc-chagall/paris-through-the-window

While the book *is* about Ring Lardner's time as a war correspondent in WW1, the book never depicts an actual battle and barely even gets into the trenches at all. The events of the book mostly involve the author being railroaded by bureaucracy every time he tries to gain access to the actual front lines to actually write some proper war journalism, which he ultimately never really gets to properly write because what little material he has to work with doesn't pass the censors. It is very tongue-in-cheek in its tone and it focuses mostly on the absurdities of wartime government bureaucracy rather than the horrors of combat. So for that reason I don't want to go with a conventional "war" cover. I think this cover is fitting because it's clearly depicting early 20th century Paris, but through a chaotic and slightly absurdist lens.

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<Screenshot 2025-11-30 135426.png>

[Jon Erdman]

I agree, I think some of the absurdities in the Chagall painting are really effective at communicating to a prospective reader that this isn't a grim, serious war memoir but something a bit more lighthearted and slightly satirical in tone. David, do you have any objections to the Chagall piece having seen the mockup? If not then I think all I have to do is fill out metadata and send it on for review.

At any rate, I'm glad that I was able to track down PD proof to get one of those Delaunay paintings in the gallery. Those are great paintings, and I'm sure somebody will find the perfect book for it.

[David]

OK then! I've made the assignment on the Chagall. Perhaps a *slightly* tighter crop of the left would get rid of the vertical red bit? But nicely done in any case.

D.

On Sunday, 30 November 2025 at 19:36:18 UTC Jon wrote:

I agree, I think some of the absurdities in the Chagall painting are really effective at communicating to a prospective reader that this isn't a grim, serious war memoir but something a bit more lighthearted and slightly satirical in tone. David, do you have any objections to the Chagall piece having seen the mockup? If not then I think all I have to do is fill out metadata and send it on for review.

At any rate, I'm glad that I was able to track down PD proof to get one of those Delaunay paintings in the gallery. Those are great paintings, and I'm sure somebody will find the perfect book for it.

On Sunday, November 30, 2025 at 2:20:26 PM UTC-5 robin wrote:

I was thinking of that Delaunay too (I’ve approved your submission) but for this case I prefer the Chagall myself.

-Robin

On 30 Nov 2025, at 19:56, Jon  wrote:

Another idea if you want something a little less... out there. This is a Delaunay piece, a somewhat abstract rendering of the eiffel tower (he did a whole series of these, this is the one that I was able to locate PD proof for):
https://standardebooks.org/artworks/robert-delaunay/tour-eiffel

Not yet approved, but the PD proof was submitted with the art, so I imagine it would be cleared for copyright purposes.

Here's a mockup of what the cover would look like for this one.:

<Screenshot 2025-11-30 135426.png>

On Sunday, November 30, 2025 at 9:06:15 AM UTC-5 Jon Erdman wrote:

Sure, here's my mockup:

[Jon Erdman]

That should be straightforward enough. I'll crop it a smidge tighter when I commit it to the repo so that the red windowframe isn't creeping into the frame. Thanks! I should be able to get the metadata wrapped up tonight.

[Jon Erdman]

Weija, this is ready for review.

I made one stylistic change that departs from what we see in the print edition - I rendered the datelines for the diary entries in smallcaps. The reason I did this is so that the handful that are written in French could be italicized and actually stand out from the ones that are in English.

[Weijia Cheng]

Ok, this is a busy week but I will try to get on it soon.

[Weijia Cheng]

Good work. I filed a review.

[Weijia Cheng]

Alex, this is ready for you.

[Alex Cabal]

Looks very good Jon, I've released it! Thanks!

On 12/2/25 6:41 AM, 'Weijia Cheng' via Standard Ebooks wrote:
> Alex, this is ready for you.
>
> On Monday, December 1, 2025 at 7:42:29 PM UTC-5 Weijia Cheng wrote:
>
> Good work. I filed a review.
>
> On Sunday, November 30, 2025 at 8:44:10 PM UTC-5 Weijia Cheng wrote:
>
> Ok, this is a busy week but I will try to get on it soon.
>
> On Sunday, November 30, 2025 at 8:35:03 PM UTC-5
> homes...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Weija, this is ready for review.
>
> I made one stylistic change that departs from what we see in
> the print edition - I rendered the datelines for the diary
> entries in smallcaps. The reason I did this is so that the
> handful that are written in French could be italicized and
> actually stand out from the ones that are in English.
>
> On Sunday, November 30, 2025 at 3:27:38 PM UTC-5 Jon Erdman
> wrote:
>
> That should be straightforward enough. I'll crop it a
> smidge tighter when I commit it to the repo so that the
> red windowframe isn't creeping into the frame. Thanks! I
> should be able to get the metadata wrapped up tonight.
> On Sunday, November 30, 2025 at 3:10:27 PM UTC-5 David
> wrote:
>

> OK then! I've made the assignment <https://
> standardebooks.org/artworks/marc-chagall/paris-
> through-the-window> on the Chagall. Perhaps a

>> robert-delaunay/tour-eiffel <https://
>> standardebooks.org/artworks/robert-
>> delaunay/tour-eiffel>

>>
>> Not yet approved, but the PD proof was
>> submitted with the art, so I imagine it
>> would be cleared for copyright purposes.
>> Here's a mockup of what the cover would
>> look like for this one.:
>>
>> <Screenshot 2025-11-30 135426.png>
>>
>> On Sunday, November 30, 2025 at 9:06:15 AM
>> UTC-5 Jon Erdman wrote:
>
>> Sure, here's my mockup:
>>
>>
>> If you don't care for that one, and
>> believe that it's just too "out
>> there", I can keep looking. Push comes
>> to shove, I'm sure I can find a more
>> generic painting of Paris to use. It
>> has proven pretty tough to find
>> paintings that clearly depict wartime
>> in France, but back in the cities away
>> from the actual trenches!
>

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