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Wed 14 Jul, 2010 07:13 pm
This morning, my nephew posted on Facebook something that discouraged him. He had used an app called "I Write Like . . ." and the answer for him was Dan Brown.
Well, I could not resist.
I ran a short story I had written for NPR's first 3-minute short story contest. The analyzer came up with Vladimir Nabokov.
I had never read a word of Nabokov but I was encouraged.
I sent another story through. Stephen King. Really?
Then a third. James Joyce. Hmmmm. The first story was so much more Joycean.
Then another Stephen King. Maybe, I am consistent.
I found I couldn't resist and, several hours later, I ran an essay through. Edgar Allan Poe.
Try your own work! All you need is : iwl.me
I just threw in a piece I am not very fond of and got Nabokov again.
@plainoldme,
You must be horror struck or your mind is encumbered with tales of horror if you write like Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe. Stephen King was a school teacher before being a famous horror story writer. Nabokov wrote about forbidden love: Lolita. James Joyce wrote The Great Gatsby.
@talk72000,
YEah, and both Stevie and Eddie had drinking problems, which I don't. Try the analyzer out. It's fun!
Simone de Beauvoir was a huge fan of Poe's and she couldn't understand why Americans don't respect him more. The story was very unPoe-like.
@plainoldme,
I probably write like Henry Miller "The Tropic of Cancer'. No, just joking. I don't write well.
@talk72000,
Talk. I think you meant F Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby. Not picking on you. Just being helpful.
@edgarblythe,
Yes, you are right. Was James Joyce the one who wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover?
I actually have The Great Gatsby in my shelf.
@talk72000,
Joyce wrote Finnegan's Wake, Ulysses, Portrait of the Artist as a Young man
Lady Chatterley's lover is by D H Lawrence
@edgarblythe,
Thanks. I need to read James Joyce. I used to read a lot of mystery stuff like Agatha Christie and also smut.
You wouldn't believe it but I used to read Ayn Rand.
@talk72000,
I read Rand. Even subscribed to her newsletter (in the 1960s). Fell out of love almost as quickly as in.
When I first tackled Ulysses, I was dazzled, but could not get through it. It took several more years to get into the book and really gain from the experience. I occasionally dip into it even these days.
I'm currently learning cursive, I hope to improve my tersive.
I typed in something I posted on A2K on July 4th. It was, perhaps, typical of my writing style.
The so-called "analysis" came back as Kurt Vonnegot.
I may try it again with a few paragraphs from the old "Goth Boy Called Today" stories from back in the hey day of A2K writing. I actually spent time on those.
All my pencils are for left handers and the points are on the wrong end. Fortunately, you don't need to know cursive or anything else with a good keyboard.
It said I write like James Joyce. I was hoping for Steinbeck.
@dyslexia,
Good luck with that.
Apparently I write like David Foster Wallace and Stephen King. Weird.
@edgarblythe,
When I was in high school, then in grad school, Fitzgerald was in eclipse and no one read him. People actually read Zelda then.
I had to teach Great Gatsby, so I read it. I was amazed by how close it was to the movie with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. I saw it with a man who was an acting student who hadn't read the book either. He hated the movie so much he kept asking me if we could leave.
@plainoldme,
I recall reading that, one year, Fitzgerald's royalties totaled something like $5.
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