Stephan Zielinski: Dwa

Type something in at the “I Write Like” site, “iwl.me”, and you’ll get an allegation that the text is written “like” that of someone famous.   Now, I’m sure it’s doing something kinda computational with its input, but…

H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness (from here): George Orwell.

George Orwell, Burmese Days, chapter one (from here): Margaret Mitchell.

Charles Manson quotes (from here, both pages, with the words “Charles Manson” removed): Kurt Vonnegut.

Mao Tse Tung (in translation, sources of quotes removed, from here): Kurt Vonnegut.

Unabomber’s Manifesto (from here): Mario Puzo.

Hitler’s Mein Kampf, chapter one (in translation, from here): Ernest Hemingway.

German news magazine article (from here): Edgar Allen Poe.

Poe’s “The Tell-tale Heart” (from here): Vladimir Nabokov.

Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” (from here): David Foster Wallace.

Twain’s “The War Prayer” (from here): David Foster Wallace.

Bourne shell source code (from here, both main.c and word.c):  David Foster Wallace.

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Addendum (2010 July 16): Jim Macdonald has documented how the site serves as a lead-in to suck money out of you via the old vanity press scam.  (To help foster the site’s coming and well-deserved fall into Internet history’s trash heap, I’ve edited out this post’s active pointer.)

Furthermore: by handing it real texts, I was already giving it far too much credit. Here, Bruce Cohen writes:

Maybe it has something to do with the author’s diet?

banana banana banana banana banana – Kurt Vonnegut
peach peach peach peach peach peach – Agatha Christie
watermelon watermelon watermelon watermelon watermelon watermelon – Mark Twain
broccoli broccoli broccoli broccoli broccoli broccoli – Chuck Palahniuk
steak steak steak steak steak steak – Ian Fleming
clam clam clam clam clam clam – Chuck Palahniuk
squid squid squid squid squid squid – Mario Puzo

And putting my previous comment into the mix:

word salad word salad word salad word salad word salad word salad – P. G. Wodehouse

For my part, I resolve– and I call on my friends and colleagues to join me– to banana watermelon clam steak clam steak clam steak.