So there’s this new thing all the kids are doing, if their Facebook pages are anything to judge by: “I Write Like,” which is this crazy website with a text box, and you paste in a short story of a blog post and it analyzes the text (for “word choice and writing style”) to tell you which writer your work most closely resembles.

I put in four different texts, and three out of four times it said that my writer was David Foster Wallace. I don’t have the faintest idea how this thing works or what kinda stuff it keys in on (and there’s no breakdown of what characterizes David Foster Wallace’s style (which would be really helpful, right? What does this SAY about my style))… BUT I am impressed with its consistency, that it could spot a resemblance to the same writer in three texts that I thought were pretty different from one another.

Of course, this is where I make the totally unacceptable confession that I’ve never read David Foster Wallace. I bought Infinite Jest when I was eighteen, but never even started it (initially impressed with its size, I was subsequently intimidated by it). Many dear friends and writer-heroes have tried to get me to read one thing or another, but it’s just never happened. I don’t have any prejudices or preconceived negative ideas about Mr. Wallace and his writing, but then again I read a lot of books, and the fact that one of his never once made it onto my bedside table probably means that his work *do*es have some kind of stigma in my mind, even if it’s just the stigma of “meh”…

So now I figure I’ve GOT to read him, right? Since, y’know, I’m him. Or he’s me. Or whatever.

Where do I start?

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 8:41 pm and is filed under The Poetry of Technology, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.