Otto v. Slothrop

[jporter]

>JPorter writes:
>
>[regarding Otto as revealing something about Gaddis, ditto for
>Slothrop and Pynchon]
>
>The original suggestion that Otto was Gaddis pretty stupid. This one
>is not much better. I would have thought it didn't need saying but
>evidently it does. *Otto reveals nothing about Gaddis*. He may indeed
>serve a purpose in the novel as some sort of foil for what art should
>be but as ever it is naive to presume that this has anything to do
>with our Willie.
>
>Personalising (or worse, psychologizing) the expression of Gaddis'
>thoughts, insights, ideas is worse than mere speculation it is also an
>admission of failure to engage with the novel per se - the most
>insulting form of criticism and just the sort of side show which has
>become the staple fare not just of bad literary academics but also
>education in general, newspapers, TV, religion and chattering,
>tittering masses everywhere. Read more of Gaddis books (double
>entendre intended) if you want confirmation of this. Ditto for Pynchon
>in spades.
>
>DKipen writes:
>
>> JP, re AI, I've always thought it might be fun to take a work written in
>> multiple voices and run them all through one of those
>> Gunning-Fogg-Flesch-Whosits style-analysis programs. You know, the kind that
>> purport to isolate a writer's syntactic fingerprint via some kind of
>> preposition-frequency matrix. Would the author really be disappearing inside
>> all his narrators, or would some consistent figure in the carpet still
>> remain? Does anybody know more than me, i.e. something, about these
>> algorithms?
>
>The guy who invented this technique was Sid Michaelson at Edinburgh,
>whose made a study of the works of Jane Austen in the 1970s.
>Prepositions are merely one index which has been suggested. Clause and
>phrase structure was another runner, as were vocabulary frequency
>tables and location of adjectives. I have a friend whose wife is
>studying for a PhD at Edinburgh (while lecturing at Bristol) and her
>research has shown that in almost every respect the presumptions on
>which such analysis (Michaelson's and later) is based are flawed. They
>have not demonstrated that there is such a thing as a "syntactic
>fingerprint".
>
>
>Andrew Dinn
>-----------
>O alter Duft aus Maerchenzeit / Berauschest wieder meine Sinne
>Ein naerrisch Heer aus Schelmerein / Durchschwirrt die leichte Luft


Hey. pass de cheez whiz and chips...and quit hoggin' da clicker...And don't
let me catch you messin 'round with dem Big Books  no more, ya here me! I'm
talkin' ta youz! Next ting ya know you'll be wan'n ta go ta collech, jeeez!

love & twitters, jp

p.s. Oh, lest I forget, Andy, as tacky as my interpretation of Otto and
Slothrop might have been, at least I made an attempt. We are all waiting
with bated breath for yours. Please, illuminate us...