Elvis Writes Like...

[Ypsilanti]

Came across an online article about the website, "I Write Like"...

http://iwl.me/

Type in any sample of writing--prose, journal entry, poetry--whatever--and click a button. The site will then "analyze" the text and tell you which famous author's style it most closely mimics. Naturally, I tried it out by pasting in a few Elvis lyrics. Here are the (somewhat bizarre) results...

Motel Matches...Stephen King
Little Atoms...David Foster Wallace
Still...Anne Rice
I Hope...Kurt Vonnegut
Hurry Down Doomsday...James Joyce
Red Cotton...Dan Brown

[Jack of All Parades]

Interesting. Thank you for sharing. I am having trouble getting my head around the connections. Probably most because you say you typed in lyrics of EC, which is a variant of poetry, and yet the program spits you back prose writers and not lyricists or poets. Given Joyce did dable in poetry, "Ecce Puer" being a minor favorite for me, none of the listed writers have, to my knowledge. "Little Atoms" would have to be complete with footnotes and explosively funny to come close to David Foster Wallace, which it does not in either case. Joyce, it can be argued is a sublime mimic, capable of mirroring a myriad of styles, so if he were to be spit out it would not surprise me as he probably could write convincingly in any prose style. I can see the bad 'purpleness' of "Red Cotton" in the equally bad 'purple prose' of Dan Brown. I do not know; as I say cannot get my head around the results.

[Top balcony]

This is fun, thanks for sharing.

I suppose if you consider that EC has chosen to "write" in a variety of musical styles eg:

pubrock
Americana
punk
classical
country
cabaret
all the others I can't be bothered to type

...then it shouldn't be such a surprise that his matched novelists are drawn from a variety of genres.

Colin Top Balcony

[Ypsilanti]

Interesting. Thank you for sharing. I am having trouble getting my head around the connections. Probably most because you say you typed in lyrics of EC, which is a variant of poetry, and yet the program spits you back prose writers and not lyricists or poets. Given Joyce did dable in poetry, "Ecce Puer" being a minor favorite for me, none of the listed writers have, to my knowledge. "Little Atoms" would have to be complete with footnotes and explosively funny to come close to David Foster Wallace, which it does not in either case. Joyce, it can be argued is a sublime mimic, capable of mirroring a myriad of styles, so if he were to be spit out it would not surprise me as he probably could write convincingly in any prose style. I do not know; as I say cannot get my head around the results.

Yes, well, I did say I thought the results were bizarre...
I only did it as kind of a lark--a little experiment--just to see what would happen.
Given the widely varying results, it seems "I Write Like" doesn't actually work very well.
Apparently, it operates like a SPAM filter--picking out "keywords".

Here's a question for you--you know a lot about literature--is there a particular poet or author that comes to mind when you read EC's lyrics?

[Jack of All Parades]

Bizarre is right- I just put my response in the program and voila I write like James Joyce! Needless to say, extremely flattered.

Now to the serious question and good question you posed- first I will never say I am an expert, just like to read- poetry being a chief passion. It is actually something I have thought about in the past. I think Thomas Hardy. Why? When you read him you read about the timeless struggles between men and women and mankind with nature and the cyclical movement of time. There is also an anger in Hardy. I also like his rejection of religion as a panacea for mankind and his condemnation of war and strife as a way to solve problems. Hardy's poems and novels are also filled with characters that one can easily identify with as people. I have fantasized that EC has a great familiarity with this artist and has drawn some of his lyric skill and maybe even themes from Hardy. EC's strong writing about the sexes, about characters of late, his perhaps questioning nature and antipathy towards war and conflict may very well have been influenced by a familiarity with Hardy; I would like to think so.

Of the more current crop of poets- I would like to think he has a familiarity with Philip Larkin and his mate, Kingsley Amis. Their hard edged and unflinching sardonic take on the world and how people relate to one another is mirrored in many an EC lyric or at least I read it as such. Their wry bitterness is something I continue to see in EC. What I do know is that EC has a great admiration for James Thurber and never travels without his writings packed in his suitcase.

Just some thoughts- now I have to go back to practicing on my James Joyce!

[Ypsilanti]

Thanks, Chris, for the extremely interesting response. I admit that I've become a very lazy reader--worse and worse as I get older, but you certainly make me want to read Hardy.

Weren't you shocked when Elvis was interviewed on Spectacle and said he never reads? That almost seems impossible.

[Jack of All Parades]

I would not say for myself shocked but a feeling of disingenuousness came to mind when he made that statement. I will give him some slack what with the schedule he maintains, the young children, etc. but I most certainly believe he reads, perhaps not fiction on a regular basis but I have to believe all his reviews, pieces about him, and articles about the world in general- you do not have the interests he maintains and not read. At least for certain he is lugging the Thurber tome around with him as he circles the globe and I have to believe he is tucking the boys in at night with a visit to Goodnight Moon or some other children's classic.

As to Hardy- you could do far worse. He is perhaps my favorite English novelist along with Joseph Conrad. That he wrote his marvelous novels and then chucked writing them to concentrate on poetry in the second half of his life has always intrigued me. He writes of 'real' people and their relations with a sort of universal truth in his books. Alexv, in a recent post on the EC/Israel thread, pokes fun at Constantine. There is a lot of truth in that gibe and Hardy frequently echoes that truth. Writing in the height of Victorian hypocrisy he poignantly pricked at religion and it echoes in his novels and poems, echoing a call back to a real worship of the natural world as personified by the ancients{Greek, Roman, or his native Celts}. Constantine's embracement of monotheism was the beginning of the end for me as relates to a 'religion'. Gore Vidal has it right when he states that the end began when the Emperor Julian was unsuccessful in returning the empire back to its pagan origins[read his novel, Julian ]. If it interests you, I recommend a book by AN Wilson, God's Funeral, which takes as it's title from a famous poem by Hardy.

As to Hardy, try the novels or for that matter the poems. Pophead wrote not too long ago about finishing The Mayor of Casterbridge and loving the book. The opening scene of that novel is exceedingly heart wrenching. Favorites for me are Far From the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Both feature strong female lead characters, a feature of a lot of Hardy's work and an aspect of him that I have always tried to encourage my daughters to explore. Excellent movies have also been done from both books with a fetching Julie Christie[a young man-and for that matter an old man favorite of mine-] and the intriguing Nastasia Kinski.

I will always push for his poetry- I have written on this site about connections I see with his poem "Neutral Tones" and EC. Give it a try. Besides being very readable it is also very technically challenging with his use of stress, stanzas and rhymes. My last visit to England included a pilgrimage to Poet's Corner to pay respects to his tablet and to his native Dorset to pay homage to where his heart was buried. He writes so well about woman, men and the way we deal with one another and of the 'wounds and scars' that we inflict upon one another. Finally it is Hardy's fatalism and delicious irony that always keeps me coming back for more[ a trait, the irony, that I love about EC.

[Ypsilanti]

Thank you! I am intrigued. I'll give Hardy a try!

[Jeremy Dylan]

Came across an online article about the website, "I Write Like"...

http://iwl.me/

Type in any sample of writing--prose, journal entry, poetry--whatever--and click a button. The site will then "analyze" the text and tell you which famous author's style it most closely mimics. Naturally, I tried it out by pasting in a few Elvis lyrics. Here are the (somewhat bizarre) results...

Motel Matches...Stephen King
Little Atoms...David Foster Wallace
Still...Anne Rice
I Hope...Kurt Vonnegut
Hurry Down Doomsday...James Joyce
Red Cotton...Dan Brown

Bwahaha! I'm not sure EC would appreciate that comparison.

I was opening this thread expecting to read Ray Davies or Cole Porter...

[Ypsilanti]

Bwahaha! I'm not sure EC would appreciate that comparison.

Yeah--it's a crazy list, right? I think EC might also be a bit horrified about Anne Rice & Stephen King. I can't see him being a fan of horny vampires and carnivorous swamp monsters

[wordnat]

...Cole Porter -- agreed! A very modern, somewhat dispeptic version of CP....