Review of Don Foster's Author Unknown

Don Foster's Author Unkown charts various literary sleuthing adventures. As some of you may recall, Foster was the one who discovered that Joe Klein from Newsweek was the author of Primary Colors, the novel about the Clinton campaign trail. He picks some stories which he was involved in, some interesting, others. . . not so much. His doctoral dissertation was on a poem "A Funeral Elegy" by one W.S., which he proved, I think, was Shakespeare. He takes us through the Unabomber, the talking points memo of Monica Lewinsky, and some kook who some other kook was Thomas Pynchon. Most interestingly he establishes the real authorship of the poem "The Night Before Christmas" always attributed to Clement Clarke Moore.

His goal is to show that it is possible to obtain the authorship of some texts even if the author is and wants to remain anonomous.

Most of these make for very interesting tales. The last one about the Christmas story was pretty interesting, the one about the Unabomber really displayed the methodology better, and the Pynchon one I thought was pretty boring. But all in all it was a good read.

I think that the book would have been better if it contained a lot more of the methodology behind all of his work. There is a real sophistication behing stylometric analyses of literary texts, and I would have liked to see more of it. But this book was a good taste of how it worked, and it was fairly enjoyable.

Update So I was trying to think about whether there is an easy way to mask one's writing so that it is immune to this sort of challenge. There are a number of things I can think of. First, use spell-check. Then dileberately mispell random words. Second, run your text through a translation program. Say translate it from English to French. Make sure it is a language you don't know. Then run the French through another translation pogram that will convert it back to English. Do not use only one translation package. Then just fix up the text to make sure your meaning is intact. Finally, remove all punctuation, and just put back the essential bits.

I tried it for the review that I wrote, and here is the result:

Don Foster's Author Unkown tracks various adventures of literary investigations. As some of you can recall, Don Foster was one which discovred that Joe Klein of Newsweek was the author of Primary Colours, the novel of the track of campaigning of Clinton. It chooses some stories which were interesting, others. . not so much. Foster's doctoral thesis was on a poem "a Funeral Elegy" by W.S, which proved, I think, was Shakespeare. It takes us to the Unabomber, the famoust note of Monica Lewinsky, and some kook that some other kook thought was Thomas Pynchon. The most interesting was it establishes the true authorship of the poem " the Night Before Christmas" Always allotted to Clarke Clément Moore. Its goal will be obliged to show that it is possible to obtain the paternity of some texts even if the author is and wants to remain anonomous. The majority of those make for the very interesting tales. The last one of the history of Christmas was pretty interesting, one of Unabomber really demonstrated the methodology, and Pynchon one I think was pretty annoying. But overall it was goood read. I think that the book would have been better if it contained much more methodology behind all its work. There is true a sophistication in stylometric analyses of literary texts, and I would have liked to see more of it. But this book was a good taste of how it worked, and it was rather pleasant.