more on I Write Like and some E. R. Eddison

I ran some of my post on the folly of Qwest online chat "help" through the text analyzer at IWL (http://iwl.me/) and it decided that I wrote that like Cory Doctorow. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't see it.

E. R. Eddison "really did write Elizabethan prose in the 1930s" (according to Ursula Leguin in her essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," so I put a random paragraph from The Worm Ouroboros into the analyzer and it promptly concluded that he writes like H. G. Wells. Okay, well the software did roughly place him in period with his contemporaries, somehow perhaps recognizing the basic rhythms and vocabulary of the early 1900s. So I put a larger sample in and it changed its mind and said he writes like James Joyce. Again, it identified the period, but when I put a long sample in which he really pulled out all the stops (I'll quote it at the end of this post. It's majestic and evocative and lovely and as Leguin says, "His style is totally artificial, but it is never faked.") and I Write Like analyzed it as William Shakespeare.

I suppose what I was really trying to get a feel for was what the "I Write Like" folks are using to compare writing styles -- I gather vocabulary and sentence construction figure into it in some way, but I suspect it would take a linguist to identify and place all the pieces. Obviously my experiment with Eddison left me more puzzled than ever, but now I get to quote this striding, marvelous passage.

In that instant came a sound of music playing, but of what instruments they might not guess. Great thundering chords began it, like trumpets calling to battle, first high, then low, then shuddering down to silence; then that great call again, sounding defiance. Then the keys took new voices, groping in darkness, rising to passionate lament, hovering and dying away on the wind, until nought remained but a roll as of muffled thunder, long, low, quiet, but menacing ill. And now out of the darkness of that induction burst a mighty form, three ponderous blows, as of breakers that plunge and strike on a desolate shore; a pause; those blows again; a grinding pause; a rushing of wings as of Furies steaming up from the pit; another flight of them dreadful in its deliberation; then a wild rush upward and a swooping again; confusion of hell, ranging serpents blazing through night sky. Then on a sudden out of a distant key, a sweet melody, long-drawn and clear, like a blaze of low sun shine piercing the dust-clouds above a battle-field. This was but an interlude to the terror of the great main theme that came in tumultuous strides up again from the deeps, storming to a grand climacteric of fury and passing away into silence. Now came a majestic figure, stately and calm, born of that terror, leading to it again: battlings of these themes in many keys, and at last the great triple blow, thundering in new strength, crushing all joy and sweetness as with a mace of iron, battering the roots of life into a general ruin. But even in the main stride of its outrage and terror, that great power seemed to shrivel. The thunder-blasts crashed weaklier, the harsh blows rattled awry, and the vast frame of conquest and destroying violence sank down panting, tottered and rumbled ingloriously into silence.

Like men held in a trance those lords of Demonland listened to the last echoes of the great sad chord where that music had breathed out its heart, as if the very heart of wrath were broken. But this was not the end. Cold and serene as some chaste virgin vowed to the Gods, with clear eyes which see nought below high heaven, a quiet melody rose from that grave of terror. Weak it seemed at first, a little thing after that cataclysm; a little thing, like spring's first bud peeping after the blasting reign of cold and ice. Yet it walked undismayed, gathering as it went beauty and power. And on a sudden the folding doors swung open, shedding a flood of radiance down the stairs.