After it told me I wrote like James Joyce, I fed the “I Write Like” Facebook app the output of a bunch of prominent authors. Here’s what it thought they were:
author … text … what the machine said
James Joyce … Dubliners … James Joyce
David Foster Wallace … essay on Roger Federer … David Foster Wallace
Herman Melville … Bartleby the Scrivener … James Joyce
John Cheever … The Enormous Radio … David Foster Wallace
Douglas Adams … The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy … Douglas Adams
Kate Chopin … The Awakening … Raymond Chandler
Jane Austen … Pride and Prejudice … Jane Austen
Allen Ginsberg … Howl … James Joyce
Jimmy Carter … Always a Reckoning … Kurt Vonnegut
Abraham Lincoln … Gettysburg Address … H.P. Lovecraft
Homer … The Iliad (trans. Samuel Butler) … James Joyce
John Milton … Paradise Lost … William Shaespeare
Malcom Gladwell … “The Formula” … David Foster Wallace
O. Henry … “The Gift of the Magi” … James Joyce
Joseph Conrad … Lord Jim … Charles Dickens
William Burroughs .. Naked Lunch … David Foster Wallace
Miguel de Cervantes … Don Quixote … James Joyce
Kurt Vonnegut … “The Big Trip Up Yonder” … H.P. Lovecraft
Anne Tyler … “Noah’s Compass” … David Foster Wallace