Worst Professor Ever

Style (and originality perhaps) is really simple honesty. No one is exactly like you.

–Sol Saks, Funny Business

Since I’m learning about search engines etc., I’ve been thinking a lot about algorithms (“ways computers figure stuff out”) and human-computer interactions. The “I Write Like” page used an algorithm — a lazy one meant to shill books — to find out something about the person using it. But when computers and literature interact, it’s exponentially more complicated the interaction between a single user and a computer. I mean,  the Kindle thinks it has the authority to repunctuate poetry, for crying out loud.

In terms of writing, “I Write Like…” had potential. I like the idea of it, because too many people think that creativity is coming up with something entirely new. Not likely. Creativity is doing something someone else has done, your way. You may as well understand your influences and know when you’re using them. So it cracked me up to be told I wrote like David Foster Wallace — I’ve never even read him — especially since I can already tell you who my influences are.

I write like Cynthia Heimel. Actually, I write because of Cynthia Heimel. In addition to writing several books, Cynthia Heimel was a columnist for The Village Voice, then Playboy. Why Playboy? Because they let her say what she wanted, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. She was too sexy for Ms., too funny to be a “serious” intellectual, and too angry to appear in “women’s” magazines. I’ve always thought she would have been even more successful had she written in the internet age.  (She’s not dead or anything, she’s just not writing regularly as far as I can tell.)

Cynthia Heimel thought that women could read Proust and discuss fashion, that they could like men and still be feminists, and that, while they were laughing, they still had a right to get angry about inequality. Also, men like her writing. I can’t tell you the number of times a guy’s been helping me move and I’ve found him reading my copy of Sex Tips for Girls. Cynthia Heimel is funny and angry and fashionable and sexy and smart, and I still don’t see “women’s” magazines (or blogs) doing what she did.  Anyway, I don’t have an algorithm to prove this, but if you like me you’ll probably like her. (Also check out this very funny interview where Cynthia Heimel reacts to Sex and the City. Ha.)

But then there’s also Fran Lebowitz, one of the few female curmudgeons. And Al Franken’s beautifully crafted satire. And if you’re going to replicate colloquial speech, there’s Lewis Black and Bernie Mac and Lenny Bruce, and even P.G. Wodehouse. Wodehouse had an unparalleled gift for phrasing; Russell Brand kind of does the same thing, only dirtier. Country music (mostly Texan) has a real knack for expression. I learned how not to be serious from Ovid, and I learned about actual jokewriting from Aristophanes and The Daily Show and Family Guy. It probably doesn’t help my attempts to be elegant when Rihanna and M.I.A. and Eminem get lodged in my brain. And narrative structure — I get my intros from any classical speech and my ellipsis from Catullus and my sense of story from Buffy and the Norse sagas and Dante and The Thousand and One Nights. Among other things.

When scholars study literature, this is exactly the stuff they try to figure out: who was reading what, who was imitating whom, and why. An algorithm could save you some work, it’s true, but it’s never going to tell you the whole story. Which is why you’re always going to need some human interference. Speaking of which, you’ll have to excuse me because I think I need to go fix the woefully inadequate Wikipedia article on Cynthia Heimel.