If you haven't found it yet, the website I Write Like is a very entertaining time-waster.
The site lets you insert a piece of writing (yours or someone else's) and then using what it claims is a "statistical analysis tool," it analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of famous writers.
Then it spits out an author's name, like Zoltar Speaks. (My recent piece about disgruntled Burlington chicken owners, it turns out, is a dead-ringer for David Foster Wallace.)
Being local politics junkies, we were curious who Vermont's statewide political candidates write like. So we copied their candidate statements from the Burlington Free Press "Comment & Debate" page and plugged them into I Write Like.
What did we learn? Either several candidates are sharing a single ghost-writer, or the program is a literary Magic 8-ball, with a set number of stock answers. Or it's totally legit and some of Vermont's wannabe leaders (or the staffers who helped write these pieces) write alike.
Four candidates — including two Democrats, a Republican and a Progressive — write like H.P. Lovecraft (pictured), the American horror and science fiction author associated with the subgenre "weird fiction." Indeed, politics at times can seem like a weird fiction.
Here's how rest came out:
Governor
Peter Shumlin (Democrat): David Foster Wallace
Brian Dubie (Republican): Arthur C. Clarke
Lt. Governor
Steve Howard (Democrat): Stephen King
Phil Scott (Republican): Jonathan Swift
Marjorie Power (Progressive): H.P. Lovecraft
Secretary of State
Jim Condos (Democrat): H.P. Lovecraft
Jason Gibbs (Republican): H.P. Lovecraft
Auditor of Accounts
Doug Hoffer (Democrat): Kurt Vonnegut
Tom Salmon (Republican): Kurt Vonnegut
Treasurer
Jeb Spaulding (Democrat): H.P. Lovecraft
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