The Not-So-Simple Art of Imitation: Pastiche, Literary Style, and Author(s): Lee Sigelman and William Jacoby Source: Computers and the Humanities, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1996), pp. 11-28 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30204515 . Accessed: 10/10/2011 15:37

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http://www.jstor.org Computersand the Humanities 30: 11-28, 1996. 11 a 1996Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

The Not-So-SimpleArt of Imitation:Pastiche, Literary Style, and Raymond Chandler

Lee Sigelman* & William Jacobyt Departmentof Political Science, The George WashingtonUniversity, Washington, D.C. 20015, USA e-mail: [email protected] t Depatmentof Governmentand InternationalStudies, Universityof South Carolina, Columbia,SC 29208, USA

Key words: statisticalanalysis, stylistic analysis, style, RaymondChandler

Abstract

This analysis extends the tools of statistical analysis to the challenging task of distinguishingbetween genuine works by an author,the preeminentAmerican writer of mysteries, RaymondChandler, and deliberateattempts by others to mimic the author'sstyle. Renderingthe task all the more challenging, the analysis focuses exclusively on the main elements of Chandler'sstyle ratherthan on his minor but telling stylistic idiosyncrasies. Statistical analysis establishesthat indicatorsof these stylistic elements can successfully detect the pastiches.

Statisticalstylistics (a.k.a. "stylometrics")was born in thesefeatures are sufficiently rare to setthe author apart 1887, when Thomas Corwin Mendenhall,a physicist, fromall ormost of his contemporaries".By comparing decided to pursuea suggestion he had encounteredin distributionsof wordlengths in passagesfrom several the writingsof Augustusde Morgan,a mathematician. representativetexts, Mendenhallpioneered a method Ponderingthe questionof how to settle disputes about thatstylisticians have used ever since to resolveauthor- the authorshipof various books, poems, and plays, ship disputes(Lord, 1956; Williams, 1956). Over Morganadvanced the principlethat "one man writing the years,this taskhas engagednot only studentsof on two different subjects [should agree] more nearly languageand literature, but also some of the leading with himself than two different men writing on the statisticiansof the day (e.g., Mosteller and Wallace, same subject".As Ellegard(1962, p. 8) laterexplained, 1984; Yule, 1944). this principleflowed naturallyfrom the twin assump- An authorwho deviates significantly from norms tions that "some features,or combinationsof features, establishedfor the context in whichhe orshe is writing in a particular writer's style or language, remain is saidto possessa distinctiveliterary style (Osgood, reasonablyconstant, or change in a predictablemanner, 1960, p. 293). Style is a probabilisticphenomenon. throughouthis production"and that "some at least of Recognizing,for example,that even a writerwho flauntsan abstrusevocabulary will also need to use mundane as a * Lee Sigelmanis Professorand Chairof PoliticalScience at many words,stylisticians regard style TheGeorge Washington University. His research interests range generalpredisposition toward a particularmode of widelythroughout the social sciences, including research methods, expressionrather than an invariant habit or constant. In masscommunication, political behaviour, and popular culture. With Dolezel's(1969, pp. 10-11) words,"The overall char- ErnestYanarella, he co-editedPolitical Mythology and Popular Fic- acterof a is calledforth the of tion,and has published several articles on political themes in popular style by degree presence literature. (or absence)of a certainmode of expression,rather t WilliamJacoby is an associateprofessor in the Departmentof thanby its exclusiveuse (or completesuppression)." Governmentand InternationalStudies at the Universityof South Moreformally: Carolina.His work has focused substantively on masspolitical atti- tudesand behavior. He has a stronginterest in statisticalmethods, Eachtext can be representedby a setof measurable, andhas written extensively on dimensionalanalysis. statisticalcharacteristics: T = {C1, C2 ... Cz) in 12

which Ci symbolizes text characteristics.In other of disputed authorship,the stylistician's conventional words, each text can be describedin a multidimen- modus operandi is to use minor encoding habits sional space, with the values of Ci representing (Paisley, 1964) of which an authormay not even be individualvectors (Dolezel, 1969, p. 17). aware as a basis for estimating the probability that a given writer was the author of a certain text. To If several of an author's works are tightly clus- establish A or B as the author,the stylistician would tered in this multidimensionalspace, the authorhas analyze materials of known authorshipin hopes of made recurrentuse of a particularstyle. If nothing determining,for example, that A often used therefore writtenby other authorsoccupies the same space, the but almost never used thus, whereas B frequentlyused author'sstyle can be consideredunique. It is precisely thus and rarely used therefore. A demonstrationthat the uniqueness or, from a different perspective, the therefore recurs throughoutthe disputed story while imitabilityof an author'sstyle - in this case, the style thus scarcely ever appearswould therefore (or thus) of RaymondChandler, widely regardedas the foremost constitute prima facie evidence for A as the author, writerof hard-boileddetective fiction - that concerns and a series of similar demonstrations(focusing, say, us here. on when or whencel), taken in their totality, would Mystery stories are easy prey for parodists, who weigh heavily in supportof A. delight in the sorts of stylistic foibles and affectations Although this approach is well suited to settling that constitutethe literarysignatures of many mystery authorshipdisputes, it does not suit our purposes,for writers(Carper, 1992, p. 10). However,our interestlies there is no assurancethat the word frequency differ- not in parody, the deliberate exaggeration of certain ences on which it is based are central stylistically. aspects of an author's style undertakenfor purposes We have no doubt that by concentratingon some of of burlesque or satire, but in pastiche, the earnest Chandler'scharacteristic but inconsequentialstylistic imitation of an author's style intended to achieve tics - his deviant spelling of certain words (e.g., okey isomorphism with the original (Breen, 1982; Queen, insteadof okay),his occasionaluse of an unusualword 1946). Pastiches provide an intriguinganalytic focus or phrase(e.g., porte cochere), or his distinctlyBritish because they pose an acid test for statisticalstylistics. style of punctuation- we could distinguish genuine As we have just noted, in cases of disputed author- Chandlerstories from pastiches, even though some of ship, the stylistician's task is to assess whethera given Chandler's imitators would surely have appropriated text is more evocative of Author A or Author B. The some of his idiosyncrasies.However, we are not really stylistician approachesthis task hoping to ferret out looking for a set of "fingerprints"that might prove stylistic differences between A and B and then to use Chandler's presence at the scene of a crime story. these differencesas a means of assigning the disputed Rather, we are trying to determinehow well any or text to A or B. Precisely because parodistsdeliberately all of the authorswho have set out in conscious imita- exaggeratecharacteristic features of an author'sstyle, tion of his style have managedto capturesome of its a competent stylistician should not encounter much main elements. If they have succeeded, it should be difficulty in distinguishingbetween parodies and the very difficult to distinguishbetween real and imitation text or texts being parodied. By contrast, the very Marlowe stories on the basis of these elements. We point of a pastiche is to appropriatethe style of anoth- are, then, looking for points of majorstylistic conver- er author.Accordingly, the stylistician would need an gence ratherthan for indicationsthat a given imitator extremely exacting set of methods and measures in has capturedone of Chandler'scharacteristic but inci- orderto distinguishbetween the work of AuthorA and dental stylistic habits. deliberateimitations by otherauthors - far moreexact- This is not to disparagethe use of minor encoding ing methods and measures than would be requiredto habits as tools of literarydetection, any more than it distinguishamong various authors writing in theirown is to denigratethe use of fingerprintsfor humaniden- individualstyles, or between a sourcetext andparodies tification. Just as fingerprints,an incidental element thereof. All indicationsare that this should be all the of human physiology, constitute an invaluable tool more so in the case of Chandler,for, in the words of in human identification,their literarycounterparts aid mystery writerJames Ellroy, "Chandleris a very easy immensely in the adjudicationof authorshipdisputes. writerto imitate"(quoted by Wolcott, 1995, p. 100). This, then, is the challenge we have posed for our- The present analysis differs from disputedauthor- selves, takingas a case in point the oft-imitatedwork of ship studies in another key respect as well. In cases an influentialAmerican author.Can we, while focus- 13 ing on main elements of an author'sstyle, distinguish less mystery writers of the past half centuryhave cut between his work and deliberateimitations of it? theireyeteeth on Chandler'sstories. Writers of private- eye novels have been likened to "salmon who swim blindly against the tide of success in their instinctive 1. The Inimitable Chandler ... and His Imitators desire to returnto the source for inspirationfor their own creative efforts" (Geherin, 1980, p. 2), and In the view of the readingpublic andhis fellow writers mystery writer Julie Smith (1988, p. 144) makes it alike, Raymond Chandlerwas the preeminentAmer- clear thatChandler is the primarysource to which they ican mystery writer of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, instinctively return:"I can't imagine that any Amer- andhe still occupies the place of primacytoday (Baker ican writerhasn't been influencedby Chandler,at least and Nietzel, 1985; Friedman, 1995; Seidman and indirectly... Quite simply, Chandlerset the standard Penzler, 1984).2 From the early 1930s, when his first and everythingelse is a deviation therefrom."As one hard-boileddetective story appearedin Black Mask, of his biographershas written: the leading pulp magazine of the day, until his death It is likely that Chandler'simportance will finally in 1959, Chandlerwrote numerousstories about the be realized only when the elevation of style, by exploits of private eye , the most writersthemselves, to a positionof supremeimpor- famous being his novels , Farewell, My tance in twentieth-centuryAmerican literatureis Lovely, and . By the standardsof generally recognized. As a stylist Chandlerhas a genre in which writers have been known to churn already stood the test of fifty years, and seems out dozens of stories in a year and hundreds in a likely to be just as fresh, as astonishingon the page lifetime, Chandlerwas not especially prolific, but he in a hundred.Like Twain or Faulkneror Heming- was extraordinarilyinfluential. For Chandler,the chal- way, he is a writerwho advancedthe techniqueof lenge of producingcrime fiction consisted, as Jacques writing.... All subsequentwriters must read him Barzun (1984, pp. 239-40) has said, "of the need to to absorbwhat he did. (Marling,1986, pp. 152-53) write in such a way as to hold the interest of the half- educatedwhile tickling the fancy of the intellectual". Long after many other leading writers of his day Respondingto that challenge, Chandlertook what he - John O'Hara, John Marquand,and James Gould castigatedas "a cheap, shoddy,and utterlylost kind of Cozzens, to name only a few - have faded from writing"(Gardiner and Walker,1962, pp. 73-74) and memory,Chandler continues as a primeforce in Amer- elevated it, if not to full literaryrespectability, at least ican popularculture. It is virtuallyimpossible to name well above the level of the pulp magazines. an American mystery novel of the past half-century If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, that does not bear his stamp, and vestiges of Chandler then Chandlermust rank alongside Hemingway and can be found in literaturesfar removedfrom both the Faulkneramong the most sincerelyflattered of modernm mystery genre and from the United States.3Moreover, American writers. Hemingway held that all modernm and more to the point of the present study, Chandler American literatureis traceableto HuckleberryFinn also lives on in a series of explicit attemptsby a later (Bridgman,1966, p. 5), and in like fashion it would be generation of writers to speak in his voice in stories only a slight overstatementto assert that all modernm and novels that chronicle the furtherexploits of Philip American mysteries are derived from Chandler's Marlowe. stories. To be sure, in the evolution of the hard-boiled Parodies abound of Chandler'shard-boiled style, mystery Chandlerwas a transitionalfigure between written by humorists like S.J. Perelman and Woody the other members of the so-called "hard-boiled Allen, "serious" novelists like Thomas Berger and trinity":,whom Chandlerambiva- RichardBrautigan, and a legion of mysterywriters like lently regardedas his mentorand dismissed as having Andrew Bergman, John Blumenthal, Barry Fantoni, no "deliberateartistic aims whatever"(Dooley, 1984, and AndrewFenady.4 However, our interestlies not in pp. 146-47), and ,about whose work parodies, but in pastiches, of which 25 have appeared Chandlerwas decidedlyunenthusiastic. It is as a stylist to date. Of these, 23 were commissionedfor a volume thatChandler is acknowledgedby all concernedto have commemorating the centennial of Chandler's birth been pivotal. Just as Chandlertaught himself the craft (Preiss, 1988). For this volume, many leading lights of mystery writing by assiduously copying out and of the contemporarymystery genre wrote stories that analyzingstories by leadinghard-boiled writers, count- placed Marlowe in a wide variety of milieus while 14 strivingto celebrateand preservethe spiritof the char- a relativelyeasy targetfor imitation,and the pastiches acter and the style of his creator. might be packedtightly in with the Chandleroriginals. The other two pastiches are by Robert B. Parker, Thus, as depictedin the upperright scatterplot in Figure creator of the popular "" mysteries and an 1, there would be little dispersion among either the acknowledged Chandler acolyte. In Chandlerstories or the pastiches, which would blend (Chandler and Parker, 1989), the better known of almost imperceptiblyinto one another.6 Parker's two efforts, Parker "finished" a Chandler Even if Chandler's stories did display a consis- novel by adding 41 chaptersto a sketchy four-chapter tent style, as evidenced by their close clustering on draftChandler had begun shortlybefore his death.This the two stylistic dimensions, his imitatorswould not venture was generally deemed a success (McBain, necessarilyhave succeededin theirattempts to capture 1989; Rose, 1989; but see, e.g., Kimberley, 1990; this style. One possibilitywould be for the imitatorsto Sheppard, 1989; Solomon, 1990), and one critic have convergedon whatthey collectively misrepresent (Champlin,1989) went so far as to proclaimthe "join" as Chandler's style; this might occur, for example, between Chandler'schapters and Parker's"seamless". if the imitators had in effect written parodies rather A second Parker pastiche - Perchance to Dream thanpastiches, perhapsby exaggeratingthe amountof (1991), intended as a sequel to The Big Sleep - soon violence in Chandler's stories. In that case, the pas- followed, though it opened to less favorable reviews tiches would be tightly clustered,but at a considerable (e.g., Amis, 1991; Lochte, 1991). distance from the cluster of genuine Chandlerstories, as shown in the middle left scatterplotin Figure 1. Two other possibilities are worth considering at 2. Data and Methods this point. In each, the Chandler stories are tightly clustered and the pastiches are widely dispersed in How might we go about distinguishingbetween the two-dimensional space. In the middle right scatter- 12 Marlowe stories that Chandler wrote and the 25 plot, the centerof gravityof the pasticheslies far afield faux Marlowe stories?"Drawing on the idea that the from that of the Chandlerstories; this could occur, for style of a given text can be representedas a point in example, if the pastiches,on average,were more diffi- multidimensionalspace, we wantto determinewhether cult and more violent than the Chandlerstories. On the Chandlerstories and the pastiches lie in such close the other hand, as depicted in the bottom left scatter- proximity to one another that it is impossible to tell plot, the Chandlerstories and the pastichescould have them apart.To illustrate,assume for the moment that the very same center of gravity but vastly different we were dealing with just two stylistic dimensions - degrees of dispersion,with the pastichesbeing spread perhaps"Level of Reading Difficulty"and "Emphasis out aroundthe tightly clusteredChandler stories; this on Violence".One possibility would be that Chandler patternwould result if the pastiches as a group were displayedno consistent tendencyon either dimension, neithermore nor less difficultor violent thanthe Chan- i.e., that his stories varied greatly on each dimension. dler stories as a group,but if the various imitatorshad In that case, his stories would pose a moving target, missed the markin their own unique ways and there- difficult or impossible to imitate, and the pastiches, fore displayedless stylistic consistency as a groupthan like Chandler'sown stories, should not cluster in any the Chandlerstories. particulararea of the two-dimensionalspace. That is, the points for the genuine Marlowe stories and the 2.1. Measuringmain elementsof Chandler'sstyle pastiches would be widely and randomly dispersed, as depicted in the upper left scatterplotin Figure 1. Ourfirst task is to identifyand then provide operational Of course, an indiscriminateadmixture of circles and measuresof several mainelements of Chandler'sstyle plusses is only one possibility amongmany. It is not an with which we cancompare the twelve Chandlerstories especially interestingpossibility in its own right, but and the 25 pastiches.These measuresmust lend them- it does provide a null model againstwhich to consider selves to use with largevolumes of material,for unlike other possibilities. many previous studies based on snippetsof text rather At the otherextreme, Chandlermight have written thanon a complete story,book, or play, our analysis is story after story in much the same style, in which based on all of the almost 850,000 words in the 37 case his stories would cluster closely together in two- stories by Chandler and his imitators. We began dimensionalspace. Such consistency would make him by scanning the 37 stories and creating a machine- 15

+ Genuine o Imitator + Genuine o Imitator

o o o + + ruN + Po oo++ + C oO + O C + +0 0 +ac o ca0oo c, o o oo o o++ co o o

60: a :- o+. + S + 0

Dimension 1 Oimensioni

+ Genuine o Imitator + Genuine o Imitator 0 o 00 O N 0 0 C 0 .0( 0 .-. o o o 00 o08 oo

o o 0 0 0O ::o , OoO 0

Dimension i Dimension I + Genuine 0 Imitator

N 0

C= C00 o0 00 00 .cO 0 0 C O O C O8O0

00 0 S Oo a .,-4 0 0 Dienioo a O 0 Dimensioni

Figure 1. Stylized point configurations. readablefile of each. As detailed below, we then con- a Periodic Chartof the Hard-BoiledElements, there is ducted various computer-basedsearches of these files little question aboutthe leading featuresof Chandler's to measuremain elements of Chandler'sstyle in each style.8 Four stand out. story.7 Specifying key elementsof Chandler'sstyle is itself 2.2. Simplicity a fairly dauntingtask: it is one thing to insist thatanal- ysis focus on main elements of an author'sstyle, and The pulp magazines in which hard-boiled mysteries it is something else again to specify these elements. were born and flourishedcatered to what Panek(1987, Fortunately,the stylistic aspectsofhard-boiled mystery p. 159) has unkindly, but not altogetherinaccurately, stories in general and of Chandler'shard-boiled mys- characterized as an "aggressively low-brow" audi- tery stories in particularhave been objects of intense ence of "adolescentsor slow readers".The low-brow critical scrutiny,and althoughthere is nothing akin to character of the readershipimposed on hard-boiled 16 writers the imperative of simplicity - the need to several), or the adjective certain; for the denom- use simple words joined in simple sentences strung inator, he counted verbs in all forms, including together in simple chronological order. The pioneer- infinitivesand participles,but not participleswith- ing hard-boiled mysteries of Carroll John Daly and out nouns and precededby the, a, or of, or forms Dashiell Hammettdid precisely that, and little more. of have, be, could, should, or would. Chandler'sachievement was to graftstylistic complex- Because the sheer volume of the materialscon- ity andsophistication onto the rudimentaryhard-boiled sidered here rendered a "hand count" of format. every adjective and verb in the 37 stories unfeasible, We employ two measuresof simplicity: we adaptedBoder's countingrules by focusing on 1. Readability level. This is a measure of reading each appearancein the Chandler stories and the ease, gauged by the widely used "Flesch formula" pastiches of the 100 most common adjectives and which focuses on the mean num- (Flesch, 1974), the 100 most common verbs in written American ber of syllables per word and the mean number English, as identified in the authoritativerefer- of words per sentence. Readabilityis expressed in ence work on word usage in mid-centuryAmer- terms of grade level; for example, a score of 10 ican English (Francisand Kucera, 1982). We then signifies that a story should be comprehensibleto determinedthe frequencywith which each of these someone with ten years of schooling. 200 words occurs in each of the 37 stories, follow- 2. Use of a "basic" vocabulary. This is a measure ing Boder's procedureswherever possible. It was of the extent to which an authoremploys common, not feasible either to exclude attributiveadjectives widely understoodwords. It is based on Ogden's or to exclude participles according to context, so (1934) catalogue of 850 English words thatpermit we included attributiveadjectives in the adjective one to expressvirtually any thought.The numberof counts and excluded all participles from the verb these words in a divided the total number story, by counts. of words, constitutes our measure of the use of a "basic"vocabulary. These counts were complicated by the gram- matical multifunctionalityof many English words. 2.3. Action For example, long (as in The Long Goodbye) is one of the 100 most common adjectives,but it can Above all else, hard-boiledmysteries are action stories. also serve as a verb (as in "I long to see you"). It would be unfair to characterizePhilip Marlowe as Grammaticallytagging each occurrenceof multi- someone who shoots first and asks questions later, function words like long on a case-by-case basis but neither is he one who whiles away the hours in was unfeasible for the same reason that it was abstractcontemplation of life's existential dilemmas. impossible to "hand-count"adjectives and verbs Like otherwriters of hard-boiledfiction, Chandlertold in the first place. We thereforeturned again to the his storiesby chroniclingwhat his characterswere say- Francis-Kuceravolume, in which the occurrence ing and doing, not what they were thinking. of each word is categorizedby grammaticalfunc- The action element is also represented by two tion. Therewe discovered,for example, that70.6% measures: of the occurrencesof long are adjectival. Assum- 1. Adjective-verb ratio. This measures the balance ing that the use of long as an adjective in a given between description and action in a story. Buse- story reflectsthis norm, we used this percentageas mann (1925) formulated the concept of the a weight to estimatethe frequencywith which long Aktionsquotientto refer to the extent to which appearsas an adjective in a given story; thus, for a writing style is active, at the one extreme, or every ten times long appears,we incrementedthe descriptive, at the other. Boder (1940; see also count of adjectivesby 7.06. We followed the same Antosch, 1969) subsequentlyoperationalized this procedurefor the 199 other words on the lists of concept as the ratio of adjectives to verbs, which common adjectives and verbs, and finally, having he tallied as follows: for the numerator,he counted totaled the adjectives and verbs, thus defined, in only attributiveadjectives (those that preceded a each story, we divided the former by the latter to noun) and did not count nouns used as adjectives form an indicatorof the extent to which a given (e.g., rubber tire) or quantitative or ordinal story is characterizedby a descriptiveor an active numerals, numeral pronouns (next, many, and style. 17

Even though we cannotclaim to have achieved Three measures focus directly on the use of an exact count of adjectivesand verbs, we know of dialogue by Chandlerand his imitators: no reason why our measurementapproach should 1. Dialogue density. This is a measureof the overall systematicallybias comparisonsamong stories. In prominence of dialogue in a story, i.e., the extent any event, in this case and all those that follow, to which the story is conveyed via direct quotation weighting has little effect on our measures, either of people talking, on the one hand, or via authorial because the words in questionreceive virtuallyfull narration,on the other. It is defined as the number weighting or because they constitute only a small of words of dialogue divided by the total number fractionof the words being counted. of words in the story. 2. Mayhem-reflection ratio. This is an indicatorof 2. Dialogue frequency. This is a measure of how the balance in a story between violence and crim- often people speakin a given story,as distinctfrom inal activity ("mayhem"),on the one hand, and how many words they utter. It is defined as the contemplation or deliberation ("reflection"), on numberof quotationsin a storydivided by the total the other. A high ratio indicates that a story is numberof words in the story. dominatedby blood-and-gutsaction; a low ratio 3. Dialogue length. This is a measure of the extent indicatesthat cognitive processes are more promi- to which verbal interchanges consist of clipped nently featured. We calculated the mayhem- dialogue, at the one extreme, or lengthy mono- reflection ratio by counting the number of words logues, at the other.It is definedas the totalnumber in a story that indicatemayhem, using a masterlist of quotedwords in a storydivided by the totalnum- we devised specifically for this purpose;doing the ber of quotations;that is, it is the mean length, in same for words that indicate reflection; and then words, of the quotationsin the story. dividing the former by the latter. The 173-word word list consists of base words central mayhem 2.5. Vividlanguage to depictions of violence in hard-boiledmysteries, like blackmail, murder,and corpse, kidnap, poison, The way Chandler'scharacters, and Marlowe in partic- with their inflectional variants black- along (e.g., ular, talk is what readers tend to remember long blackmailed, mails, blackmailing, blackmailer, after they have forgottenChandler's convoluted plots. and The denominatorof the ratio blackmailers). An amateurphilologist, Chandlerrecorded the jargon is the numberof words thatdenote cerebral,reflec- of various professions in his notebooks (MacShane, tive Our 160-word reflection master processes. 1976), and his stories teem with underworldargot. list of stem words believe, consider, doubt, (e.g., He eschewed literary language and let his characters realize, think, and and their inflec- understand) talk like real people - or at least as his readersmight tional variantswas based on Hart's (1984) compi- imagine privateeyes, gangsters, cops, gun molls, and lation of terms that signal "intellectuality",though their ilk talk. we believe that "reflection"better conveys the Chandler'sincessant and colorful use of similes is emotional as well as intellectual of purely aspect anothertrademark of his vivid language. Throughout these activities. his career,but especially in the early years, Chandler delighted in the spectacularsimile, which he sprinkled 2.4. Dialogue liberally throughouthis stories. The following five, culled from the scores thatfestoon his firsttwo novels, Much of the of a hard-boiled is plot development story TheBig Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, are indicative carried but even the stan- by dialogue, by garrulous of the striking imagery for which Chandler is well dards of hard-boiled fiction the spoken word plays known: a prominentrole in Chandler's stories. In conveying actionthrough talk Chandler was capitalizingon one of Her face fell apartlike a bride's pie crust. his foremost strengthsas a writer,for his "fine feeling His pale eyebrows [were] bristling and stiff and for the sound and value of words"lent him an "almost round like the little vegetable brushes the Fuller perfect ear for dialogue"(Symons, 1985, p. 130). His Brush man gives away. characterstypically engaged in clipped interchanges- He looked aboutas inconspicuousas a tarantulaon brief, machine gun-like bursts of remarksand wise- a slice of angel food. cracks- ratherthan lengthy monologues. This car sticks out like spats at an Iowa picnic. 18

I lit a cigarette.It tastedlike a plumber'shandker- like a bride's pie crust").Of course, not all similes chief. begin with like, and like is not always followed by a simile. if we were to the Though linguistically adventuresome, Chander Thus, interpret frequency with which like as an exact count of the was ever mindfulof the puritanicalnorms of good taste appears numberof similes in a we would runthe dual that prevailedin the Americaof the 1930s, 1940s, and story, risk of such as "as incon- 1950s. Black Mask and the otherpulps set virtuallyno overlooking expressions as a tarantulaon a slice of food" limits on graphicportrayal of violence, but explicit sex spicuous angel while such as "Do like and strongprofanity were taboo. Marlowe,Chandler's counting expressions you orchids?" knight,never succumbedto the fleshly temptationsthat We had no means of the first surroundedhim, andthe otherwiseauthentic-sounding practical correcting street talk of Chandler'scharacters was, in the words problem,which was not very serious in any event, because the share of similes do with of Martin Amis (1991, p. 9), "verbally as chaste as greater begin TheNew YorkTimes". To be sure, some sense of hard- like. We approachedthe second problemby again Francis and Kucera's boiled authenticity was restored by the presence of consulting grammaticaltag data, which indicate that 81% of the occurrences an occasional damn, hell, or bullshit, but anything of like in American are as a or more pungentwas "expurgatedwith pudibunddashes" English preposition that the use (Legman, 1963, pp. 68-69). subordinatingconjunction. Assuming Chandler'slanguage is noteworthynot just for the of like as a prepositionor subordinatingconjunc- words he used (or did not use), but also for the distinc- tion in a given story reflects the normativepattern in American we used this as a tive cadences in which he fitted words together.As the English, percentage to estimate the with which like critic H.A.L Craig has said: weight frequency introducesa simile in a story.9 Chandler's is of the style uncompromisingly type- 3. Use of vulgarity. This is a measureof the relative writer - the office heavy, flailing, typewriter. frequencyof vulgar language in a story,defined as His words are flung down and pressed down. the numberof vulgaritiesper 1,000 words. Vulgar- His like the of the are sentences, play machine, ities are coarse expressions that typically involve staccato. neitherrun on nor with each They dally bodily processes or parts, ancestral allusions, or sometimes bite back at each other, though they religious blasphemies (see, e.g., Cameron, 1969; other (Craig, 1951, p. 513). Foote and Woodward,1973). Our count of vulgar- Chandlerachieved these staccato cadences, Craig ities was based on a 24-word masterlist composed contends,by disciplininghimself to shun coordinating of bastard, bitch, damn, hell, and shit and terms conjunctions (and, or, but, and so on), the glue that derived therefrom,e.g., bullshit and horseshit. To binds compoundsentences together. form the measure, we determinedthe frequency We employ five measures of the vividness of the with which each word on the master list appears languagein a story: in a story, summed the overall frequencyof these 1. Use of argot. This is a measure of the relative words, and expressed the total as the number of frequency of the language of the underworldin vulgar words per 1,000 words in a story. a story, defined as the number of criminal argot 4. Use of obscenity. This indicates whether or not terms per 1,000 words. The measure is based on a story passes beyond vulgarity into the socially an 89-word master list of argot terms and their taboo area conventionally labeled obscenity. The inflectionalvariants, e.g., beezer,belly gun, finger measureis based on a 15-wordmaster list of terms man, gat, gumshoe, and gunsel, which we drew that includes asshole, cock, cunt,fuck, and terms from Knoerle's (1979) compilationof underworld derived therefrom. Here the crucial question is slang terms. whetherthe taboo is violated in a given story, not 2. Use of similes. This is an estimate of the relative how often it was violated, because Chandlerand frequency of similes in a story. The measurement his contemporariesnever committed such words of simile use poses a difficultmethodological chal- to print. If no such terms appear in a story, we lenge (see, e.g., Fass, 1991; Martindale, 1990). assigned a score of 0 to the story; if any of these Our approachwas based on occurrences of like, words is used even once, we assigned a score of 1. the most common markerof expressionsof simili- 5. Use of coordinating conjunctions. This is a tude in AmericanEnglish (as in "Herface fell apart measureof the relativefrequency with which coor- 19

TableI. Central and of the Chandlerstories dinating conjunctions (and, but, either, neither, tendency variability andthe pastiches. nor, or, and yet) appearin a story, defined as the number of coordinating conjunctions per 1,000 Chandler Imitators words. Again, we had to weight the raw frequency meanvariance mean variance counts for but, either, neither, and yet, none of Measure 5.67 0.09 6.22* 0.65* which functionsexclusively as a coordinatingcon- Basicvocabulary 0.56 0.00 0.53* 0.00 to the Francis-Kuceravolume, junction.According Adjective-verbratio 0.20 0.00 0.22 0.00 but is used 96% of the time as a con- coordinating Mayhem-reflectionratio 0.81 0.06 0.84 0.21* and and junction, either, neither, yet 67%, 69%, Dialoguedensity 0.44 0.00 0.36* 0.01 and 32% of the time, respectively. We used these Dialoguefrequency 30.05 10.84 31.76 117.91* percentages as weights to estimate the frequency Dialoguelength 14.84 5.71 12.22 19.39* with which coordinatingconjunctions appear in a Argot 0.78 0.08 0.57 0.20* story, and standardizedthe sum of the weighted Similes 2.69 0.19 3.10 1.42* frequenciesby expressing it as the numberof coor- Vulgarity 1.10 0.20 0.72* 0.34 dinatingconjunctions per 1,000 words of text. Obscenity 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.00 No single one of these elements fully defines Coordinatingconjunctions 37.58 2.75 33.92* 35.37* Chandler's style. Other authors (e.g., Hemingway) * p < 0.05.N= 12forthe Chandler stories and 25 forthepastiches. have achieved great simplicity; others (e.g., Mickey Statisticalsignificance is gaugedby t-testsfor differences of means Spillane) have specialized in slam-bangaction; others andF-tests for differences of variances. (e.g., George V. Higgins) have written realistic dialogue;and still others(e.g., JamesJoyce) have engi- neered dazzling linguistic effects. Chandler's style, denoting reflection (0.81). Much of the action and like that of any author, consists of the conjunction color in Chandler's stories is conveyed by dialogue, of its constituentelements. Accordingly, a successful which comprises, on average, 44% of all the words Chandlerpastiche must capturenot just some of these in a story; for every thousand words of text, there elements, but all of them; that is, it must convey the are, on average, approximately30 verbal exchanges, underlying simplicity of his style and the action and which last approximately15 words apiece. For every the dialogue and the vivid language. thousandwords of text, Chandler's stories also con- tain approximatelyone argot word, three similes, one vulgarity, no obscenities at all, and 38 coordinating 3. Findings conjunctions. On average,the 25 pastichesare pitched at a signif- 3.1. Preliminaryanalyses icantly, though not dramatically,higher reading level (6.22) and, with a mean of 53% Basic English words, As a prelude to the main statistical analyses, let us featurea slightly more variegatedvocabulary than the briefly consider the aggregate similarities and differ- Chandlerstories. They also use significantlyless dia- ences between the twelve "real"Chandler stories and logue, which accounts for an average of 36% of the the 25 pastiches. As Table 1 reveals, the mean read- words in the 25 pastiches, as opposed to 44% in Chan- ability level of the Chandler stories falls below 6.0; dler's stories; significantlyless vulgarity (an average this means that, on average, a readerwith only a fifth- of seven-tenths of a vulgar word per thousandwords or sixth-gradeeducation should be able to comprehend of text, as opposed to 1.1 for Chandler);and signif- one of Chandler'sstories. Consistentwith the impres- icantly fewer coordinating conjunctions (a mean of sion of simplicity that this figure conveys, Chandler 33.9 for every thousandwords of text, as opposed to employed a restrictedvocabulary: on average, 56% 37.6 for Chandler).On all the remainingmeasures, the of the words in one of his stories appearin Ogden's mean differencebetween the Chandlerstories and the list of Basic English words. The action-packedchar- pastiches falls short of statistical significance. In all, acter of Chandler'sstories is reflected in his sparing then, thereare statisticallysignificant mean differences use of adjectives,as denotedby the low mean ratio of between the Chandlerstories and the pasticheson five common adjectivesto common verbs (0.20); the same of the twelve measuresof style. characteristiccomes through clearly in the relatively The appearanceof so many significantdifferences high mean ratio of terms denoting mayhem to terms in central tendency between the Chandlerstories and 20 the pastichessuggests that, as a group, Chandler's provento be inimitable,or have some imitatorscap- imitatorshave failed in numerousrespects to speak turedhis style? in the master'svoice. No less importantly,there are Answeringthese questions requires us to consider also significantdistributional differences between the the aspectsof Chandler'sstyle simultaneously,rather Chandlerstories and the pastiches. With the sole excep- thanone at a time.For this taskwe turnto nonmetric tion of the dialoguedensity measure, the Chandler multidimensionalscaling (MDS) analysis. MDS uses stories are packed very closely together (most informationabout dissimilarities among a setof objects extremelyon the categoricalmeasure of the use of (in thiscase, the 37 stories)to producea spatial"map" obscenity,for Chandler never used obscene language). of the objects.The more similartwo storiesare to To be sure, on all eleven numericmeasures there is oneanother, the closer together the points representing somevariability among the Chandler stories. The most themlie on themap. extremeoutliers crop up in his use of vulgarity,with The inputdata for the MDSanalysis take the form one story,"Marlowe Takes On the Syndicate", lying a of a square, symmetricmatrix of order 37 repre- considerabledistance from the rest. This is the story sentingthe twelve genuineMarlowe stories and the Chandlerwrote at the very end of his life, andit reflects 25 pastiches;the cell entries are measuresof the his attemptto modernizehis increasinglyantiquated pairwisedissimilarities between stories. The analysis protagonistand to enlivenhis creakyplots, in part usesprofile dissimilarity measures to gaugeinter-story throughextensive use of naughtylanguage. However, differenceson thetwelve measures of style.For a given evenallowing for this exception, Chandler's stories are pairof stories,designated i andj, the profiledissimi- remarkablefor their overriding stylistic consistency. laritymeasure is definedas: By contrast,the 25 pastichesdisplay far greater Table1 revealsseven = [ (Sik - S /2 variability.Indeed, statistically i s=1 , significantdifferences in the extent of variability betweenthe "real"Marlowe stories and the imita- In this equation,6i, is the overalldissimilarity between tions, and in each instanceit is the pastichesthat are stories i and j, and Sik and Sjk are the values of morevaried. Overall, then, Chandler's style remains, stories i andj, respectively, on the kth style variable. if notentirely constant, then at leastextremely consis- Thus, 6ij representsthe root sum of squared differ- tentfrom one storyto the next. However,numerous ences between i andj across the twelve style variables. significantmean differencesemerge between Chan- A story's values on the twelve measures collectively dler'sstories and those of his imitators,and the style define its profile- hence the term"profile dissimilarity of the pastichesvaries greatly from one to the next. measures".The full set of values, arrangedappropri- Accordingly,in severalinstances the lackof a signifi- ately,comprise the profiledissimilarities matrix, which cantmean difference between the Chandler stories and summarizesall the pairwisestory differences across the the pastichesstems directlyfrom the variabilityof twelve original style variables. the pastiches:in theseinstances, some pastiches have Our immediate objective was to represent the unusuallyhigh scores while others have unusually low stories as points in a dimensional space, such that the scores, so on averagethe two extremesbalance one distances between points reflects, as closely as possi- anotherout. Thus,even on measuresfor whichthere ble, the dissimilaritiesbetween stories.10Because the is no significantmean difference between the Chan- dimensionalityof the space was not known a priori, dler storiesand the pastiches,it wouldbe premature we followed the conventional strategy of replicating to concludethat the style of the Chandlerstories is the analysis with several dimensionalitiesand retain- indistinguishablefrom that of thepastiches. ing the simplest solution that fit the data. The fit of an MDS solution is generally expressed in terms of a 3.2. Multidimensionalscaling analysis badness-of-fit measure called Stress, so in effect we were seeking the configurationof points that mini- 3.2.1. Analyticstrategy mized the Stress value. The preliminaryanalyses establish certain stylistic differencesbetween Chandler's stories and those of 3.2.2. Empiricalpoint configuration his imitators,but do not resolvethe issue of whether After replicating the analysis in one through seven attemptsto imitatethe originalMarlowe stories have dimensions, we settled on a four-dimensionalsolu- all missedthe markstylistically. Has Chandler's style tion as the optimalcombination of fit and parsimony.'1 21

The complexity of this solution,evidenced by the need stories lie far from the 23 other pastiches and from to rely on a relatively large number of dimensions, the twelve Chandler stories in the plane defined by reflectsthe high degree of variabilityamong the works the first and second dimensions. However, by far the underexamination. The Stressvalue of.07 for the four- most extreme outlier in this plane lies in the far lower dimensionalsolution represents a "good"fit to the data left corner.Robert Crais's "TheMan Who Knew Dick (Kruskal,1964); the one-, two-, and three-dimensional Bong" defines an extreme on five of the twelve style solutions did not fit nearly as well, and the five-, six-, measures, and approachesan extreme on three other and seven-dimensionalsolutions all introducedgreater measures.Crais is the only imitatorwho uses obscen- complexity without substantiallyimproving the fit. ity; he also greatly overuses a simplified vocabulary, It is impossible to display four dimensions simul- similes, coordinatingconjunctions, criminal argot, and taneously, so Figure 2 presents a three-dimensional vulgarity,and he presentstoo much narrativeand too bubbleplot in which the firsttwo dimensionsare repre- little dialogue. With the obvious exception of Crais's sented as the horizontaland vertical axes, respectively, story anda few others,the pastichestend to be scattered and the third dimension is representedby size of the above and to the right of the Chandlerstories. symbol for each story (circles for the Chandlerstories, In sum, the MDS results reveal a compact and asterisksfor the imitations);larger symbols appearto reasonablydistinct Chandler subspace within the four- be locatedcloser to the "front"of the three-dimensional dimensionalconfiguration, along with a wide disper- subspace. These dimensions are not substantively sion amongthe 25 pastiches.The genuineand imitation interpretablein themselves, but serve as coordinate subsets of stories are centered at perceptiblydifferent axes thatfix the relativelocations of the scaled points. points on the first two dimensions but display similar The consistency of Chandler'sstyle is borneout by centraltendencies on the third and fourthdimensions. the compactnessof the cloud of points that represent Thus the observed spatial configurationis, in effect, a his stories. In the plot of the first, second, and third cross between the last two stylized configurationsin dimensions (and also in a plot of the first, second, and Figure 1. fourth dimensions, not shown) all twelve Chandler points are clustered tightly together, with one or two 3.2.3. Sources of the interstorydifferences possible exceptionsthat we will considerin due course. As noted above, the substantivemeanings of the four On the third dimension (and on the fourth), the sizes dimensionsare as yet unspecified.Thus, before we pro- of the plotting symbols for the twelve Chandlerpoints ceed any further,it seems appropriateto inquire into are nearly constant, signifying a virtual absence of the sources of the differencesamong the 37 stories on variabilityon either dimension. Thus, if our attention the four dimensions. To do this, we simply determine were restricted to the genuine Chandler stories, we whether the variability in point locations within the could achieve a very good fit to the data in only two MDS-derivedspace correspondsto differencesamong dimensions.This observationleads directlyto a second stories on the measures that were used to establish prominent feature of the MDS results: the extreme the inter-storydissimilarities in the first place. This is variability among the pastiches, as evidenced by the accomplished by regressing each style variable onto wide scatterin theirpoint locations andthe appreciable the dimension coordinates for the 37 stories. If the differences in the sizes of their symbols. Because the MDS results reflect particularcharacteristics of the pastiches are literally all over the place on the twelve stories, then some of these regressions should exhibit style measures, all four dimensions are requiredto especially high R2values; we could thenuse the regres- achieve an adequatespatial map of the 37 stories. sion estimates to locate new axes within the space, Thus, the MDS results confirm the patterns we correspondingto these variables. Unlike the original glimpsed in the preliminaryanalyses, but the scal- dimension coordinates, which are merely geometric ing procedurealso provides new information.Figure constructionsused to locate the points, the regression- 2 reveals that the imitator points are not scattered based axes would be substantivelyinterpretable repre- uniformly.A few pastiches that are unusually unsuc- sentationsof the sources of inter-storydifferences. cessful from a stylistic perspectivestand out, including The resultsof these analyses are shown in Table 2, JamesGrady's "The Devil's Playground"(represented each row of which summarizes an ordinary least- by the rightmost point in the three-dimensionalsub- squaresregression in which the dependentvariable is space) and Paco Ignacio Taibo's "The Deepest South" one of the style measures and the independentvari- (representedby the topmost point). Both of these ables are the story coordinateson the four dimensions 22

a,

O

* Pastiche I I I o OhandlerStory

Dimension1

Figure 2. Configurationof points obtainedby nonmetricmultidimensional scaling of dissimilaritiesamong story style characteristics.The third dimension is representedby the size of the plotting symbol. from the MDS-derived Two results stand out, Table 2. Fitting style measures to point locations in space. four-dimensionalspace. the second being largely a qualification of the first. The first is the magnitudeof the R2 values. Although Measure R2 each is of at least moderate magnitude and even the Reading .726 smallest (.59) is quite robust, none approachesunity. Basic vocabulary .585 This means thatno stylistic measurecorresponds very Adjective-verbratio .716 to the of In some closely spatial placements points. Mayhem-reflectionratio .638 this result would be considered contexts, disappoint- Dialogue density .878 ing, but in the currentcontext it seems quite reasonable, Dialogue frequency .852 for it suggests that the differencesbetween the Chan- Dialogue length .808 dler stories and the pastiches are based on a variety of Argot .608 stylistic characteristicsrather than on any single aspect Similes .681 of Chandler'sstyle. That is, it is the combinationof Vulgarity .645 stylistic conventions, not any particularstylistic con- Obscenity .587 vention, thatdifferentiates Chandler from his imitators. Coordinatingconjunctions .621 This, in turn, helps explain why it is apparentlyso Each table entry is the explained variance from an difficultto producea successful pasticheof Chandler's ordinaryleast squaresregression equation with a style style. If what made Chandler'sstories so distinctive measureas the dependentvariableand the fourdimen- had been a single defining feature or a small set of sion coordinatesas independentvariables. The cases are the 37 stories. such features,he would have been not only a frequent, but also an easy, targetfor imitators.However, Chan- dler was simply too distinctive in too many different length- standout above the rest. Obviously,the extent ways for potentialimitators to succeed in reproducing to which and the manner in which charactersspeak the wide arrayof elements that set his stories apart. to one anotherhave an especially pronouncedimpact Having made this point, we must immediately on the overall stylistic differences among the stories. qualify it by noting a seconddistinctive feature of these This resultoccasions no greatsurprise in light of Chan- results. The R2 values of three dependent variables dler's acknowledgedstatus as a masterof dialogue in - dialogue density, dialogue frequency, and dialogue general and of the sardonic wisecrack in particular. 23

Chandlerachieved the vaunted distinctiveness of the great changes in his circumstancesand outlooks that Marlowecharacter primarily through the spoken word, occurredover this period. so it seems only naturalthat other writers would find Finally, the sign and significance of the coeffi- this the most challenging aspect of his style to repro- cient for the PP2 term indicate that the mean distance duce. Understandably,imitators have been more likely between pairs of pastiches is even larger than that than Chandlerhimself to opt for describing settings, between pastiche-Chandlerpairs. Summing bo and bl situations, and actions from an omniscient point of yields a mean distance between pastichepairs of 2.95, view. With the possible exceptions of his uncertain almost threetimes the mean distancebetween pairs of efforts very early in his career and his flailing efforts genuine Chandlerstories. This meansthat the pastiches shortlybefore his death,Chandler himself had no such are extremely heterogenous stylistically. As a group, difficulty. they have been unsuccessful in duplicatingChandler's writing style, but they have not failed in any singular 3.2.4. Systematicdifferences between Chandlerand way. his imitators Our second approachto assessing the importance Finally, are the differenceswe have observedbetween of the observed differencesis based on the notion of a the genuine and imitation Marlowe stories large "core"Chandler style. We can use the informationwe enough to be "important",in some substantivesense? have aboutthe genuine Chandlerstories to estimatethe We approachthis issue from two differentdirections. spatial location of a "typical"Chandler story. It then Our initial approachis via analysis of the distances becomes a simple matter to calculate distances from between pairs of points. Considerthe equation: that point to points representingall the other stories how Distancei = bo + bl PPi + be CCi + ei, and see close particularpastiches, rather than pastichesas a group,have come to the centralthrust of where the distancebetween a Distancei represents pair Chandler'sstyle. To estimatethe prototypicalChandler of the which points designated by subscripti, ranges point, we simply use the centroidof the twelve empiri- from 1 to 666, the numberof nonredundant of pairs cal Chandlerpoints. The centroidlies at the intersection 37 stories; PPi equals 1 if the stories in pair i are of the mean coordinatevalues for the Chandlerstories both pastiches, or 0 otherwise; CCi equals 1 if both on the four dimensions. membersof i are Chandlerstories, or 0 otherwise; pair Table 3 shows, for each genuine or imitationChan- is a constant, to be estimated;b1 and b2 bo are slope dler story, the distance to the Chandlercentroid. In coefficients;and e is a stochasticerror term. Ordinary general, Chandler'sown stories are located close to estimation the result least-squares produces following the prototype;their median distance from the proto- (with standarderrors in parentheses): type is only 0.62, and even the maximum distance, 1.41, is not very large. By contrast,distances from the Distancei = 2.42 + 0.53 PPi - 1.32 + CCi ei pastiches to the prototypetend to be much largerand = (0.10) (0.17) R2 .16 much more variable:with a medianvalue of 2.19, they The intercept, which represents the mean distance range from 0.96 all the way to 5.11. Once again, the between a Chandler story and a pastiche, serves as distinctivenessof Chandler'swork is evident in these a baseline for interpretingthe slopes. The coefficient results, as is the heterogeneityof his imitators. for the distance between pairs of stories by Chandler Using these distances, we can home in on the (-1.32) is negative and muchlarger than the estimated success or failure of particularworks as exemplarsof standarderror (0.17). Taken together, the sign and Chandler'sstyle. For example, consider the two least significanceof this coefficient indicate that the Chan- typical genuine Chandlerstories: "Marlowe Takes On dler stories, on average,lie much closer to one another the Syndicate", with a distance of 1.41, and "Finger than to the pastiches. Specifically, the mean distance Man",with a distanceof 1.23. These distancesare rela- from one Chandlerpoint to another, which is given tively small in absolute terms,but they standout from by the sum of bo and b2, is only 1.10, compared to those of Chandler'sother stories. Those familiarwith the mean distance of 2.42 between a Chandlerstory Chandler'swork would not be especially surprisedby and a pastiche. This dramatic difference highlights the identityof these two stories, which Chandlerwrote anew the consistency of Chandler's style across his at the very beginning and the very end, respectively, twelve stories, which is especially noteworthyin light of his career. "Finger Man" was a highly derivative of the three-decadespan over which he wrote and the pulp magazine story,written during an apprenticeship 24

Table3. Distance from the Chandlercentroid. As for the pastiches, the great majority simply Authorand Story Distance could not, based on this evidence, be mistaken for Chandler'sown work. Granted,some have come rela- "The Man Who Knew Dick 5.11 Crais, Bong" close to the Chandler - closer, indeed, "The Devil's 4.24 tively prototype Grady, Playground" than Chandler himself came on two occasions. Of Lutz, "StarBright" 3.99 Taibo, "The Deepest South" 3.47 these, the two closest approximationsto the Chandler Healy, "In the Line of Duty" 3.34 prototypeare Dick Lochte's "Sad-EyedBlonde" and Hoch, "Essence d'Orient" 3.04 RobertB. Parker'sPerchance to Dream. Nevins, "Consultationin the Dark" 3.00 More without who Randisi, "Locker246" 2.46 generally, if, knowing actually Collins, "The Perfect Crime" 2.45 wrote any of the storieslisted in Table3, one attempted Van Lustbader,"Asia" 2.35 to classify each as either a genuine Chandlerstory or Gorman,"The Alibi" 2.12 an imitation,one could correctlyclassify 33 of the 37 Valin, "MalibuTag Team" 2.21 on the basis of their distance from the Chandlercen- Simon, "In the Jungle of Cities" 2.19 troid. All one would have to do is assume that the 12 Kaminsky,"Bitter Lemons" 2.12 Paretsky,"Dealer's Choice" 2.10 storieswith the lowest scores were genuine andthat the Brett," Kill" 1.96 remaining25 were imitations, and these assumptions Campbell,"Mice" 1.59 would be borne out for every story except "Marlowe Poodle 1.56 Parker, Springs Takes On the Syndicate", "Finger Man", Perchance Chandler,"Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate" 1.41 Philbrick,"The Empty Sleeve" 1.34 to Dream, and "Sad-EyedBlonde". This 89% classifi- Schutz, "The Black-Eyed Blonde" 1.31 catory accuracyconstitutes a great improvementover Chandler,"Finger Man" 1.23 what could be achieved withoutreference to the prox- Smith, "Red Rock" 1.22 imity scores; indeed, classificationbased on distance Estleman,"Gun Music" 1.21 from the Chandlercentroid eliminates two out of every Harrington,"Saving Grace" 1.12 Lochte, "Sad-EyedBlonde" 1.02 threeerrors in classificationthat would be producedby Parker,Perchance to Dream 0.96 the best naive classificatorystrategy, which is to treat Chandler,"Trouble Is My Business" 0.95 every story as a pastiche.12 Chandler, 0.86 In sum, only two of the 25 pastiches fall within Chandler,"Goldfish" 0.82 the bounds of stories that based on Chandler,The 0.63 stylistic might, Chandler,"Red Wind" 0.61 the evidence summarizedin Table 3, be mistakenfor Chandler,The Long Goodbye 0.57 Chandler's.To keep even this achievementin context, Chandler, 0.56 we mustbear in mind thatthe only Chandlerstories that The 0.53 Chandler, Big Sleep any pastiche surpasses in proximity to the Chandler Chandler,The High Window 0.52 Chandler,Farewell, May Lovely 0.17 prototype are two extremely poor exemplars of the Chandlerstyle. In "Finger Man", Chandlerwas still Stories are listed from the most to the least distant from the struggling to establish a style of his own, while in Chandlercentroid. "MarloweTakes On the Syndicate",he was struggling to recaptureit. Neitherstory is vintage Chandler.Thus, in which Chandlerwas explicitly imitatingestablished to the extent that any imitatorhas rivalled Chandler hard-boiled writers of the day rather than writing himself in writing in the Chandlermode, it is only in in what would become his own authorial voice comparison to one of Chandler'scrude early efforts (MacShane 1981; Meador 1982). "MarloweTakes On or his frail last gasp. No pastichehas penetratedclose the Syndicate" was his last story, published shortly to the stylistic core of Chandler'soeuvre. Most of his after his death. He wrote this story years after he had stories, and certainlyall of what are acknowledgedas run out of steam as an author (Orel 1961), and its his best stories, standby themselves. qualityis conveyed by Marling's(1986, p. 71) descrip- tion of it as an "awful pastiche of dated tough-guy dialogue, modern revelations about the Cosa Nostra, 4. Conclusion and predictableplotting" that "Chandlerfans should avoid".Thus, it is not difficultto understandwhy these In the past, the tools of statisticalstylistics have often two works standout fromChandler's other efforts: they been used to adjudicatedisputes about which of two show him at his worst or very close to it. or more authors,each writing in his or her own style, 25 actuallywrote a given text. In this study,we set a more pose to make sure he wouldn't get away with it. challenging task for ourselves, that of distinguishing (Lochte 1991, p. 3)13 between an author'swork and deliberateimitations of that work. We made this task all the more difficult However, even though, as another reviewer put it, by confining the analysis to the main elements of the Parker'spseudo-sequel to The Big Sleep simply "isn't author's style rather than focusing on incidental but much good" (Amis 1991, p. 9), our computer-based telling stylistic tics, and by selecting an authorwho is analysis could not tell it from the real thing. reputedlyeasy to imitate. Ourunderlying concern was What are we to make of this? That Parker'sfairly not whether we could establish that Chandler actu- feeble effort has, by our reckoning, come closer than ally wrote a particularstory. We already knew that. any other pastiche to capturingChandler's style testi- Rather, it was whether we could extend the tools of fies more eloquently than any other evidence we have statistical stylistics, not to make relatively gross dis- yet consideredto the inimitabilityof Chandler'sstyle. tinctions among different authors' writing styles, but Many have tried,but if Perchance to Dream is the best to make relatively fine distinctions among different they have produced,it should be obvious thatnone has authors'attempts to write in the very same style. yet succeeded. Meeting this challenge would, we argued, require The misclassificationof Perchance to Dream also more exacting methods and measuresthan are needed serves as a reminder that attributeslike cleverness, to distinguish among various authorswriting in their imagination, and good taste are not easily program- own individual styles. Thus, based on our under- mable. The computerhas a tin ear.It cannotdistinguish standing of hard-boiled mysteries in general and of between fine writingand fill-in-the-blanksmimicry, or Chandler's hard-boiled mysteries in particular, we between a wonderfulsimile and a terribleone; indeed, developed measures of simplicity, action, dialogue, it has trouble in distinguishinga simile at all. There- and vividness in the 37 stories consideredhere. fore, even if, like Parker,an authormanages to capture Our analyses indicate that Chandlermaintained a the form of Chandler'sstyle, the Chandlerianquality highly consistentstyle throughouthis most productive of the writing remains an open question. However, years as an author.It was only in his earliest stories, having said this, we must add that the computerholds when he was still learning his craft, and in his last no monopoly on tin ears. For example, critic Leon story, when he seems to have forgotten it, that he Arden (1983, p. 93) describedChandler's Playback as deviated perceptibly from this style. Our analyses "almost totally unrecognizableas the productof Ray- indicate further that as a group, Chandler's imita- mond Chandler".Now, Playback may, as Orel (1961) tors have not homed in on their target. Their efforts has said, be "drearytrash", but our computer,unlike so have displayedwide variabilityand, virtually without practiceda critic as Arden, has no particulardifficulty exception, have failed to replicate his style. Accord- in identifying it as Chandler'sdreary trash. Although ingly, in our view the measuresand methodsemployed our exercise in statisticalstylistics has producedsome here have succeeded in the challengingtask we set for erroneousresults, it has, in the overwhelmingpropor- them. tion of cases, producedcorrect ones, andmore conven- Lest we conclude on too self-congratulatorya note, tional methodsof literaryanalysis - Arden's appraisal we must concede thatour combinationof methodsand of Playback serving as a telling case in point - are measuresis hardlyfoolproof. One ratherjarring result themselves by no means foolproof. What remains is is the erroneousattribution of RobertB. Parker'sPer- the furtherrefinement of methods and measures that to Dream to Chandler.Most critics considered would enable stylisticians to addressmore adequately Perchance to Dream a failure at invoking the spirit of such qualities as "tone"and "imaginativeness",which Chandler."Every page of this strangelittle book", one are the stock in tradeof traditionalliterary analysis but reviewer wrote, still lie beyond the reach of precise measurement.

... makesyou wonderwhy a mysterynovelist justi- fiably famous in his own right [Parker]would go 5. Notes to such lengths to highlight the gulf separating The whenv. whenceexample is, in fact, one of the key tests him from his acknowledged idol. Then a thought Mostellerand Wallace (1984) devisedin theirclassic analysis of occurs: Maybe he felt so guilty about poaching on whetherHamilton or Madison wrote certain of theFederalist papers. the idol's preservesthat he bungled the job on pur- 2 Studiesof Chandler'slife andwork are voluminous. Good start- 26

ing pointsare Gross(1978), MacShane(1976, 1981), and Speir programs:PC-STYLE to measurereadability; BASIC ENGLISH (1981). to countthe 850 basicvocabulary words and their inflectional vari- 3 Forexample,Durham (1963) sees Chandler as a seminalinfluence ants with the suffixes -ing, -ings, -ied, -ed, -er, -ers, -ies, -es, in the developmentof the objectivetechnique, America's "single, and-s; andWDCOUNT to performthe remainingcounts. Omni- clearly-marked,stylistic contribution to literature."Chandler's influ- Page, a commercialproduct, is availablefrom the CaereCorpo- encecan also be seenin theliterature of othercultures; see, e.g., Ten ration(100 CooperCourt, Los Gatos, CA 95030). PC-STYLE PercentofLife, by theUruguayan novelist Hiber Conteris (1987) or and BASICENGLISH are sharewareproducts, available from Hard-BoiledWonderland and the End of the Worldby the Japanese ButtonWare(P.O. Box 5786, Bellevue,WA 98006) andL. Crew writerHaruki Murakami (1991). (P.O.Box 64839,Chicago, IL 60664),respectively. We developed 4 Indeed,as withHemingway, an annualcompetition (sponsored WDCOUNTspecifically for this study. Written in Pascal,it counts by theFriends of theLa Jolla Library) is heldto determinewho can theoccurrences in anASCII text of eachentry in a user-suppliedlist mostfaithfully mimic Chandler's style. of words,optionally weighted according to theuser's specification. As Marlowestories, we countthe seven completedChandler WDCOUNTis writtenin Pascalfor MS-DOS-basedpersonal com- novels (The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window, puters;we will gladlymake it availableto interestedreaders. , The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, 8 Inaddition to sourcescited in thetext, much valuable material on andPlayback) and five otherstories. A puristmight demur from Chandler'sstyle can be foundin Cawelti(1976), Madden(1968), this count.In additionto the posthumouslypublished "Marlowe Marling(1986), Newlin (1985), and Wolfe (1985). TakesOn the Syndicate,"which was unarguablya Marlowe story, 9 Weweighted the frequencies of liketo maintainconsistency with we classifyfour others ("Finger Man," "Goldfish," "Red Wind," theother measures. For a single-indicatormeasure, such weighting and "TroubleIs My Business")as Marlowestories. When these hasno effecton statisticalresults. four storieswere originallypublished, their protagonist was one o10More accurately, the interpointdistances need only reflectthe of Marlowe'sprecursors in Chandler'sevolution as a writerof rankorder of the dissimilarities,as the inputdata are treatedas hard-boiledmysteries - an unnamedprivate eye in "FingerMan," ordinal. Ted Carmadyin "Goldfish,"or John Dalmasin "Red Wind" " We obtainedthis solutionfrom the ALSCALroutine (Takane, and "TroubleIs My Business"- ratherthan Marlowe. However, Young,and DeLeeuw, 1977; Young, Takane, and Lewyckyj, 1979) when , the first hard-cover collection in SAS 5.18. of Chandler'sstories, was publishedin 1950, the protagonistof 12 Moreformally, a proportional-reduction-in-errorstatistic equals thesefour storieswas renamedPhilip Marlowe in orderto capi- 0.67 for thesedata, with the numberof errorson the naivemodel talizeon thepopularity of thecharacter. The stories were otherwise (12) beingdetermined by theassumption that every case is modal. unchanged,so theMarlowe of thesefour collected stories was simply 13 As it happens,this reviewer,Dick Lochte, is the authorof the the Dalmas,Carmady, or unnamedcharacter of the storiesin their otherpastiche that would, on the basis of ouranalysis, be erroneously originalpulp magazine incarnations; oddly, the namesof the main classifiedas Chandler'sown work. charactersin the two otherstories collected in TheSimple Art of Murderwere also changed, but to Dalmasand Carmady rather than Marlowe(Apostolou, 1984). Strictlyspeaking, then, these were not "really" Marlowe stories. References However,in lightof Chandler'slong-standing "cannibalization" (his term)of his non-Marlowestories in his Marlowebooks (see, e.g., Amis,Martin. "Sin Has Come a LongWay Since 1939[Review of Mills, 1990), one couldargue that there is simplyno such thing RobertB. Parker,Perchance to Dream]".New Yorklimes Book as a "pure"Marlowe story, including The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Review(January 27, 1991),9. Lovelyand the remaining Chandler novels. More to thepoint, Chan- Antosch,Friederike. "The Diagnosis of LiteraryStyle with the dlerhimself acceded to thename changes, and if Marlowe'screator Verb-adjectiveRatio". In Statistics and Stylistics. Eds. Lubomir was willingto have these readas storiesof PhilipMarlowe, we Dolezeland Richard W. Bailey.New York:American Elsevier, arehardly in a positionto disagree.More importantly still, because 1969,pp. 57-65. copiesof the old pulpmagazines in whichthe fourstories origin- Apostolou,John L. A.K.A.Philip Marlowe. The Armchair Detective ally appearedhave been out of circulationfor manydecades, these (Spring1984), 201-202. storieshave long been accessible in the UnitedStates only as they Arden,Leon. "A Knockat the Backdoorof Art:The Entranceof appearedin The Simple Art of Murder and later collections, i.e., RaymondChandler". In Art in Crime Writing:Essays on Detec- withtheir central character identified as Marlowe;thus, it is safeto tiveFiction. Ed. Bernard Benstock. New York: St. Martin's, 1983. assumethat most modern readers of Chandler(including the authors pp.73-96. of the pastiches)would take the protagonistat face valueas Philip Baker,Robert A. andMichael T. Nietzel. Private Eyes:One Hundred Marlowe. and One Knights - A Survey of American 6 Althoughthese first two possibilities are polar opposites in many 1922-1984.Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State Univer- respects,in practicethey could be hardto tell apart,because in both sityPopular Press, 1985. casesthe means would be equaland the two sets of pointswould be Barzun,Jacques. "The Aesthetics of the Criminous".American equallydispersed. If thetwo dimensions were expressed in a readily Scholar,53 (Spring,1984), 239-241. interpretablemetric, it wouldbe no greatfeat to determinewhether Boder,David P. "TheAdjective-verb Quotient: A Contributionto the pointsare tightly clustered or widelydispersed. But if the two the Psychologyof Language".Psychological Record, 3 (1940), dimensionswere expressed in a moreor less arbitraryformat, e.g., 310-43. in standardizedform, then the scatterploton the rightmight simply Breen, Jon L. Hair ofthe Sleuthhound:Parodies of MysteryFiction. be a close-upof theone on the left. Metuchen,NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1982. The storieswere scannedon a HewlettPackard ScanJet Plus, Brett, Simon. "Stardust Kill". In Raymond Chandler's Philip using OmniPagetext-recognition software. To performword Marlowe.Ed. ByronPreiss. New York:Alfred A. Knopf,1988, frequencycounts on themachine-readable texts, we employedthree pp. 194-205. 27

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