The Not-So-Simple Art of Imitation: Pastiche, Literary Style, and Raymond Chandler 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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Computers and the Humanities. 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 indications are 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