For what it’s worth:
Yavelow contacted me and I sent him some relevant materials. When he ran the two books nominally by Barack Obama, the 1995 Dreams From My Father and the 2006 Audacity of Hope, through FictionFixer [software developed by Yavelow, a writer and composer, that “he believes is the most comprehensive linguistics tool for authorship detection”], he concluded, “They were written by different people.â€Â
As Yavelow explains, authors don’t go from a 3.8 percent use of the passive voice in 1995 to an 8.3 percent use in 2006. For developing writers, the use of the passive almost always diminishes with experience.
Yavelow cites a score of other characteristics that change too conspicuously from one Obama book to the next, among them the Flesch Reading Ease score, the use of gender words, sentence starters, adverbs, discouraged words, sensory triggers, and more.
When, however, Yavelow compared Obama’s Dreams with Bill Ayers’ memoir, Fugitive Days, he found the similarity of the two books “striking.†He then quickly corrects himself: “’Striking’ is an understatement for the relationship FictionFixer uncovered between Fugitive Days and Dreams From My Father.â€Â
For instance, Dreams averages 17.61 words and 26.48 syllables for non-dialogue sentences. Fugitive Days averages 17.62 words and 26.27 syllables.
Another example is what Yavelow calls “attributionsâ€Ââ€â€e.g., he “asked,†she “said,†they “wondered.†Some authors use as few as three. Many use fewer than twenty. Dreams, however, uses 36; Fugitive Days 34, and with only four exceptionsâ€â€three of these used only onceâ€â€the two books use the very same attributions.
Yavelow compares the two books on any number of other characteristics and concludes, “There is a strong likelihood that the author of Fugitive Days ghost-wrote Dreams From My Father using recordings of dialog (either tape recorded or notes). Alternatively, another scenario could be possible: Ayers might have served as a ‘book doctor’.â€Â
The Yavelow analysis — and a lot more from Cashill — is available at the link.
I report, you decide. But do read the whole thing.
Having not done an analysis myself, I can only point you to the work of those who now have — and who have independently (and so perhaps importantly) reached very similar conclusions.
I’ll leave it to SEK and others to make the case that structural examination — or forensic semiotics — is a crackpot field, and that practitioners of such literary detective work are generally ignored by literary critics who find such antiseptic analysis of a complex work soulless.
As a narratologist myself, however, I find structural investigation very useful in general — so I see no reason why the findings here may not be (potentially) useful as part of a more detailed examination.
(h/t Dan)
Cleansing Professor Ayer’s reputation begins in days.
I thought that had been going on for years, JHoward. He’s “just an English professor”, “mainstream”, “I thought he had been rehabilitated” and all that.
That many of us are offended that a terrorist is considered acceptable in polite company among the Chicago elite clearly doesn’t mean squat.
“Yavelow Study Confirms Ayers Hand In Obama’s “Pants” Fixed that for ya…
If you want to discredit this sort of analysis you better not own any google stock I think.
It would be really useful to have any sort of control at all for this little experiment. “Dreams averages 17.61 words and 26.48 syllables for non-dialogue sentences. Fugitive Days averages 17.62 words and 26.27 syllables.” Great. How about another of Ayers’ books? The King James Bible? The collected Martha Stewart Chronicles? Without that, it’s impossible to tell if the analysis shows the two authors have a common fingerprint, or just a common number of fingers.
There’s a pdf file of the full study, bgates. Did you check there?
GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN!
Yeah, I’m thinking bgates reading comprehension is minimal.
The part it quoted was prefaced by; “’Striking’ is an understatement for the relationship FictionFixer uncovered between Fugitive Days and Dreams From My Father.â€Â
For instance, Dreams averages…
Here’s the part you missed bgates. I report, you decide. But do read the whole thing.
it’s impossible to tell if the analysis shows the two authors have a common fingerprint, or just a common number of fingers.
What if we don’t have any fingerprints, but similar strangulations?
At the risk of repeating myself
re: the moral stylings of “academia”
If Nicole Simpson had been a CEO, OJ would have an office down the hall from Ayers.
[…] Protein Wisdom with another study that claims Obama didn’t write his book, Ayers did. Well, if we have to have four years of him, it will be a lot more interesting if he had an unrepentant ex-terrorist write his memoir, along with Auntie the fugitive alien’s issues, etc. […]
As usual, Jeff’s missing the boat because of his lack of imagination. Ayers didn’t write Obama’s book. It was Obama who wrote Fugitive Days and anything else Ayers was supposed to have authored. After all, it was Barack Obama who planned Ayers’ bombings, Obama who orchestrated the riots during the 1968 Democratic convention, and Obama who was on the grassy knoll with a gun when JFK was assassinated. Barack Obama’s crimes are almost as bad as the string of murders Bill Clinton committed in Arkansas before he was elected president.
So who’s the ventriloquist and who’s Mortimer Snerd?
Does Baracky validate you? I think he does. That’s not good for Baracky’s marketing I don’t think. It’s like when you see some fat ugly person driving the car you’ve been wanting.
Does Baracky validate you?
Actually, ‘feets, I think he turned that part of the credit card processing software off.
What a sad fat slovenly pathetic greasy chicken fat loving life Caric must lead. Seriously, as a member of the human race I’m embarrassed for that fat fuck.
So…. Have there been any Obama jokes already…. I’m thinking like retread Chuck Norris “jokes”…. because that would be real edgy and stuff. Almost… rebellious… Like a trucker hat.
Caric the Pretender would like OJ to audit his classes
or maybe he has, in search of the next Nicole look-a-like to abuse. Caric might have been getting a finder’s fee which has now stopped… no wonder his writing has that puckered sphincter vibe.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
I feel like Holly surrounded by sleestaks. I really do.
Caric the Pretender would like OJ to audit his classes
Well, it would be the first time he’s had an actual black person.
Sorry Ric- he doesn’t have the chutzpah to have engineered any of those events. He is after all only an academic. Fortunately he has a team of experts to help him out in that arena though once he’s in office.
This is great news! I’m sure, coming the day before the election and based on software that no one’s ever heard of written by someone no one’s ever heard of will manage to sway millions of undecideds.
I am literally hanging my head in shame for not pushing this peerless analysis and instead concentrating on trying to spread the feeble plan at my name’s link. I now know that was a mistake, and I’ll start pushing this news instead.
Not to sound racist or anything, but I can’t help but think how Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech might be updated by Senator Obama and his radical leftist followers: “I Have a Wet Dream,” perhaps…
[…] scenario could be possible: Ayers might have served as a ‘book doctor’.†Clip Source: proteinwisdom.com Yavelow contacted me and I sent him some relevant materials. When he ran the two books nominally […]
Caric, you must be the stupidest tool in the Left’s shed. Politicians NEVER do there own wetwork, they don’t have the training or the stones for it. They merely order it…
There’s no perspective for this research — the .pdf gives no context for these numbers, and the sample used for “Fugitive Days” is much smaller the the software needs to determine significant results. It’s quite possible Ayers had a hand in the writing of “Dreams..”, but this does not constitute significant evidence.
Millican took a preliminary look and found the charges “very implausibleâ€Â.
…
Millican said: “I thought it was extremely unlikely that we would get a positive result.”
But he couldn’t be bothered to actually run the test and find out. Don’t you love the curious nature of modern academia?
glasnost was previously asked to stay away.
The post he linked was here, for those interested.
Cashill’s long article did include this bit:
Which is why I asked people to read the whole thing.
Glasnost likely didn’t — and the site he links apparently argues that any academic who comes to the conclusion that striking similarities exist between the two books is either a whackjob or a partisan.
Meanwhile, I’ve stated repeatedly that I’ve done no analysis, and that you can make of all this what you will. Beyond that, I’ve made no further determinations, other than to say that forensic semiotics is a useful preliminary tool in these kinds of examinations.
Really. It’s all right there in my post. Just read it if you don’t believe me .
“Forensic semiotics” would find a strong likelihood that you write the comments I put here. Because it can’t read them.
This isn’t “structural investigation.” It’s counting things. As a narratologist yourself, you know that’s not the same.
There’s intent in the works of both men. It’s not the same intent or the same man’s.
(Nor are Dreams‘s and Audacity‘s. Which is the real story here, run past en route to the thrilling! conclusion.)
psycho —
As I’ve said repeatedly, I haven’t done an analysis myself. In fact, this post starts off with a “for what it’s worth” — which should set the tone. There is most certainly use to be had from “counting things,” though that use is preliminary, as I noted, to any real investigation. And yes, counting can be part of a structural investigation (and can, in some instances, key one into intent or attitude; for instance, the frequency of use of the first person).
I’ve had my disagreements with similar analyses in the past (see Beauchamp and semiotics, eg). But I don’t discount the usefulness.
Just a mild curiosity caused by a passing interest for a triviality.
Yeah.Right.
He’s not the liberty crusher of your broken record Progzilla nightmares. He is a big man, big time, Cy Young, and it’s not a crime to note that.
He came to play. And the game was on. (Existentialist Hemingway mockery mode on)
O! is in the House Tonight
I didn’t know you held courses in ‘mediocre’ perfessor. If your lucky, tonight will see the ushering in of ‘mediocre’ in a grand scale.
The comedy continues.
thor reveling in the mob’s awesome beauty. Shocka.
It’s amazing how many people who hold themselves up as being “intelligent” have such reading comprehension problems, such as the Perfessor and Hammer Boi. Closest I ever got to the halls of academia was getting drunk one night in the Graduates Pub on the Rice University campus, back in my sordid youth, and I was able to figure out Jeff’s intent quite easily.
Did Obambi’s resident Commie bomb-thrower ghost write that book? If proof of such did appear (as for Yavelow’s study, suggestive yes, proof no), it certainly would not surprise me.
Of course, even if someone produces the actual gun camera film of Billy and Barry-O! working on the book together (in between giving each other big sloppy tongue kisses, purely in a spirit of Marxist solidarity, you understand), some people still would not believe it (the Perfessor and Hammer-Boi come to mind).
However, it will be fun to watch their heads explode should their Magic Negro lose tonight…:)
Sorry none of Obama’s past asssociations mean anything. He could be gay lovers with Ayres and married to Jeremiah Wright and those people who expect a check when Obama’s president won’t give a damn.
A local talk radio host reported a friend of his went to a Biden campaign stop with his kids. He was confronted by a number of black females, who, when they learned he was a McCain supporter, dog cussed him and then told him “You’ll be working your white ass off to pay for me” while one of the other ones added “Yeah, while I sit home and get my check.”
Swear to god, this is not an exageration. An Obama presidency has the potential to torpedo race relations for the next 50 years. And I’ll tell you why – if the attitude of poor blacks is really going to be “your white ass better get to work so I can feed my nine kids” I promise I’ll start resenting poor blacks, who already have a poor reputation due to certain stereotypes (some of which are imagined, many of which are true), even more. And if it makes me racist I want to smack any black woman who tells me to “get off my white ass and get her a check”, well then I accept that.
Matt Esq
the old saw “If you rob Peter to pay Paul you get Paul’s vote” is working over time in The One’s campaign.
Civil resistance and working on getting America values congressional candidates elected in 2010 may be the only answer.
g-snot
JeffG rarely deletes comments, even troll droppings. And you deliberately ignore that this site is a private enterprise not public.
Not that Leftist ever makes such a distinction … but there you have it.
Me? I will never hire or sub contract anybody who has supported that Marxist piece of shit. Which is too bad for a couple of guys already. Cause you know what? There ain’t gonna be no check. They’ve all been tooled, for the Marxist piece of shit’s fantasy world. He’s gonna be like the President of Il Paveau in Wise Guy. He’s gonna look around, and there’ gonna be exactly nobody behind him when the rubber hits the road. Palin 2012!
glasnost: Actually, I think Jeff should officially adopt Steve Graham’s policy:
Comments may be summarily deleted, edited, or altered, at the whim of Jeff Goldstein, the proprietor.
Regards,
Ric
Donald
I’m going to try and engage in as much cash trade under the table as possible, barter, trade, reduce my official economic footprint. the ubiquitous Swap Meet first soared to popularity under Jimmy Carter … no coincidence.
Matt, Esq., are you talking about unintended intended consequences? They said it’d never happen.
But what am I talking about? thor the Libertarian Nihilist merely believes religiously in totalitarian “leaders” — real men, they, actually vanquishing old retiring regimes by the very force of their positive energy and all — that force all that is bad back into the good column. Top-down policy tyrannies build up personal freedoms and well-oiled markets, whoda thunk it. Well, we know who. And more or less why.
One wonders just how such a spectacular ignorance parallels itself into the same slots as the plotted, willful racist abuses of the system for personal gain you relate…
I’m sorta in this thing for myself and my kids, so I hope that Obamabots will forgive me when I ask them to take care of their own damn needs. Freeloaders can step off. I’m a bastard that way.
Ric —
That’s the policy I’ve adopted. And I’m so secure in it that I don’t even bother to post it anywhere. It just is.
Hell, that last glasnost post I deleted without reading. Felt great!
Who the fuck is “glasnost”? Well, that’s what I get for going off to vote. Miss all the good stuff…
And Darleen, you are right. I never thought about this until you mentioned it here, but yes, it was during the Smilin’ Jimmuh debacle that flea markets and “swap meets” became REAL popular. Between the high taxes and inflation a lot of people were scrambling for extra income.
No doubt we will see the same thing again if the Magic Negro gets elected. But I still have a gut feeling that McCain is going to win this.
McCain will win cause if he didn’t that would be silly and a waste of a perfectly good revolution against stupid England.
STFU, datadave.
And yet forewarned trespassers continue to return as though it were their perfect right of birth to trample another person’s property. Strange, and stranger still their apparent uniformity of political opinion. Correlation is no causation so further study will be warrented.
a
dogs and vomit. But Mom! it’s soooo tasty!