A friend just pointed me to a feature I hadn't seen on Amazon: concordances. They're pulling the most frequently used 100 words, and displaying them like a tag cloud. Here are the top 100 for I Am Charlotte Simmons, the new Tom Wolfe book that I've yet to throw across the room.
adam again am another anything arms away bed beverly big black boys came charlotte coach come daddy door down dupont enough even ever everybody eyes face fact felt first front fuck fucking gave get girl go going good got great guy hand head herself himself hoyt jojo knew know let lie little long look looked looking man mean moment momma mr night nothing now oh people put really right room say saying see seemed shit side simmons smile something still students take tell thing think thought three time tip took toward turned two vance voice want wanted went white word
NB: Both "fuck" and "fucking" made it into the top 100. Nothing against those words, mind you, it's just a pointer that Wolfe may be trying a bit too hard. As usual.
the SIPs make the effort even more clear
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312424442/ref=sip_top_dp/104-3904871-0136759?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance#sipbody
Posted by: Bill Seitz | Oct 22, 2005 at 03:09 PM
I just finished reading Italo Calvino's 1982 novel "If on a winter's night a traveler". It's a book about reading books, and in one passage a character (Lotaria, the more intellectual and less book-loving of two sisters) describes her shortcut to understanding books: she enters all the words into a computer, and has the computer give her a report of the most common words in the book.
Funny to think that 23 years later this is actually being done, although for the purpose of letting people decide whether to read the book, not as a substitute for reading the complete text. Although I imagine that some people really will look at the word list and think "well, I know what that's about now - no nead to read the thing."
Posted by: Abe Fettig | Oct 27, 2005 at 08:01 AM