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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Lit-Spam

I received this spam recently. It's brilliant -- the machine has recombined sentences and phrases from Lucy Maude Montgomery's 1926 book The Blue Castle to create an entirely new text. It's surprisingly cohesive and interesting. I've cleaned up the machine errors which moved letters out of their places, and double-spaced paragraphs, but otherwise this is unedited, poetry created from a source text (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200951.txt) by a computer program. It's not genius, but it IS a significant improvement on the original text.


In her heart she thought unashamedly: I wish Olive could know that Allan Tierney wanted to paint me.

Your eyes look like burnt holes in a blanket.

Bring no more of that devilish stuff here, he had ordered briefly. Not come home at all for meals if you wanted to.

With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills.

Valancy went up the rock steps and into the house. And she did not want him to be the least unhappy.

Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise.

What have I done that deserved a slam like that? You know I've often told you it was distracting.

The air was so crisp and clear that it was half intoxicating. Valancy still strove blindly to push him away. The woods will have their own way even with those obvious dandelions. Barney, I thought you were dead, she whispered. After two years of the Klondike did you think a baby storm like this could get me?

She made him stand still on his snowshoes while she repeated it. The air was so crisp and clear that it was half intoxicating.

Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Valancy still strove blindly to push him away.

Barney went into Bluebeard's Chamber and shut the door. Valancy turned sick before the horror of it.

Looks exactly like a picture-book, doesn't it?

To her delight, Barney gave her a necklace of pearl beads.

We must not commit the desecration of tramping through there. In short, they've no secrets, said Barney.

Never had she imagined anything so splendid. They left the doors open, and Banjo and Good Luck came and went at pleasure. Once or twice night overtook them, too far from their Blue Castle to get back.

That sounds John Fosterish, teased Valancy.

Dawdle over meals as long as you wanted to. She had no desire to peer into the locked chambers of Barney's house of life.

Today it is queen of the wild places and it is always today in the woods.

I wonder if John Foster ever spent a winter in Mistawis, said Valancy.

The sweetest sound she had ever heard was Lady Jane's clatter through the woods when Barney returned. Valancy still strove blindly to push him away. You are too hard on John Foster, said Valancy severely. Luckily Banjo got out from under in time, his whiskers bristling with indignation. He stood up, without looking at Valancy, and said casually: I suppose we'd better be hiking back.

She looked at Barney, hunched up beside her. Valancy had only one unhappy night that winter.

1 Comments:

Blogger Ariel Gordon said...

Fie on you and your disapproval of The Blue Castle! (It was very good reading when I was fourteen and feeling Valancy-like...)

8:35 PM

 

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