Author Unknown: Tales of a Literary Detective

By Don Foster

Book Overview

From the professor with an extraordinary gift for unmasking the authors of anonymous documents comes the inside story of how he solves his most challenging cases. In "Author Unknown," Don Foster reveals a starling fact: since no two people use language in precisely the same way, our identities are encoded in our own language, a kind of literary DNA. Combining traditional scholarship with modern technology, Foster has discovered how to unlock that code and, in the process, has invented an entire field of investigation--literary forensics--by which it becomes possible to catch anonymous authors as they ultimately betray their identities with their own words. Foster's unique skills first came to light when a front-page "New York Times "article announced his discovery that a previously unattributed poem was written by Shakespeare. A few weeks later, Foster solved the mystery that had obsessed America for months when he identified Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors. Foster also took on the case of an oddball California bag lady who many believed to be the elusive Thomas Pynchon. His contributions to the Unabomber case takes us inside the tangled mind of Ted Kaczynski. And, in the final chapter, Foster makes a surprising-and heartening-discovery about a beloved holiday icon. As entertaining as it is eye opening, "Author Unknown "shows us how Don Foster uses his unusual methods to search out the hidden identities behind anonymous documents of all kinds. Anyone who reads this remarkable book will find it impossible to read-or write-in the same way as before.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805068120
• ISBN13: 9780805068122
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.9" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Author Unknown is a pleasure to read!

Since no two people use language in precisely the same way, our identities are encoded in our own language, a kind of literary DNA. Professor Foster combines traditional scholarship with modern technology in the search for anonymous authors - creating a new field of investigation - literary forensics.As Don Foster writes of his cases, he recounts the story of his own life because it is all intertwined & as his prowess becomes accepted he is drawn, sometimes even challenged, into cases that have made the headlines: who really did wite Primary Colors; the Tripp-Lewinsky Talking Points & the Unabom Manifesto? When Don Foster is asked to poke his learned nose into an old, old mystery of the American Classic, "The Night Before Christmas", he is in his element & takes us on a history lesson about how Santa Claus came to be. Off we go back in time to 1823 Poughkeepsie & the writings of Mrs. Van Deusen's great-great-great-great-great grandfather who wrote funny anapestic poetry at the drop of a hat.What I relish about Author Unknown is the language - it had me gleefully delving into my dictionary, opening up whole new realms. I had dreaded a dry rendition of brittle research & got instead, a lilting, entertaining & instructive introduction into Literary Forensics. Do check out my eInterview with this author.

Literary Sleuth Tells All

Don Foster has an unusual talent. He is a professor of English literature, specializing in Shakespeare, and so you can bet he reads a lot. But sometimes he reads not to understand the text, but specifically to detect the writer of the text. In fact, if he reads it in such a fashion, he might not understand the text at all. "When reading a text of unknown or disputed authorship, I have developed an odd way of reading, by which my brain records ideas and words and punctuation form the printed page while the story goes zipping right past me, unattended." Foster's fascinating _Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous_ (Henry Holt and Company) lets us in on some of his other secrets of being the world's foremost literary sleuth. Foster came to fame in showing that _A Funerall Elegye_ by W.S., printed in 1612 was by William Shakespeare himself. His fame got him the assignment of tracking down who wrote the political novel _Primary Colors_, and his stories of how he managed the attribution, and the media tempest that occurred to the professor afterwards, are witty and fun. He goes on to tell in detail about his work on Ted Kaczynski's writing as the Unabomber, the "talking points" paper attributed to Monica Lewinsky, and letters attributed to Thomas Pynchon. He is a good storyteller, even in cases that didn't get national attention.His funniest stories are left for last in his search for the real author of the poem we know as "The Night Before Christmas," which Foster convinces us was not the product of Clement Moore. Hilariously, Foster presents real work of Moore, whose poems were moralistic, forgettable verses that curmudgeonly carped about scolding wives, frivolous maids, lewd coquettes, and (over and over) loud children, who obviously needed the birchen rod. Even Moore's juvenilia is crabby. The real author, Foster resoundingly demonstrates, was not the choleric Moore but the cheerful Henry Livingston, a jolly Dutch landowner whose bouncy verses were full of fun. This is an eye-opening book that shows just what can happen when someone reads carefully. Foster does not get bogged down in details of how he does his work, but he gives us enough to explain it well, and his clear, humorous stories are a pleasure to read.

An Analysis of Author Unknown

Professor Don Foster has achieved a very readable non-fiction book that is destined to be a best-seller. Author Unknown combines the right amount of literary scholarship, investigative sleuthing, and humor all into one novel. This book awakens the reader's senses to not only question the literary attribution of certain popular works but explains why authors exploited the situation. Author Unknown is destined to be controversial to some readers and to descendants of Clement Clark Moore. Author Unknown attributes authorship to the proper creator of the poem "The Night Before Christmas." Foster's book is a very difficult book to put down. I read its 304 pages in two days while nursing a cold at the Four Seasons Biltmore Hotel. I can tell you that I've come across no more interesting novel in the past twelve months. --Author Anonymous

A unique perspective of investigation

Vassar College Professor Don Foster is an armchair sleuth who has solved some of history's literary mysteries. In AUTHOR UNKNOWN: ON THE TRAIL OF ANONYMOUS, Professor Foster explains his forensic techniques in solving the real identity of the most prolifically used nom de plume, anonymous. His premise is simple: writing is like DNA or fingerprints, unique to the individual. The book also goes into the more famous cases that Professor Foster has "solved" such as identifying the author of PRIMARY COLORS or proving that Moore is not the author of THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Finally, Professor Foster provides insight into how his literary analysis methodology has helped law enforcement. AUTHOR UNKNOWN: ON THE TRAIL OF ANONYMOUS is an intriguing non-fiction work that will hook readers or writers with its different outlook. In an interesting manner with real world examples from today's headlines, Professor Foster explains his use of modern day science to ferret out the unknown behind writer of letters, books, poems, and the written word in general. This reviewer evaluated Professor Foster's writing style and concludes that his book is well written and very entertaining.Harriet Klausner

a really pleasant surprise

Give anonymous offenders enough verbal rope and column inches, and they will hang themselves for you, every time. -Don Foster, Author UnknownIn a culture where your fifteen minutes of fame are immediately followed by a book deal, we are flooded with memoirs, but remarkably few are any good. For the most part, our enjoyment of these books hinges almost exclusively on our interest in the event that propelled the author into the public spotlight, however briefly. Don Foster is a Shakespeare scholar, Vassar professor, and literary sleuth, and his book, Author Unknown, is a glorious exception to this rule. Though his name may be unfamiliar, many--at least the political junkies among us--will remember the dramatic moment when Mr. Foster unmasked Joe Klein as the man behind the nom de plume "Anonymous" and the author of Primary Colors. Foster, at the behest of New York Magazine, had compared the text of the novel to the writings of a number of the most likely suspects and had found so many stylistic and linguistic similarities between the book and Klein's column--including heavy use of adverbs, hyper hyphenation, Capitalization of Concepts, an obsession with race and a certain uncomfortableness about sexual orientation issues--that he was able to confidently pronounce Klein the author. Despite Klein's fearsome denials and some brief second thoughts, Foster stuck to his guns and eventually Klein was forced to acknowledge authorship, when handwriting samples also tied him to the manuscript. This book contains plenty of fascinating details about the techniques Foster uses and the nitty gritty of the investigation, but the basics of the "Anonymous" caper are fairly well known, in at least general form, and, though this episode alone would probably suffice to sell the book, it is the other cases that Foster deals with that really make the book worthwhile. He starts with the work that brought him to the attention of New York's editors, when as a graduate student he managed to use his investigatory skills to attribute a poem to William Shakespeare. This story provides a truly sublime moment when, having submitted his dissertation to Oxford University Press as a book proposal, he was turned down and received instead two anonymous critiques of his work--apparently standard practice calls for scholars to read and judge submissions anonymously--wherein both authors stated that it is not possible to use only the internal evidence in written works to attribute authorship. However, Foster then proceeded to compare the critiques to the writings of various prominent Shakespeare scholars and was able to discern precisely who had written them--perhaps predictably, neither expert saw the humor in this this, but the reader surely will. Despite these early rejections, Foster was eventually credited with having discovered a new Shakespeare poem and write-ups in The New York Times and elsewhere established him as perhaps th