Author Unknown: Tales of a Literary Detective (Paperback)

~ Don Foster (Author) "Mark Twain once remarked of Christopher Columbus that "it was wonderful to find America-but it would have been more wonderful to miss it..." (more)
Key Phrases: huge liar, birchen rod, case doc, New York, Primary Colors, Joe Klein (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This fascinating book describes how an English professor became a detective, sort of. Don Foster still teaches literature at Vassar College, but he's recognized as an expert in attributional theory--the idea that everybody has literary fingerprints, or, as he puts it, "no two individuals write exactly the same way, using the same words in the same combinations, or with the same patterns of spelling and punctuation." Foster is now an expert at identifying anonymous authors. He fell into this line of work accidentally. As a graduate student who spent his days reading forgotten Elizabethan texts, Foster stumbled upon "A Funeral Elegy" by one "W.S." Through careful research, recounted in Author Unknown, he showed that it was, in fact, a long-lost poem of Shakespeare's. His claim was controversial; a chapter on this experience is as much a lesson in academic politics as attribution theory. "To propose an addition to the Shakespeare canon is like announcing that you've found a lost book of the Bible, due for inclusion in future editions," he writes. "History shows that it is usually the attributor who gets burned." For Foster, however, it became a launching pad.

In what is his most interesting chapter, Foster explains how he deduced Joe Klein was "Anonymous," the author of the bestselling book Primary Colors. He also became involved in the Unabomber case and a search for the identity of the mysterious novelist Thomas Pynchon. Foster is sometimes said to use computer programs to determine an author's identity, but this is only partly true: he employs searchable databases, and then conducts all of the comparative analysis himself. "Give anonymous offenders enough verbal rope and column inches, and they will hang themselves for you, every time," he writes. The first three chapters--focusing on Shakespeare, Klein, and the Unabomber--are the best part of the book; the rest of it, at times, feels like filler. Yet as a whole, Author Unknown is a compelling blend of autobiography, detective story, and literary analysis. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

HThe Elizabethan scholar from Vassar College who unmasked Joe Klein as the "Anonymous" who wrote Primary Colors now shakes up Yuletide verse with a reattribution of "A Visit from St. Nicholas." The selected cases of literary detection that lead up to this final surprise are the scholarly equivalent of FBI psychological profiler John Douglas's Mindhunter. Foster's textual forensics have put "A Funeral Elegy" by "W.S." into the Shakespeare canon and helped put Unabomber Ted Kaczynski in prison. His accounts of his high-profile roles in transatlantic Shakespearean squabbles and journalistic whodunits are both personable and page-turning. Whether it's because the statistical side of Foster's methodology is rather technical or that his critics have dismissed him as a "professor with a computer program," he mostly sticks to describing the fingerprints of word choice and telltale punctuation rather than lexical databases and verbal probabilities. In his case for a Scots-Dutch Revolutionary War major, Henry Livingston Jr., as the author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and against puritan Manhattan professor Clement Moore, to whom it is traditionally attributed, he argues from not only lively biographic inference but also such small, telling details as the adverbial use of "all" and the Scottish origins of "snug." While lexiphiles will enjoy such minutiae, any book lover can savor the irony of how an Elizabethan elegy eventually put a literary scholar on the trail of a serial murderer. (Nov. 7)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; 1st edition (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805068120
• ISBN-13: 978-0805068122
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #347,191 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Analysis of Author Unknown, November 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous (Hardcover)

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

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A unique perspective of investigation, November 7, 2000

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous (Hardcover)

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

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a really pleasant surprise, November 3, 2000

By	Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous (Hardcover)

Give anonymous offenders enough verbal rope and column inches, and they will hang themselves for you, every time. -Don Foster, Author Unknown

In 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 the first, certainly the leading, practitioner of literary forensics.

Later sections of the book deal with : his subsequent involvement in the JonBenet Ramsey and Unabomber cases; a demonstration that Thomas Pynchon was not the secret author behind a series of vituperative letters to the editor of Mendocino County, California newspapers, signed by Wanda Tinasky, the Fort Bragg Bag Lady; a tantalizing rumination on who may have really written the infamous "Talking Points" of Lewinsky fame; and a final chapter which pretty much demolishes the idea that Clement Moore wrote the beloved poem, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. The Talking Points discussion is especially interesting, mostly because it remains such a galling mystery, particularly for those of us who wanted Bill Clinton led out of the White House in an orange jumper and handcuffs. Foster is not able to pin the deed on a specific culprit, but does show conclusively that the memo was not the exclusive work of Monica and her pal, Linda Tripp, and points at clues in the language and legal sophistication of at least the first page of the memo that seem to indicate it was most likely the work of one of a handful of lawyers in the Clinton inner circle. Recall that Clinton himself is a lawyer, but Foster does not pursue him directly, focussing instead on Bob Bennett, Bruce Lindsey and Vernon Jordan. He is hindered here by not having access to much written work by these three men, but it would be fun to see what he could do with more evidence.

My only criticism, and it's a mild one, is that there's a little too much "gee has my life become hectic" and "what have I gotten myself into." This is self indulgent, almost self pitying, and is at odds with the genuine excitement he obviously brings to his work. He does such a good job getting us caught up in the thrill of the chase that his complaints about the hectic lifestyle the work entails fall on deaf ears. These quibbles aside, the book was one of the more pleasant surprises to come over the transom here in quite awhile. This one is highly recommended.

GRADE : A