| Show Cooks 2D Sunday December 3 2000 Standard-Examin- Literary detective finds clues in writing external evidence such as a letter to link an author to the poem So he began to methodically scrutinize uncommon words and phrasing in the poem itself He compared his findings to other texts written by other authors in that period It looked like “WS” shared a lot of literary idiosyncrasies with Shakespeare - things like the tendency to use "who” with inanimate objects like “book By MICHAEL HILL The Associated Press OUGHKEEPSIE NY-- It sounds like a TV show: Don Foster a English professor makes time between teaching college kids Shakespeare to solve mysteries He sniffs out a long-lopoem by the immortal Bard He g author unmasks a who anonymously disparaged the president And he takes it on the chin a couple of times along the mild-manner- st best-sellin- way The twist is that Foster is not a gumshoe in the typical sense Vassar The College professor is a literary detective He analyzes writings -things like poems books and ransom notes - in order to identify the author He has looked for revelatory clues in the dark ramblings of the Unabomber the girlish prose of Monica Lewinsky even the beloved holiday verse beginning "Tv as the night before Christmas" The results have been some dramatic pronouncements a bit of controversy and now a book summing up the professor's sideline "Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous" (Henry Holt & Co S26) The book also serves as an extended argument by Foster that an individual's writing is like a fingerprint - a mark of identity that shows through in the words we use and the way that we use them "In my opinion the kind of evidence that a text supplies is more reliable than eyewitness testimony” Foster says "An eyewitness can forget or lie or equivocate or leave the country or become ill or mistake one face high-profi- for high-profi- another" Foster seems at ease in the cloistered confines of Vassar's Hudson Valley campus He banters easily with a class of sophomores over cuckolding jokes in "Much Ado About Nothing" The married father of two sons is and can reel off long quotes from Shakespeare in conversation Academia would probably remain his lone passion today if not for the pull of a certain literary mystery "I never really wanted to become Mr Attribution" he says "It just sort of happened to soft-spok- me" An elegy Foster chanced upon a poem when he was a doctoral student in 1984 The poem was a funeral elegy for William Peter a scholar murdered after a day of drinking in 1612 It was signed with the initials WS "A Funeral Elegy" struck Foster as having an “awful lot” of Shakespeare in it He decided to test his theory Foster couldn't uncover any 17th-centu- suspends Newsday Stephen King is m the middle new : When will he finish his new The prolific author has suspended his experiment in electronic publishing for profit and told his subscribers - those who have paid to read his new serial book and those who haven't - that “The Plant" "will be going into hibernation for a while" as the author works on other projects le little-know- started it all King Items must be submitted to the Standard-ExaminWednesday prior to publication For information call project e-bo- ok When King announced in June that he was planning to circumvent a publisher's percentage of book income by offering his book for sale directly to readers he said he would keep writing as long as they kept paying by noon on the 625-427- 1 SIGNINGS READINGS AMP EVENTS AT LOCAL BOOKSTORES David Woolley will sign copies of “Pillar of Fire" (Covenant $21 95) at Deseret Book in ZCMI Center 36 S State St Salt Lake City from noon-- 2 pm Wednesday For information- - call 328-819- 1 LarTy Nalder will sign copies of “The Gift of Urr” (Cedar Fort $1095) at Media Play 1101 W Riverdale Road Riverdale from 5-- 7 pm Wednesday For information call 627-039- 0 Anne Poelman will sign copies of “Secret Santa” (Deseret Book $1595) at Deseret Book in ZCMI Center 36 S State St Salt Lake City from noon-- 2 pm Fnday For information call 328-819- 1 Dean Hughes will sign copies of “As Long As I Have You” (Deseret Book $2195) at Deseret Book in ZCMI Center 36 S State St Salt Lake City from noon-- 2 pm Friday For information call 328-819- 1 Anne Poelman will sign copies of “Secret Santa" (Deseret Book $1595) at Barnes & Noble 1780 N Woodland Park Drive Layton at 7 pm Friday For information call 773-997- 3 Marlene Sullivan will sign copies of "Heroes and Heroines: True Stories” (Origin $1 1 95) at Deseret Book 460 W 500 South Bountiful from 1 1 am-- l pm Saturday For information call 292-048- 0 who” Foster fingered Shakespeare as the elegy's author in a thesis for the academic presses This was a very big deal in the rarefied world of Shakespeare studies Some scholars balked - or in Foster's words came "whooping for my scalp” A common complaint was that the elegy was boring certainly nothing the great Shakespeare would write Foster began receiving unsigned rejection letters from academic presses questioning his textual analysis He responded by identify ing the authors of those anonymous rejection letters His thesis was eventually published Today the elegy is included in some of the major Shakespeare anthologies though not all Foster was able to shrug off the slings and arrows of outraged scholars - unaware it was a taste of things to come The Shakespeare attribution got Foster media attention in 1996 which in turn got him invitations to figure out a mystery from the time: Who wrote “Primary Colors"? The thinly disguised novelization of Bill Clinton's 1992 run for president was attributed only to Anonymous For this job Foster ripped out all the pages of the novel and fed them into a scanner to compare with electronic texts from some primary suspects like New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and humorist Christopher Buckley Foster found a match and named political columnist Joe Klein as Anonymous in a February 1996 New York magazine article Klein denied it And so began Foster's season of anxiety In naming Klein the n professor from Poughkeepsie put his professional reputation on the line Klein headed a pack of prominent people saying Foster goofed Worse yet the academic brouhaha over "Funeral Elegy” was still raging - critics were say ing that if Foster blew it with Klein maybe he did it with Shakespeare too “It was” Foster says pausing a few seconds “difficult - a difficult few months for me Let’s put it that way” Klein finally confessed in July 1996 after his handwriting was identified on the book’s manuscript Foster was vindicated and in demand BOOKMARK Timothy Robinson will sign copies of “A Night Without Darkness" (Deseret Book $1595) at Deseret Book in Layton Hills Mall from noon-- 1 1 pm Saturday For information call Dean Hughes will sign copies of “As Long As I Have You” (Deseret Book $2095) at Deseret Book in Layton Hills Mall from noon-- pm Saturday For information call 5463391 Kerry Blair will sign copies of “The Heart Has Forever” (Covenant $1395) at Deseret Book in Layton Hills Mall from noon-- pm Saturday For information call Lynda Nelson will sign copies of “Where Dreams Meet" (Evans Book $1395) at Deseret Book in Layton Hills Mall from noon-- 2 pm Saturday For information call 5463391 Nancy Allen will sign copies of “A Time for the Heart” (Covenant $1495) at Deseret Book in Layton Hills Mall from noon-- 2 pm Saturday 1 For information call Jefferson Carter will sign copies of “Billy Nagle” (Toodee pm Publishing $1295) at Deseret Book in Layton Hills Mall from Saturday For information call 5463391 Brenton Yorgason will sign copies of “Cherished Intimacy” (Granite Publishing $1495) at Deseret Book in Ogden City Mall from 4:30-- 6 pm Saturday For information call 3933141 Jefferson Carter will sign copies of “A Little Christmas Story" (Toodee Publishing $595) at Media Play 1101 W Riverdale Road 0 Riverdale from 69 pm Wednesday For information call Brenton Yorgason will sign copies of “Cherished Intimacy” (Granite Publishing $1495) at Deseret Book in Layton Hills Mall from 7:30-8:3-0 pm Saturday For information call 5463391 Hardesty will sign copies of “The Lost Legend of the First Christmas” (Ampelos Press $1995) at Media Play 1101 W Riverdale Road Riverdale from 69 pm Sunday For information call 6273390 Matthew Brown will sign copies of “Symbols In Stone" (Covenant $1595) at Deseret Book in ZCMI Center 36 S State St Salt Lake City from noon to 2 pm Dec 13 For information call 3268191 AT LOCAL LIBRARIES Brigham City Library 26 E Forest St hosts a book discussion group at 7 pm Thursday on "Dancing at the Rascal Fair” by Ivan Doig led by Kathryn McKay a professor of history at Weber State University For information call Brigham City Library 26 E Forest St hosts family night at 7 pm Thursday Dec 14 For information call Logan Library 255 North Main St has registration for January 5 Children must be ages 3 to 5 storytime from Dec For information call 7169123 546-339- 1 2 546-339- 1 546-339- 3-- 5 The Associated Press Don Foster a professor at Vassar College analyzes writings to determine the identity of the author WORD SLEUTH: Big cases come calling Foster reckons he received 13000 requesting his assistance in the two years after outing Klein He was asked to analyze all manner of anonymous documents - wills Internet postings letters screeds But he has remained choosy in picking mysteries in part because the work is so time consuming He shakes his head at the misperception that he merely feeds texts into some sort software of Author-o-Mati- c program that spits out an answer While he often relies on electronic databases it remains demanding work Still Foster found some questions are just too interesting not to explore His book details a loopy investigation into whether a poison pen letter sent to a Northern California weekly was wntten by the reclusive author Thomas Pynchon (Foster says no) He also describes efforts to divine who wrote what in the infamous affidavit "talking points” Lewinsky handed to Linda Tripp (Foster believes Lewinsky revised someone else’s text) Foster also exposes himself to a new controversy by asserting that Clement Clarke Moore in New York falsely posed as the author of the beloved Christmas poem known commonly as “Twas the Night Before Christmas” Foster believes the real author was Henry Livingston Jr an obscure Poughkeepsie poet On the more serious side Foster has done a lot of criminal cases and is on an FBI referral list of experts who can help in investigations He has testified to the similarities between the Unabomber manifesto and writing of Ted Kaczynski and looked into the 1996 Olympic park bombings in Atlanta He also has worked for the prosecution on the Jon Benet Ramsey murder case in Colorado although defense lawyers released a 1997 letter Foster wrote to Ramsey’s mother offering assistance “I’ve learned a lot really about what one can say and not say” Foster says "I’ve had a couple of bumps on my learning curve It was a rough transition going from the halls of academe world into the of criminal investigation" His book finished Foster is focusing more exclusively1 on campus life He professes nostalgia for the days when the only papers he scrutinized were written by his students rough-and-tumb- le 627-039- JL 723-585- 0 723-585- 0 11-1- BEST SELLERS These were the week's top books according to Publisher's Weekly HARDCOVER NONFICTION 1 “Who Moved My Cheese?“ by Spencer Johnson 2 “The Beatles Anthology" The Beatles 3 “The O’Reilly Factor” by Bill O'Reilly 4 “Tuesdays with Morris" by Mitch AJbom 5 “Body for Ufa" by Bill Phillips and Michael D'Orso 6 “A Short Guide to a Happy Life" by Anna Quindlen 7 “Joe DiMagglo: The Hero’s Ufa” by Richard Ben Cramer 8 “Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom" by Bob Woodward 9 “Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 18661869” by Stephen E Ambrose 10 “Guinness World Records 2001" by Guinness Publishing - Standard-Examine- r staff and wire reports Ennronnmnnrra t t In a story on King's Internet site in September King said the decision did not rest with him to stop publishing his book online "In the words of The Turtles 'You baby nobody but you’ If you pay the story rolls If you don't the story folds” he said Michael McLean’s 414 ITentiors Wanted For The yc WESOF WiNTERFEST 2001 Jan 19-- 20 Weber County Fairgrounds &itr Dec 2 “M5 Orem McKay Events Center UVSC SCRAPBOOK VENDORS CRAFT BOOTH VENDORS WANTED!! Ogden Dee Events Center Weber State Buddings Dec Event Includes: Authentic German Folk Festical German Food Entertainment xV- - VtP Scrapbook Classes Crop Party Make and Take 782-531- 1 Celt: 3xs 0S40 7891 1 Salt Lake City Cottonwood High School Par Infurmjtion call Scott Sneddon: (801-222-800- 0) Dec 6 Thousands attend this event! Two The Story Continues - Tickets are $12 (plus applicable service charge) and available at all Smith's Tix outlets or by calling Discounts available for groups of 20 or more m1 KirttifdJnshi4rTuiliom 'y eememijm' tc IM- ff ' krx a (t t FOOD STAMPS ACCEPTED PRICES EFFECTIVE DEC 4 - DEC 9 2000 4 Subject to availability and stock on hand ' I Make the extra stop at our meat market you will be happy about it I 9 |
