A literary entry (well, sort of)

Got this link from my friend and former Isis officemate, Len: Gender Genie. Based on simple algorithm (don’t ask me what that means, check with dictionary.com), it can predict the gender of an author. It needs an entry of more than 500 words to make the calculations more accurate.

The geek that I am, I whipped out an old notebook (one of a few) which contains book passages copied from books that I read. The Gender Genie was able to predict the gender of Salman Rushdie but failed with JD Salinger. Maybe because the passage was spoken by Franny, a female.

And anyway, the passages I wrote were less than 50 words so that could have thrown the calculations a bit.

It’s also fun to be reading these words that I deemed to be the more important parts of some of the books I read; carefully-written words that resonated in me.

Here are some:

I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of splash. – “Franny and Zooey,” JD Salinger

I feel this too but probably not as vehemently as Franny felt. How else to explain this blog? It’s me trying to make my own splash or plink as the case maybe :}

In fiction’s grip, we may mortgage our homes, sell our children, to have whatever we crave. Alternatively, in that miasmal ocean, we may simply float away from our desires and see them anew, from a distance, so that they seem weightless and trivial. We let them go. Like men dying in a blizzard, we lie down in the snow to rest. –“At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers” a short story from the collection “East, West,” Salman Rushdie

I forgot the theme of the story but this passage really caught my eye. Still sends me shivers as I try to make out the meaning of the wonderfully linked words

It’s not the destinations; it’s the ability to be on the road, happy trails, out where no one knows or understands or cares about all the devilling things that have been weighing you down, keeping you frantic as a lizard with a rock on its tail. “Under the Tuscan Sun,” Frances Mayes

Ah, captures exactly my perspective on traveling