tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post1242462304408936088..comments2024-03-23T00:59:24.057-04:00Comments on Sapping Attention: Centennials, part IIBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-6177870146805516302010-12-05T10:35:28.167-05:002010-12-05T10:35:28.167-05:00Ben,
If it's the last alternative (which is, ...Ben,<br /><br />If it's the last alternative (which is, I agree, less interesting, at least for content analysis), is there some way to spin out of it to claims about different efforts by different houses to push their wares in different books?<br /><br />It's possible thoughts on that would have to wait for genre tags from you, but I just wondered if there were, in theory, some way to zoom out from an admission about a seemingly technical snafu to some analysis about commercial patterns in the publishing industry a la the last piece of Dan's second question...Hanknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-43352686657530392732010-12-04T15:39:11.485-05:002010-12-04T15:39:11.485-05:00Dan,
It's just "Alcott", unfortunat...Dan,<br /><br />It's just "Alcott", unfortunately--my system only works quickly on single words. I'm curious about all those things, too, but I'm not sure I'm going to chase it down right away. Most of the jump is generic, I think--Longfellow gets it too, and more importantly, Shakespeare gets an abbreviated version. Even John Bunyan, who pretty clearly peaks earlier, has a secondary peak around 1885. I said earlier I was working on a post about the pitfalls of loess and the transcendentalists--I'm just not sure how deep I want to go into differences between publishing houses, etc., particularly before I have genre information.<br /><br />As for whether it's a 'large general jump', the numbers are normed against all words published that year, so it's not just that there are more books--but there's probably some sort of change, maybe involving publishers printing books about writers more, and not just the 'primary sources.'<br /><br />A less interesting possibility is that it has to do with publishers putting the names of other books in their catalogs on the endpapers, which my program would parse. I know you see that a lot in the late 19C, but I don't know when it starts. That's a whole problem I've hardly thought about at all.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-85792550707841720942010-12-04T11:58:45.006-05:002010-12-04T11:58:45.006-05:00Two questions:
1. Was that Bronson or Louisa May i...Two questions:<br />1. Was that Bronson or Louisa May in that graph?<br />2. Could you do a similar graph with some writers who weren't transcendentalists or Am. Renaissance stars? I'm interested in knowing if that big jump in the 1880s and beyond has to do with subject matter, reputation, or is partly an artifact of a large general jump in US publishing.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05217832960135325575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-86188745835398431242010-12-03T17:33:52.206-05:002010-12-03T17:33:52.206-05:00This, from wikipedia, is one of the dumbest senten...This, from wikipedia, is one of the dumbest sentences I've read: "The record for the fewest Presidential birthdays is one, shared by June and September."Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.com