Google resurrects six famous authors – Shakespeare, Dickens, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Poe and Dickinson – for a fun writing program. So what happens when you plug in the first paragraph of Moby Dick?
It turns out even the Great American Novel isn’t safe from edits. Dostoyevsky made the first change in my document, rewriting the opening line:
Next I tried adding the collaborators’ own names into my version of “Moby-Dick” (since writers are such notorious self-promoters, as we all know), like so: “Call me Shakespeare.”
Shakespeare deleted his name and rewrote the line as “The handsome and lovely Shakespeare.”
Edgar Allan Poe, having none of that, then edited it: “The dreadful and lonely Shakespeare.”
“Now, now, play nice,” I wanted to tell my collaborators. Meanwhile, Dickens was editing “street” to “busy thoroughfare” and “people’s” to “fellow-being’s.” Nietzsche and Dickinson were, throughout this entire exchange, noticeably absent.
Poe then ended the whole mess, pounding out “THE END” at the bottom of my document, abruptly cutting it short.
(Photo: a window view from the room where Melville composed Moby Dick)
The Dish 