
The Jungle - ingve
http://blog.mattbierner.com/the-jungle/
======
Chinjut
From the link: "History remembers Upton Sinclair's The Jungle as a vivid
exposé on literal and figurative sausage making, a piece that shocked the
nation and led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. But all that
happens in the first half of the novel, no one remembers the second half. And
that is probably for the best. Rereading The Jungle recently, I again found
the second half almost unbearable, especially the later chapters which devolve
into clumsy, thinly-veiled socialist propaganda."

This appears to be precisely the reaction to The Jungle which Upton Sinclair
complained about; he wrote the book to illustrate the harshness and
exploitation of poverty, but everyone got hung up on the descriptions of
meatpacking instead. Not on the conditions of the meatpackers, mind you, but
on the conditions of the meat ("Oh no, not my food!")! As Sinclair said, "I
aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

------
adsche
From the conclusion:

    
    
        This work conclusively demonstrates an inverse correlation
        between exclamation points density and quality of The Jungle.
    

And from the introduction:

    
    
        Rereading The Jungle recently, I again found the second half
        almost unbearable, especially the later chapters which devolve
        into clumsy, thinly-veiled socialist propaganda.
    

To "conclusively demonstrate an inverse correlation between exclamation points
density and quality", I believe one should find a better measure of quality
than the occurence of socialist motifs.

~~~
Apocryphon
This entire misguided exercise seems like a parody of hacker
overquantification and using cold, hard metrics in order to spurn art.

Is The Jungle really the leftist equivalent to Atlas Shrugged, as the blogger
seems to allege?

------
joesmo
I think the conclusion is self-evident to any avid reader of literature. I
can't think of a single good author who abuses exclamation marks. And that's
because someone who abuses exclamation marks in this way is a pretty poor
writer by definition.

~~~
qu4z-2
Could you quote me the relevant definition? :)

Or, less snarkily, I don't think it's self-evident that a writer who uses
exclamation marks a lot is a bad writer (although I can't think of a
counterexample). What leads you to say that?

(also I'd argue that "abusing" exclamation marks follows from your judgement
of "bad writer". Any good writers would be _using_ exclamation marks, not
_abusing_ them)

------
Renaud
There well may be correlation but in this article, the only objective measure
of fact is that of the number of exclamation points.

The main assumption, that the book gets worse over time, is completely
subjective and dependent on that particular reader's personal preferences (is
it just style? is it the subject matter?, it is the plot? the dialogues?).

It's a dangerous game to play: you can easily persuade yourself that you are
reaching some objective truth when in fact you're just measuring your own
personal bias and hiding it behind the veneer of a scientific methodology.

A fairly good example of confirmation bias.

