My very first spell-checker 22 years ago was, like the romantic poet Lord Byron, “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” If CorrectStar2000 had had its wicked way back in the late ‘80s, a college survey of the great works of literature might have included “Ulysses” by James Jaws; “Moby Disc” by Hormone Melville; “Robinson’s Cruise” by Denial Defoe; and “The Merchant of Vans” by William Shakespeare.
Maybe they’ve mellowed over the years: My current spell-checking software is much more like Mr. Rogers–ever so helpful, always cheerful and polite.
Two decades ago, back when I was slaving over my own early works on a now laughably gigantic old IBM PC, I would run finished drafts through a final spell-check before submitting my stories.
From the start, something was amiss. The suggested corrections in the spell-checked versions were most peculiar, bearing little resemblance to my original word choice, or, dare I say, reality. The more I spell-checked, the more perverse and random the corrections became. Proper nouns–and nouns in general–were especially troublesome for “Star. I got the feeling it was personal: There were words that it just plain didn’t like.
If the spell-checker could mangle my pedestrian prose, I thought, what might it do to truly great writing, say, the Great Works of English Literature? So began my experiment, first running only titles and authors through the program, from Charles Dickens (“The Old Crusty Shop”) to Sir Falter Scott (“Rob Rot,”) then entire lines from plays and stanzas of poetry. In Star’s hands, Chaucer read like “Animal House,” and William Shakespeare needed serious therapeutic intervention.
What if the spell-checker fell into the wrong hands—the hands of literary terrorists? Could it spell the end of literary history as we know it?
As Star’s suggestions became increasingly bizarre, I began to wonder if it had some literary axe to grind, whether this could be some sort of deconstructionist plot. Why would a mere spell-checker want to sabotage the works I had idolized as an English major? And what if the spell-checker fell into the wrong hands—the hands of literary terrorists? Could it spell the end of literary history as we know it?
I began to see my spell-checker as an evil saboteur hungry for power and on a decline into madness, reminiscent of Hal in Stanley Kubrick’s ”2001.” Just why had it chosen to date itself so far into the future? What fresh Hal was this? And what would be next—demands for co-authorship—”King Liar” by CorrectStar2000 with William Shakespeare? Or might I begin receiving cryptic messages: “Ask not what your spell-checker can do for you. Ask what you can do for your spell-checker.”
Twenty years on, Western Literature remains intact, and I now wonder whether perhaps CS2000 wasn’t really to blame. After all, Star only had a vocabulary of 87,000 words. Maybe it just felt inadequate or suffered from a Napoleonic complex? Or maybe it was merely projecting its own dysfunction onto the great literary figures?
We’ll never know, but in the interest of the history of computer science, here are the results of my study, a decided candidate for the “Journal of Irreproducible Results.”
A Sample of Star’s Handiwork
“Cuckoo Song,” author unkown (1250)
The original:
Summer is icumen in,
Lhude sings cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wud nu–
Sing cuccu!
Star’s Revision:
Somewhere is acumen in,
Lewd sings cockatoo
Groweth sex, and bloweth weed,
And springth the nude gnu–
Sing cockatoo!
The Revised Works
From “The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaser:
A good Wife was ther of boozed Bathe…
Boiled was her face..and upon amber ocelot she sat…
In felaewshipe well could she laugh and carhop.
A merchant was ther with a fork bared,
In motel.
From William Shakespeare:
“Hamlet”
A most instant tartar baked about
All my smooth body.
The ghost, Act I, Scene v, line 71
To thine own self be true…
And thou canoeist then be false to any man.
Polonius, I, iii, line 78
“Romeo and Guilt”
“Deny thy father and refuse thy name:
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Copilot.
Guilt, II, i, line 34
Thou art thyself, ‘tho not a Montage.
What’s Montage?
Ibid, line 39
“Intone and Cleopatra”
Methinks I hear Intone call.
Cleopatra, V, ii, line 282
“Joyless Seizure”
Et tea, Brutes?
Seizure, III, i, line 77
Yond Cashews has a lean and hungry look.
Brutes, Ibid, line 194
Not that I loved Seizure less,
but that I loved Rome more.
Brutes, IIi, ii, line 21
“Cymbeline”
Hark, hark! The lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phobias ‘gin arise.
Cloten, II, iii, line 19
“King Liar”
Why brand they us with bass? With bassoons? Bassoons Bass?
Edmund, I, ii, line 9
“Macbeth”
Glooms, thou art, and Chowder.
Lady Macbeth, I, v, line 13
“The Two Gentlemen of Verona”
Who is Saliva? What is she
That all our swains commend her?
Host, IV, ii, line 39
From “The Shepherd’s Colander” by Sir Fouled-up Kidney
A shepherd’s boy
All in a suntan day…led forth his flock.
From “The Faerie Queen”by Sir Edmond Sponsor
Full jolly night he sambaed.
As one for knightly gazettes and fierce encounters fist.
Canto I, Book I, Stanza I
So pure and innocent she was…
And by descent from royal line came
Of ancient congas.
Ibid Stanza V
Therewith she spewed out of her filthie maw,
A flouride of piscine horrible.
Ibid, Stanza XX
“How Soon Hath Time” by John Molten
How soon hath time….
Stolen on his wing my three and 20th beer…
“To a Skylark” by Percy Boorish Shyly
Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird, tho never wet. Parasite!
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Coitus
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape,
Of diets or mortals, or of both?
“Lady of the Lake” by Sir Falter Scott
“Harp of the North! that moldering long hats hung
On the witch-elm that shades St. Felon’s spring.”
Canto I, line 1
“H.M.S. Pinafore,” “The Boatswain’s Song,” Gilbert and Sylvan
For he might have been a Rezone
A French or Turk or Protein.
But in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations
He remains an Englishman.
“Mr. Elite’s Sunday Morning Service” by T.S. Elite
“Swine shifts from ham to ham, stirring in his bath.
From “Mother Goose”
Wee Wallet Winkie runs through the town…
See-saw, Merger, Dow,
Jacky shall have a new master.
Polly put the cartel on,
And we’ll all have tea.
Deviate, Deviate, Dumpling,
Boil him in the pot.
Lawsuit Locket lost her pocket…
Barbara Ann Curcio is a former reporter and syndicated columnist for The Washington Post.
