Amazon's Statistically Improbable Phrases

Amazon's new feature:

Amazon.com Statistically Improbable Phrases: Amazon.com’s Statistically Improbable Phrases, or “SIPs”, show you the interesting, distinctive, or unlikely phrases that occur in the text of books in Search Inside the Book. Our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to how many times it occurs across all Search Inside books, that phrase is a SIP in that book.

SIPs might be the new Cliff Notes.  You can learn everything that makes a particular work unique by them.  For instance, the SIPs in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!--monkey nigger, wild negroes, wild niggers-- say all anybody needs to know about this classic work of American literature.  What could you possibly need to know about Abraham Lincoln that you couldn't glean from his SIPs: not exist within their limits, cotten goods, policy that agitation, cannot exclude slavery, abolition platform, cranberry laws, annual joyous return, prohibited therein, requisite population, provision for submitting, unconstitutionally commenced, slavery therein, territorial existence, acquiring additional territory, nationalize slavery, unconditional repeal, ask your attention, slave constitution, unfriendly legislation, alike lawful, abolition counties, own way subject, long continued applause, useless labour, carry slavery.  American History 101!  Who needs college?  Not you!

Cornered by an annoying Holy Roller?  Don't want to admit you haven't had time to read The Mark: The Beast Rules the World (Left Behind No. 8)?  No problem!  The SIPs know all: enforcement facilitators, old safe house, loyalty mark.   Smile, smack 'em on the back and tell 'em "Better slap on those loyalty marks before the enforcement facilitators break down the doors of the old safe house!"  You and he or she will be brothers or sisters or siblings in Christ before you know it.

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is as intellectually weighty as it is, well, weighty.  Always wanted to be a member of the intellectual elite?  Never had the time to read a 1300 page novel with 300 pages of footnotes?  No problem!  Just tell 'em you loved it, what with all the entertainment cartridges, annular fusion, dawn drills, professional conversationalist, feral hamsters.  They'll be so impressed!  This time you'll make them say her momma!

And finally, a missive from the future: "Damn, A. Cephalous, I'd love to read Ulysses but I can't find the time," says Some Gay Guy.  You're in luck.  It just so happens that I've its SIPs right here on my desktop: tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom, quaker librarian, absentminded beggar, matrimonial gift, base barreltone.  "What about A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?"  What about it?  "What's the deal with it?"  I see, I see.  It's a relatively simple book about epiphany technique, fallen seraphim, ardent ways, windless hour, esthetic image. 

P.S.  Some Gay Guy: Next time you find yourself at a trendy West Hollywood party surrounded by queer theorists, I've found a hoard of conversation starters for you: washroom sex, ridiculous theater, queer structure, gay punk, lesbian cinema, gay subject, lesbian filmmakers, lesbian media, gay filmmakers, lesbian representation, ball world, porn tapes, sex police, found footage, lesbian romance, corpus socians, paternal corpse, sexual difference theorists, gay male leather community, sexual structuring, black women reformers, black feminist theorists, homosexual heritage, gay cultural production, heritage cinema, vampire imagery, gay style, gay representation, lesbian vampire, vampire fiction, gay porn, gay oppression, sad young men, gay culture, gay male culture, vampire tales, camp sensibility, being queer, gay film, radical culture, sexual freedom agenda, reproductive surrogacy, malestream world, lesbian sex wars, gay male sexual culture, gay sadomasochism, queer coalition, strategies with couples, control desensitisation, dropping safety behaviours, case conceptualisation, internalising disorders, panic scenario, standard cognitive therapy, inflated responsibility, cognitive conceptualisation, old core belief, anxiety spiral, schema modes, schema avoidance, anxiety cues, focused cognitive therapy, panic attack frequency, hypomanic patients, interoceptive exposure, applied relaxation, cognitive therapy group, interpersonal schemas, panic disorder with agoraphobia, behavioural experiments, recent panic, behavioural avoidance, tempat ngeber, lesbi women, gay archipelago, lesbi subjectivities, archipelago concept, antiblack world, circular dream, decadent men, queer legal theorists, behavior that defines the class, suspect class status, good homosexual.  That ought to get you party started right...

Comments

[Some Gay Guy]

Cool! Now I can /finally/ bag a certain blonde-haired, deliciously twinky fellow grad student. Yum!

[Some Gay Guy]

Why does this Web site always make me repeat myself? I type one thing, and it doesn't show up. So I type another and then *both* comments show up. I guess it wants to make sure I'm serious?

[A. Cephalous]

I think you're seeing things...

...by the way, best SIP I've found yet (from Crooked Timber):

The Trial, Franz Kafka: ostensible acquittal; definite acquittal.

More that I've found. These books all appear in the works cited page of my current dissertation chapter, but until now I really didn't understand them:

The Education of Henry Adams: diplomatic education, accidental education, supersensual chaos, larger synthesis, rebel agents

John Barleycorn, Jack London: salmon boat, oyster pirates, night coal, long sickness, desire for alcohol

Origin of Species, Charles Darwin: temperate productions, genera descended, transitional gradations, unknown progenitor, fossiliferous formations, our domestic breeds, modified offspring, doubtful forms, closely allied forms, profitable variations, enormously remote, transitional grades, very distinct species, mongrel offspring, and, of course, diversified habits (a nice indication of his annoyance with Lamarck)

The SIPs for The Descent of Man aren't as indicative of the larger argument: more beautiful males, colour from the females, rivalry with other males, build concealed nests, stridulating organs, from some lower form, build open nests, anthropomorphous apes

[David]

Lesbian sex wars, eh? ... God, I'm so predictable. The sad thing is I'm sure that's not nearly as awesome as it sounds.

While I'm on the subject, though... SGG: thank you for your response, which truly was as thorough as it was informative. Let me know how that last idea works out for you, since if I have been of any help at all, I will doubtless wish to store the knowledge in my treasured cr8 of memories.

You may now shoot me for the pun. I die a happy man.

[David]

And yes, I will freely admit that I made the "Lesbian sex wars, eh?" comment /solely/ so I could segue into the response and make a vile pun. Does that mean I'm a bad, bad man?

[Some Gay Guy]

David: My pleasure. Also, you'll be relieved to know that I, along with a small minority of other gay guys, find guy-girl porn /incredibly/ hot. So maybe there's hope for us yet...Also, are you cute?

A. Cephalous: You were right, my friend. From the NYT: "The word conclave, in fact, comes from the Latin "with key." The tradition of isolating the cardinals developed in the 13th century, after agonizingly long waits, including a nearly three-year conclave in Viterbo. The people of the city outside grew so sick of waiting for a pope that they locked the doors, removed the roof and promised to serve only bread and water. Gregory X was quickly elected."

[A. Cephalous]

So Some Gay Guy, how was the coke party. Did you get, uh, HIGH...

[Some Gay Guy]

You're misinformed, A.C. I was /invited/ to a coke party that I am, obviously (good boy that I am) not going to. 8-ballin not my style, dude.

[David]

Am I cute?

Well, my mother says I'm handsome. /deadpan

[Some Gay Guy]

And I'm sure you are! Why do I want to know, you ask? You know, I have no clue. Anyway, you're doing better than I. All I can get out of my mother is "there's nothing wrong with you," which seems to be the most flattering lie the woman can muster. Ah, well...