Rebecca's Interview with Professor Don Foster
author of
Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous

Rebecca :
After reading your book, it seems I have ascended unto a fresh plateau of awareness about how I think, communicate & listen. What are the most common telltale clues you look for when first you set off On the Trail of Anonymous?

Professor Foster :
Hi Rebecca, many thanks for your interest in Author Unknown. Nothing in the Questioned Document (not so much as a semicolon, or a dash, or an undotted i) can be overlooked. Nor is any single piece of evidence conclusive.

Rebecca :
Has anyone ever asked you: “Who wrote The Bible?”

Professor Foster :
Many different individuals contributed to the collection of books that we call “the Bible”--Hebrew poets and Levites, first-century Christians, various scribes and redactors who recopied and/or revised the text, and, of course, translators.

Rebecca :
Looking into Shakespeare takes us back to your earlier years as well as to the beginnings of the printing press revolution. In what ways are our errors revealing?

Professor Foster :
All of us, sooner or later, make errors when we write. We may get the facts wrong, or we may have lapses in punctuation, spelling, word-usage, grammar, or sentence construction. If a Questioned Document contains mistakes that appear also in known writings by an identified suspect, that can be useful evidence.

Rebecca :
When you found yourself drawn into the modern mystery of who wrote Primary Colors - did it ever occur to you to let reluctant authors be?

Professor Foster :
Sometimes it may be best to let the anonymous author remain unidentified, as in the case of whistle-blowers who fear for their jobs yet wish to reveal problems in the workplace. But the blade cuts both ways: everyone in our democracy has the right to write anonymously--and yet we have also the right to figure out who did the writing.

Rebecca :
In A Professor's Whodunit you had the task of examining what made a deadly bomber tick. Were you nervous?

Professor Foster :
By the time I became involved with the Unabom case, Ted Kaczynski was already locked up tight and ticking off his days on a prison calendar. But since that time there have been other loose nuts, anonymous scoundrels whose writings could make anyone a little nervous.

Rebecca :
You analyze The Smoking Gun, page by page in the Starr-Crossed Lovers chapter & I learnt a lot! Is there an Anonymous you would like to explore & haven't yet?

Professor Foster :
I'm working on a collection of poetry and prose by early women writers - A.D. 900-1640, many of whom I have not yet been able to identify.

Rebecca :
With Christmas just passed, in your pursuit of the real person who wrote that best-beloved poem we've all come to recognize as 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, what was it like to handle & read texts written so long ago?

Professor Foster :
It's always a thrill to do archival work, whether it's with thousand-year-old medieval parchments, or the diary of a Renaissance housewife, or a bit of artwork or poetry by Henry Livingston, the 18th-century New Yorker who gave us The Night Before Christmas.

Rebecca :
In what ways do the times in which words are most commonly used affect your research? Are they reliable indications of a writer's age within an age?

Professor Foster :
Though it's not always reliable, such evidence must be considered. Slang, for example, may indicate the writer's approximate age (“cool,” “groovy,” “kewl,” “phat”). The writer's diction may also indicate something about the writer's native language, ethnicity, geographical region, professional training, or personal beliefs.

Rebecca :
I am impressed(said the flea to the dog) with the cues & clues you describe to demonstrate this intriguing new science - Literary Forensics. Is there a study course available?

Professor Foster :
A Ph.D. in Linguistics is a good place to start.

Rebecca :
Professor Don(is that a pun along the lines of C. O. Jones & E. N. Tranas?) in Wanda, the Fort Bragg Bag Lady, I sense a note of levity running through your sleuthing. I was mightily pleased to see that as I'd been dreading plodding philology. Who is the funniest Anonymous you ever pursued?

Professor Foster :
In England, Professors are called “dons,” so I guess that makes me Don Don. For sheer wackiness, Wanda Tinasky is a hard woman to beat (though a few of her bruised readers would like to try it).

Rebecca :
I am so glad I read your book & I do thank you for taking these moments out of your precious time to respond. I know anyone who reads Author Unknown will have their mind changed about this skill we call writing. What, do you imagine, makes a person write - no matter their medium?

Professor Foster :
Thanks for your kind words. All living creatures need to eat and rest and reproduce, but we human beings have the advantage of words, without which, we'd be little better than beasts of the field. Silence is death.

Rebecca :
& on that cheery note we'll bid the professor farewell! Do check out my review of his Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous - I think you'll like it!

Mrs. Van Deusen contacted us in glee to be mentioned in the review & offered us the link to her family site where you can explore much, much more about Henry Livingston the real author of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas & also the poetry of Clement Moore.
(Published February 18, 2001)