Author Unknown:
  On the Trail of Anonymous
   Don Foster
  2000 Henry Holt & Co. NY USA
   ISBN: 0805063579


Since no two people use language in precisely the same way, our identities are encoded in a kind of literary DNA. On The Trail of Anonymous combines traditional scholarship with modern technology to create a new field of investigation - Literary Forensics.

Don Foster hadn't set out to be a literary sleuth, he was just curious & had inculcated more than he realized when he first came across a funeral poem which he finally credited to William Shakespeare amid a spate of ridicule. Enough people, however, placed enough value in the proof of his sleuthing that he began to make a name for himself in a field that had not, as yet, been given a name.

By the time this professor at Vassar had began to investigate who wrote Primary Colors he'd coined Literary Forensics & was on his way. Luckily, he has a wry, dry sense of humor, a delightful writing style which keeps you galloping along from clue to clue, from one debacle to the next.

As this author explains the cases & the clues which were to make his name a household word among people to whom language matters, he also recounts the progress of his life & career; so when he's recruited to examine the mass of writings brought from Utah once Theodore Kaczynski was nabbed, he finds himself in the surreal world of Quantico.

Then, along came: “My visitor sat down in a chair beside my desk, popped open his briefcase, and pulled out a maroon folder. I was a little distracted by his feet, a white sweat sock on the left, a brightest mustard-yellow stocking I'd seen on a male leg since Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night”... & so Don Foster is drawn into the Tripp-Lewinsky Talking Points & the chapter on Starr-Crossed Lovers is written.

Wanda, the Fort Bragg Bag Lady is an arcane exploration - irate scribblers of Letters to the Editor in a Marin County weekly rag; the demise of the legendary writer Thomas Pynchon & the wild & woolly ways of murder & mayhem in a fabled Californian era.

When Don Foster is asked to poke his learnéd nose into an old, old mystery of who really wrote the poem we've all come to know & love, 'The Night Before Christmas, he is in his element & takes us on a history lesson about how Santa Claus came to be. Off we go back in time to 1823 Poughkeepsie & the writings of Mrs. Van Deusen's great-great-great-great-great grandfather who wrote droll anapestic poetry at the drop of a hat.

What I relish about Author Unknown is the language - it had me gleefully delving into my dictionary, opening up whole new realms. I had dreaded a dry rendition of brittle research & got instead a lilting, entertaining & instructive introduction into Literary Forensics.

Don Foster is a professor of English Literature at Vassar College. He has assisted with dozens of criminal investigations & civil suits involving anonymous or pseudonymous writings, including the Unabom case, the “Army of God” bombings & the Jon Benet Ramsey homicide investigation.

Do check out my Interview with Don Foster - it is delightful!

Mrs. Van Deusen contacted us in glee to be mentioned in this 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.
(02/18/01)

Rebecca