AustLit logo

AustLit

'Dogs in All the Unregarded Bales' : Mr Rubenking's 'Breakdown' [sic] single work   prose  
  • Author:agent John Tranter http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/tranter-john
Issue Details: First known date: 1991... 1991 'Dogs in All the Unregarded Bales' : Mr Rubenking's 'Breakdown' [sic]
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'BrekDown' is a text analysis and text generation program written in Turbo Pascal for IBM-compatible personal computers, devised in 1985 by the San Francisco programmer Neil J. Rubenking. 'Brekdown' can also blend the styles of two or more texts, and reconstruct a text with the characteristics of this blended style.

The article is accompanied by two examples of this 'robot poetry' - 'What Mortal End' and 'Her Shy Banjo' derived from the works of Matthew Arnold and John Ashbery respectively. Both the titles of these poems and the names of their authors are anagrams of the real poets' names. John Tranter has also written seven prose pieces using this technique, in each case blending two writers into one new creature. They appear in Different Hands (1998).

Notes

  • Correct spelling is 'Brekdown'.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Alternative title: Mr. Rubenking's 'Breakdown'[sic] : The Utilisation of Digital Computers in the Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Writing
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Meanjin vol. 50 no. 4 Summer 1991 Z633452 1991 periodical issue 1991 pg. 635-638
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Jacket no. 4 July 1998 Z893990 1998 periodical issue 1998
    Note: With alternative title.
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()

Related Works

Her Shy Banjo i "Rain, without it there can be no September music", Joy H. Breshan , 1991 single work poetry
— Appears in: Meanjin , Summer vol. 50 no. 4 1991; (p. 634) Jacket , July no. 4 1998; Several pages of poems written by John Asbery typed as one continuous text and put through a computer program (Neil J. Rubenking's 'Brekdown' ) to re-assemble in a different form. Both the title and the author's name are anagrams of John Asbery .
What Mortal End i "Those quick inventive brains, who with early distant", Tom Haltwarden , 1991 single work poetry
— Appears in: Meanjin , Summer vol. 50 no. 4 1991; (p. 633) Jacket , July no. 4 1998; Three poems written by Matthew Arnold ('The Buried Life', 'Dover Beach', and 'The Scholar-Gypsy') typed as one continuous text and put through a computer program (Neil J. Rubenking's 'Brekdown' ) to re-assemble in a different form. Both the title and the author's name are anagrams of Matthew Arnold.
y separately published work icon Different Hands : Seven Stories John Tranter , South Fremantle : Folio Fremantle Press , 1998 Z303139 1998 selected work prose (taught in 1 units)

Seven prose pieces written using 'BrekDown', a text analysis and text generation program written in Turbo Pascal for IBM-compatible personal computers, devised in 1985 by the San Francisco programmer Neil J. Rubenking. 'Brekdown' can also blend the styles of two or more texts, and reconstruct a text with the characteristics of this blended style.

'The stories . . . I got "Brekdown" to mix text samples by two different writers in a kind of conceptual blender, and produce a new text with the characteristics of both. I produced seven stories, about ten pages each. The drafts that Brekdown gave me needed a lot of reworking. The story "Howling Twins" was heavily reworked from a draft originating in a blend of two text samples, one from Allen Ginsberg's notorious poem "Howl", and one from a chapter of "The Bobbsey Twins on a Bicycle Trip." The piece titled "Lonely Chaps" began as a sample from Radclyffe Hall's febrile novel of pre-war middle-class lesbian passion, "The Well of Loneliness", blended with "Biggles Defies the Swastika."

Source: Interview with John Kinsella, August 1999, John Kinsella website, www.johnkinsella.org (sighted 14/10/2002)
Carousel John Tranter , 1998 single work short story
— Appears in: Jacket , July no. 4 1998; Different Hands : Seven Stories 1998; (p. 26-38)
VIEW ALL RELATED WORKS (4)
Last amended 14 Oct 2002 13:53:38
Informit * Subscription service. Check your library.
Subjects:
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X