OK, this is silly. I posted a few paragraphs of Beneath Gray Skies into the “analyze your style” site, and it told me Raymond Chandler. I then tried with an except from At the Sharpe End and it told me I was like Ian Fleming.
I was flattered, I suppose, until someone told me that they had pasted in the first few chapters of Moby-Dick and got Raymond Chandler!
But it got me thinking… Is it possible to write parts of Moby-Dick in the style of Raymond Chandler? Here’s my (not terribly good) attempt at the first part. I would like to see other people’s efforts. If you feel inspired, post them as a comment here:
I opened my eyes. From the way the sun was shining through the window I guessed it couldn’t have been much after three in the afternoon. It felt like a big white whale had been sitting on my chest and then wrapped its flukes round my head. Rum will do that to you every time. Call me… Oh, the heck with it, just call me Ishmael and have done with it.
There must be a lot of people out there who can do much better than that.
I guess it doesn’t matter how many legs you’ve got if you’re as hopped-up crazy mad as old man Ahab was. I’d never thought that much of the guy before, but there he was in the front of the boat, trying to keep upright, and yelling fire and brimstone. You had to hand it to him, crazy as he was, the guy had the fire in his belly.
Moby was taking his time. You had the feeling he’d done this many times before. Now and then he’d wink at Ahab as if he was playing, but there was something about that wink that told you it wasn’t the sort of game you wanted to join in with.