Conrad Black writes like the author of The Godfather

By now many people have heard of I Write Like, the site that takes a person’s writing and matches it to that of a famous author. Of course, the results have as much validity as the personality test we took to determine our aura colour, but that didn’t stop I Write Like from being a huge hit on-line. We put some well-known Canadian writers, bloggers and our favourite convict through the test. The results, after the jump.

Conrad Black
Text used: An excerpt from a 2008 column he wrote for the National Post while he was behind bars. It was about solving the world’s financial crisis:

This international financial crisis will subside when the United States has at least believably started to reduce its dependence on foreign oil and its trade imbalance with China; Chinese currency has been revalued, and China has implemented some degree of structural reform; and enough economic water has been trod to ensure that private sector financial institutions are relatively stable.

Writes like: Mario Puzo, an American author and screenwriter best known for his novels on the Mafia, most notably The Godfather. We think Connie may disagree.

Douglas Coupland
Text used: The opening sentences of his newest book, Generation A.

How can we be alive and not wonder about the stories we use to knit together this place we call the world? Without stories, our universe is merely rocks and clouds and lava and blackness. It’s a village scraped raw by warm waters leaving not a trace of what existed before.

Imagine a tropical sky, ten miles high and a thousand years off on the horizon. Imagine air that feels like honey on your forehead; imagine air that comes out of your lungs cooler than when it entered.

Writes like: Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author most famous for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Margaret Atwood
Text used: A blog entry about her recent trip to Germany to accept an award.

The next day, Astrid and I went to Dortmund by train, where we were met by Hans-Georg Schutz of the Nelly-Sachs Prize, of which I was the 2010 recipient. (Actually it was for 2009, but the City of Dortmund had some politico-economic problems that caused the event to be postponed.) The Prize was presented by the Mayor, Birgit Jorder, and the excellent speech was delivered by esteemed literary critic Frauke Meyer-Gosau.

Writes like: Arthur C. Clarke. However, her column in the Globe about the G20 protests is more David Foster Wallace. Strangely, one of Mel Gibson’s phone rants is similar to Atwood’s own work.

Elaine Lui of Lainey Gossip
Text used: Tuesday’s update on the Salt premiere and Lindsay Lohan.

Pitt Porn is back. Like there’s anything else to talk about.

It’s been a long time. And Salt opens on Friday. And the Jolie wants Salt to open big. So they brought it last night at the premiere. And when they bring it like this, like you’ll see in the photos below, everyone else can eat sh-t.

Jumpy claps? Of course. True Celebrity is exciting. True Celebrity is becoming increasingly rare, especially during a summer full of loser Bachelor people and reality tv show stars who won’t seem to go away. Want to point and laugh? One of those Hills twats tried to make herself happen last night with a plunging neckline on the same carpet as Angelina Jolie recycling Rihanna. It’s like watching someone walk into a door.

Writes like: Kurt Vonnegut.

Coco Rocha
Text used: The model’s account of growing up on airplanes that was published in the New York Times.

In the old days, before Sept. 11, my mom, who was a single parent, would often bring me on the long-haul flights to and from Asia. For a little girl, and even now as an adult, these flights seemed to last forever. And usually, all I wanted to do was find somewhere cozy to fall asleep. A few times, that meant the cockpit. The pilots were great. But I was always afraid that I would bump my head on a button and wind up crashing the plane.

Writes like: Cory Doctorow, the Toronto-born writer and one of the people behind the blog BoingBoing.

• What famous writer does Mel Gibson sound like? [Gawker]
• ‘I Write Like’ finds your inner author [Toronto Star]
• Kim Kardashian writes like James Joyce? Website reveals inner author [CNN]
• I Write Like