Google Presents: Collaborating With Famous Storytellers

[Caeli]

See what it's like! (Admittedly, a few years after their prime.)

I had way too much fun with this.

My favorite part? When several different authors began inserting adjectives in front of each other's names. And someone put a frowny face after Poe's name.

Well, Shakespeare inserted adjectives (handsome and lovable) in front of his own name. Then Poe erased that and inserted "dreadful and lonely."

My last line before I closed the tab, when I didn't know how to finish the sentence: (Help me!)

Poe came in and saved the day: Help me! Nevermore!

[ManyMindsManyVoices]

"The nature of this program is quite interesting. Collaborations would be quite fun with this."

[gaggedLouise]

Makes me think of this supposed 'ghost-written memoir' of boxer Ingemar Johansson, who became heavyweight World Champion in 1959 after K.O.'ing Floyd Patterson at Yankee Stadium. Some of the in-jokes here are about Ingo's merciless way of dispatching Patterson - he punched him out machine-gun style six times on a row at a point when it was all but open and shut that he would win - and about pro boxing as such (staging fights for money was not permitted in Sweden at the time), others are about the high-flying imagery of the stand-in author:

"The stars on high looking down on us mortals, the dark blue firmament holding its vault over our heads, what would they care about a mere human such as me? And yet small as I am I will not plead with destiny. Even a man who gives other men a too hard shake doth feel the mystery of life sometimes,  and even a small boxer man has the right to taste and store away some of the glittering riches of this earth, in Switzerland for example.

May the tattling press complain that it does not wish to see blood flow, may idle scribblers condemn the urges of the spectator crowd: to me this brute expenditure of iron muscled strength pouring off a mighty arm is a sine qua non! A man blessed with a divine strength in his loins has got to do what a man's gotta do. And when destiny makes a vaunted hero suddenly trip up before him, there is nothing strange about pulling no punches is there? Howdy!"

:D