New find: Literature Map

New find: Literature Map. Type in an author and watch the names slowly disperse and adjust themselves in a planetary design.

It's one of the most poetic online tools I've seen.

Poetic, but not necessarily useful. I got some bizarre results and glaring omissions, leading me to wonder if the results are based on personal relationships between writers, or their writing styles, or their literary ancestors and influences, or a combination thereof.

For example, take a look at the result for John Steinbeck. At first glance, this looks like an accurate map—if one is expecting to see authors who write in a similar vein. But why is Oscar Wilde in there? Granted, he's on the outskirts of the planetary system, far away from Steinbeck's name in the middle, but Wilde doesn't spring to mind when you're thinking of Steinbeck. Wilde is more precious, fanciful, and witty. Steinbeck is more of an earthy documentarian.

The frontpage of the "gnook tool" doesn't shed any light on what the literature map does, although it points to another application that aims to locate literature you will like. Does that goal apply to the literature map, as well? That would very much change the purpose of the literature map.

At any rate, the prominent Amazon badge made me think this is just a thing to generate buzz and more commerce for Amazon. To which I'm contributing in my own small way.

In all fairness, gnook does bill itself as an "experiment", which I guess means "there are still some things to iron out". Perhaps providing a definition of the literature map is one of them.