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Literature by the Numbers
“Literature is the opposite of data,” wrote novelist Stephen Marche in the Los Angeles Times Review of Books in October 2012. He cited his favorite line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Light thickens, and the crows make wing to the rooky wood.” Marche went on to ask, “What is the difference between a crow and a rook? Nothing. What does it mean that light thickens? Who knows?” Although the words work, they make no sense as pure data, according to Marche.