They Can Read Me Like A Book!

The other day, Amazon.com sent me one of those recommendation e-mails. You know the type: “Because you bought Blah Blah Blah, we thought you might like to know about Bleh Bleh Bleh.” Often, the assumption is correct because the items are usually related by genre or subject.

However, this e-mail read: “As someone who has purchased or rated The Dwiggins Marionettes: A Complete Experimental Theatre in Miniature by Dorothy Abbe, you might like to know that Mencken on Mencken: A New Collection of Autobiographical Writings is now available.” At first glance, I thought the binary system had been slipped a new number. How in the world had it connected marionettes to Mencken?

I considered these possibilities:
• They’re both books.
• The grammatical construction of the titles is similar.
• Both titles include a word that begins with the letter “M.”
• On a more conceptual level, perhaps they’re similar because one entity (marionettes and Mencken, respectively) is possessed by or acted upon by another (Dwiggins and Mencken, respectively).

I tucked away these thoughts with the intention of poking fun at this apparent software glitch/shortcoming in a future Lull post. But after a cursory Google search on the books, the eerie truth began to surface.
• William A. Dwiggins and H. L. Mencken were both born in 1880 and both died in 1956.
• The marionette book was purchased by my husband for his own interests. But curiously, puppet-maker Dwiggins speaks to my interests: He was by trade a graphic designer. In fact, he was the first to use that term to describe his profession and he created a number of classic fonts still used today in typography.
• Both men worked with letters and contributed significantly to the publishing industry (again, pursuits that interest me).

My goodness! The web of connections between Dwiggins, Mencken, and me expands the more I think about it. Just how much does Amazon.com know about me? Does Amazon.com secretly partner with the CIA, the FBI, and/or organizations that conduct background checks for hiring purposes?

Well, well, well. The binary system I thought was flawed is just super-sophisticated. The joke’s on me.