Hugh Kenner is good on a surprisingly wide range of things. This is a publisher's description of a book called The Counterfeiters, first published around 1968:
"Wide-ranging enough to encompass Buster Keaton, Charles Babbage, horses, and a man riding a bicycle while wearing a gas mask, The Counterfeiters is one of Hugh Kenner's greatest achievements. In this fascinating work of literary and cultural criticism, Kenner seeks the causes and outcomes of man's ability to simulate himself (a computer that can calculate quicker than we can) and his world (a mechanical duck that acts the same as a living one)."
Kenner also co-authored a relatively early text generator, called Travesty, that would analyze a source text in terms of n-grams (e.g., 4-letter combinations) and then generate something new to match it. This was published in Byte magazine in 1984.
"A Travesty Generator for Micros" doesn't ring a bell, so thanks for the pointer. If it wasn't collected in Mazes or Historical Fictions it'll be one of the few things of his I haven't read yet.
"Wide-ranging enough to encompass Buster Keaton, Charles Babbage, horses, and a man riding a bicycle while wearing a gas mask, The Counterfeiters is one of Hugh Kenner's greatest achievements. In this fascinating work of literary and cultural criticism, Kenner seeks the causes and outcomes of man's ability to simulate himself (a computer that can calculate quicker than we can) and his world (a mechanical duck that acts the same as a living one)."
Kenner also co-authored a relatively early text generator, called Travesty, that would analyze a source text in terms of n-grams (e.g., 4-letter combinations) and then generate something new to match it. This was published in Byte magazine in 1984.