  I present a method for text analysis based on an analogy with the dynamic
friction of sliding surfaces. One surface is an array of points with a
'friction coefficient' derived from the distribution frequency of a text's
alphabetic characters. The other surface is a test patch having points with
this friction coefficient equal to a median value. Examples are presented from
an analysis of a broad range of public domain texts, and comparison is made to
the Flesch Reading Ease. Source code for the analysis program is provided.
