Further Annotations

Gabbler Recommends: Joanna Newsom’s interview with Tiny Mix Tapes

Posted on February 21, 2016February 20, 2016 by blablablaandgabbler

JN: My favorite author of all time is Nabokov. I’m really obsessed
with him, actually… all my Nabokov novels are, like, ravaged by notes crammed
into the margins of every page, from readings and re-readings. I especially like
the annotated Lolita, edited by Alfred Appel Jr., because I can just
luxuriate in his neurotic, exquisite feast of footnotes and endnotes… like a
book within a book… amazing.

My other favorite book is The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle.
Incredible. One of the greatest literary meditations on beauty, sickness,
mortality, loneliness, perfection, defection, bravery/heroism, regret, pity,
purity, magic, and power, of all time. So there. The movie is my
favorite, too, though for slightly different reasons. I actually just discovered
that Mr. Beagle lives in Oakland, which is right near me, so I’m sort of
hoping that somehow, someday, I might get to meet him…that would be so
amazing….

TMT: What music have you been listening to and enjoying as of late?

JN: Well, I honestly don’t listen to a great deal of music. I love
a great [deal] of music, both by folks working nowadays and those from a
ways back…. but I find myself tending toward silence most of the time,
especially if I’m trying to write my own music. I feel too permeable otherwise,
too afraid of being influenced, or of diluting my ideas, or of forgetting them.

[Read the rest.]

[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]

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On the state of fan fiction

Posted on February 21, 2016February 21, 2016 by blablablaandgabbler

Of course, Clare was reviled—and adored—in Harry Potter fandom even before the plagiarism charges against her came to light. And fan fiction itself has come a long way, spawning numerous real-world stars, fan writers such as E.L. James who move on to publish best-sellers. Clare was among the very first to do this. But the prospect of going pro and striking it rich seems to many fan-fiction writers like a serpent in the garden, corrupting what once felt like an idyllic, egalitarian gift-economy of like-minded dabblers. Once, fandom was a destination in itself; now it’s just another stepping stone for ambitious writers with their eyes on a richer prize. Like so much of the idealism of the early Internet, this, too, has become an offshoot of the marketplace. “I think what you don’t understand,” one friend told me when I expressed bafflement that Clare’s fellow fan-fiction writers didn’t view the popularity of her books as a feather in their collective cap, “is that a lot of them just feel used.” When I admitted that didn’t make sense to me, she added, “It’s hard to explain, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

[via]

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Posted on February 20, 2016February 20, 2016 by blablablaandgabbler

“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.”

Laurence Sterne, first line from Tristram Shandy.

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FAQ update: Gender and Pronouns

Posted on February 14, 2016January 24, 2021 by blablablaandgabbler

We just updated our FAQ to reflect a question we’ve been getting a lot:

Why do you guys use “s/he” or “he/she” so much when talking about each other? Why not use only gender-neutral pronouns such as “they/their”? That’s a good point. The main reason is the Narrator and I are cis-gendered. We don’t want to abuse a gender-neutral pronoun because, when we do finally reveal who we are, we don’t want to undermine a whole group of people who do use the they/their. It’s not our pronoun and we want to respect those who do identify with they/their. Though, you may see us drop a few they/theirs in the novel because English is an illogical chimera of language.

Hope this clarifies some things for you, Reader.