Sunday, April 08, 2012

Jeff VanderMeer's Denemonisation in 2002

Having stumbled upon it yesterday, here is Jeff VanderMeer's interesting ‘speech’ published in ‘Nemonymous Two’ (2002) about his story “Mansions of the Moon” being accepted for ’Nemonymous One’ (2001) under its terms of late-labelling:

"I submitted to 'Nemonymous' under a female pseudonym from a fake hotmail account. I took great care to alter my 'speech' in accompanying emails and I believe the editor was fooled until he sent his acceptance and I told him. This sense of play in itself gave me great pleasure. Whole experience of having my work read anonymously and accepted anonymously was pleasurable. I've enjoyed even more the reactions of people on various messageboards as to the identity of 'Mansions of the Moon''s author. I think when you take the personalities away, especially within genre, where everyone knows everyone, it allows for an objectivity otherwise lacking. It allows readers to see my work as a whole in a new light, based on 'Mansions', and it allows the reading experience to be somehow more innocent and pure. You also find you don't know as much about other writers' styles as you thought. I guessed wrong on several of them. Finally, the design of 'Nemonymous' fits the graceful simplicity of its concept to a tee. In short, I have enjoyed the entire experience.
"My latest book is 'City of Saints & Madmen', available in trade paperback from Cosmos and hardcover (with lots of new material) from Prime. I am a member of Storyville."

1 comment:

Nemonymous said...

Rhys Hughes' denemonisation speech from 2002: HERE