Shaenon K. Garrity, "Librarians in the Branch Library of Babel"

It’s December 4. Shaenon K. Garrity, author of Narbonic, doesn’t recommend Ishmael’s chowder recipe.

How would you describe your story?

SHAENON K. GARRITY: It’s about an infinite library where roughly 72% of books are Moby-Dick. I open by acknowledging my debt to Borges’s “Library of Babel,” but people have pointed out to me that Borges’s library isn’t infinite because he places a limit on how long his library's books can be, so my library follows different logical rules. I apologize to patrons of very large but non-infinite libraries for the confusion.

It’s also a story about chaos and order, and trying to capture things that are too vast to capture, which are things Moby-Dick is about, too, probably.

When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?

SG: This was a dream I had. I dreamed an infinite library where a disproportionate percentage of the books are Moby-Dick, and the room in the front where the librarians keep the mostly readable Moby-Dicks, and characters venturing into the library’s infinite depths. After I woke up, all I had to do was write it down and add a plot and names for the characters.

I wish I’d dream stories good enough to write down more often, but it’s only happened a couple of times. Usually I dream my own versions of movies I’ve only seen the trailers to. I still think my dream version of Multiplicity, starring Michael Keaton, is better than the one they actually made.

What kind of research went into this story?

SG: I read Moby-Dick and a lot of information about Moby-Dick. I learned things about the original printing of Moby-Dick that tied into the story eerily well. I also read Transcendentalist poetry, which the narrator quotes because she has a crush on an English professor who specializes in the Transcendentalists.

What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?

SG: A short story is the right length to explore exactly one thing—a character, a place, an emotion, an idea. It’s nice to be able to focus on that one thing and tease out as much as you can.

Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?

SG: My website, shaenon.com, is full of links to my fiction as well as samples of my artwork. I’m mainly a cartoonist and comics writer, but I’ve published about two dozen prose stories, mostly fantasy and science fiction.

What's the best gift you've ever been given?

SG: One Christmas my husband gave me a Muppet based on me. Another Christmas he gave me the original art from a two-page spread in Roger Langridge’s Muppet Show comic book showing the Muppets riding in their bus with the Electric Mayhem playing on the roof. Most of the best gifts are Muppet-related.

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