Keie Nanei
Keie Nanei | |
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| Born | 8 March 1964 |
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Keie Nanei (born 8 March 1964) is a Gylian columnist, humourist, and writer. She is one of Gylias' most popular columnists, and is known for her cultural commentary, delivered from the viewpoint of a humorously anarchronistic alter ego.
Early life
Keie was born on 8 March 1964 in Rance. She describes herself in childhood as having "solitary tendencies", and credits these with sparking her early fondness for reading.
She enjoyed reading Esua Nadel and Denise Sarrault's columns in her youth, and identifies them as her formative influences. Another was Margherita Martini, whose collection of sketches she "devoured", and whom she later wrote a biography of.
She moved to Velouria, where she attended university. There, she got her start writing in the student newspaper. She completed a bachelor's degree in history, followed by a master's degree in journalism.
Career
Keie joined The Velouria Tribune in 1990 as a columnist.
She writes mainly commentary on Gylian life and culture. Her colums are noted for their deadpan humour, risqué wit, and affectionate parodies of Gylias and its public figures. She has been described as a "successor" to Esua Nadel, an epithet she considers her "greatest honour".
Besides collections of her essays and columns, she has written a number of non-fiction books, including cultural commentary, social commentary, and biographies of figures like Margherita Martini and Esua Nadel.
Her writings have also appeared in The Travelling Companion and Gylias Review.
Public image
Keie cultivates a deliberately anachronistic public image to complement her writing, reminiscent both in wardrobe and personality of telefoni bianchi and orgone film heroines.
Antichronos
Much of Keie's writing is informed by an interest in collective memory, nostalgia, and the use thereof. Her best-known work on the subject is the book Antichronos, published in 2004.
Named after the Greek term for "against time", Antichronos is a study of a current Keie identifies in Gylian culture of "using the past to comment on the present". She contrasts this with anachronisms, writing that while anachronisms are typically regarded as writing mistakes, antichronism is intentional, cultivating the quality of "temporal fish out of water" to humorously reflect on contemporary life.
She uses examples of various figures that have deliberately employed this strategy, including Margherita Martini, Esua Nadel, Denise Sarrault, Jenny Taylor, Peggy Carter, Eðe Saima, Evelin Tanli, Alike Demetriou, Cécile Sorel, Isabel Longstowe, Ane Seşel, and Leonora Weeks.
The book also contains extensive discussion of the "romantic conservatism" tendency in Gylias, with a focus on the creation of intentional communities for the free pursuit of certain lifestyles. Keie describes this tendency, dating back to the Free Territories, as offering a model for reconciling the pursuit of certain lifestyles and ideals with libertarian socialist ideals of free association. She notes the parallels between these "time-warp communities" and historical re-enactments such as Renaissance fairs.
A Plague of Prescriptivists
She is a staunch linguistic descriptivist, and wrote a book-length caustic attack on linguistic prescriptivism, A Plague of Prescriptivists, published in 2009.
Presidential runs
She has run twice for the presidency as an independent, in 2003 and 2015. Both times, she ran satirical campaigns but didn't reach the final round, finishing third in 2003 and fourth in 2015.
Private life
She identifies as an atheist.