Egbert B. Gebstadter

Egbert B. Gebstadter is a fictional author who appears in the indexes (and sometimes in the text) of books by Douglas R. Hofstadter. For each Hofstadter book, there is a corresponding Gebstadter book. His name is derived from "GEB", the abbreviation for Hofstadter's first book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid; the letters appear in his last name, permuted in his first name, and permuted again in his initials.

From Gebstadter's brief 1985 biography:

The equivalent section of Hofstadter's brief 1985 biography:

Most of Gebstadter's books are published by Acidic Books, a fictional publisher in Perth, Australia; this corresponds to Hofstadter's publisher Basic Books of New York.

Gebstadter's first book is described in GEB as follows:

(According to GEB, the phrase "turgid and confused" was used about the works of Johann Sebastian Bach by his contemporaries.)

CSG is also referred to in the text of GEB itself as Giraffes, Elephants, Baboons: An Equatorial Grasslands Bestiary, which maintains the "GEB: An EGB" acronym. Or perhaps this is a different work by Gebstadter altogether: the evidence is incomplete.

CSG is also referred to in Aria with Diverse Variations, a dialogue in GEB. Achilles and the Tortoise are trying to remember the name of an amateur mathematician, Achilles (incorrectly) suggests "Kupfergödel" and "Silberescher", then Mr Tortoise recalls Goldbach". Half-translated from German, these names are "copper Gödel", "silver Escher" and "gold Bach", respectively.

Gebstadter's second book is an anthology co-edited with the Australian philosopher Denial E. Dunnitt entitled The Brain's U: Phantoms and Mirror-Images of Selfless Souls, and appears in the bibliography of The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, edited by Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett. The Gebstadter bibliography on the website for Stepford Ninniversity's "Residential Pictures in Mundanities and Artifice" gives the subtitle as Fairy Tales and Rotations on Ego and Anima.

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