06 October 2016
Authors as Public Property
What do they owe their readers?
by Lynda Goetz
I had been intending this week to write about Rose Tremain’s appearance at the Wimbledon Bookfest; but although my admiration for Ms Tremain’s work remains unbounded and the opportunity to listen to some insightful and interesting comments on how she alighted on her subjects and themes was fascinating, the occasion itself was not, on the whole, as satisfying as I had anticipated. This led me to think about how much, these days, we expect authors to be public speakers as well as writers; performance-related entertainers as well as masters of the written word. Then a few days ago, one Claudio Gatti, an Italian investigative journalist, proclaimed a personal scoop as he revealed the identity of Elena Ferrante, the hitherto anonymous author of a number of books, but most famous for her Neapolitan quartet, originally written in Italian and published in English between 2012 (My Brilliant Friend) and 2015 (The Story of the Lost Child).
In the New York Review of Books, Gatti claimed he had tracked down the true identity of the author, who has been translated into many different languages, published in 39 different countries and sold millions of copies of her novels. According to Gatti, she is an Italian translator (from German), whose real name is Anita Raja and who used to be employed by Europa, the publishing house who published Ferrante’s books. Sandro Ferri, Ferrante’s publisher and one of the few who knows her true identity, did not deny that Gatti had correctly identified the author, but, in an interview with The Guardian, criticised the story. Jojo Moyes, English journalist and writer, author of ‘Me Before You’, (who has twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award), was also immediately highly critical of Sig. Gatti. She first Tweeted her anger at the revelations and then wrote a piece for The Telegraph entitled ‘Novelists like Elena Ferrante – and me- owe you nothing but our books’.
Is she right or is Claudio Gatti correct? Is Ms Ferrante entitled to her privacy or has she, as Gatti claims, fed public curiosity with her false biography and emailed interviews and thus almost challenged the public (or investigative journalists) to ‘winkle her out’? Are we, the public, the readers, the ‘customers’ and ‘clients’ really permitted to slake our thirst for gossip by knowing or finding out about the private lives of authors or actors? Does this in any way add to their writings or performances? Kim Kardashian has knowingly foregone her right to privacy by making her living out of being a media celebrity. That is what she is. The surprise in her case is possibly that she has not before been the victim of envious ‘nobodies’ (she was burgled at gunpoint in a ‘private’ Paris hotel this week) given that she constantly shares with her millions of followers the latest jewels or houses she has acquired.
In the case of actors like Gemma Arterton (whose stance with regard to social media I discussed last week) or authors like Rose Tremain, Jojo Moyes or indeed the pseudonymous Elena Ferrante, they have an entirely different existence, which they are surely entitled to keep separate from their jobs. Should they wish, for the purposes of publicity or promotion, to share any aspects of their private lives with us, the reading, cinema-going, TV-watching public, then that should be their choice; if they have chosen, on the contrary, not to, then that choice should be respected, not regarded as a challenge to investigative reporters or others to reveal their real names, names of their lovers or any other information they wish to keep to themselves.
The use of pseudonyms by authors is hardly a new thing. You will find 200 pages under Pseudonymous Writers on Wikipedia. Françoise Sagan was not the real name of the 20th Century author who was famous for Bonjour Tristesse; Guillaume Apollinaire, another 20th century French writer, was actually Wilhelm Albert Wlodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki; the real name of Hergé, the creator of Tintin, was Georges Remi; the Bronte sisters famously first published their novels under male pseudonyms, Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell; likewise the 19th Century novelist Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Elliot. The list goes on. There are also of course plenty of well-known writers who used or use a pen name to write books in a different genre from their usual writing; Agatha Christie wrote six romantic novels under the pen name of Mary Westmacott (in addition to her 66 detective novels and 15 collections of short stories); Benjamin Franklin, the renowned author, polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, used at least nine known pen names (largely for correspondence with newspapers) including Mrs Silence Dogood and Alice Addertongue. J.K. Rowling hid behind gender-neutral initials for a long time rather than use her full name, Joanne, and subsequently used the name Robert Galbraith to write crime fiction, although it did not take long for her cover to be ‘rumbled’.
As already noted, there are a number of reasons why writers might choose to use a pseudonym. In an age where women were not taken seriously or viewed as capable of anything very much in the worlds of politics, academia, art or literature, it was easier to hide behind a male name to get anything published – hence George Elliot here in England and George Sand (Amandine Lucie Aurore Dupin) in France. A change of genre is a frequent reason for authors using different names; or in the case of an author who is not established, it could be that they need a new name because their earlier books have not sold. In an increasingly tough publishing world there are not too many second chances. Even Rose Tremain wondered whether she would have succeeded in the current climate. It was not until her fifth novel, Restoration, that she found any real success. As she pointed out in Wimbledon last week, these days you’re lucky to get a second chance if your first novel fails to sell, let alone a third, fourth and fifth. For some, like J K Rowling, it might be the challenge of getting beyond perceived expectations or wanting to know that you will get published on the basis of the writing itself – without the celebrity name. Another pen name might be an amalgam of two names – as in the case of Nicci French, the pen name of husband and wife writing team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, used for their psychological thrillers. Ferrante falls into none of these categories. As far as one can tell from everything that is written about her she simply feels that her writing should speak for itself.
For those interested in literature and literary criticism, Ferrante’s is an interesting and valid perspective. After all, does it matter whether some of the details in a novel are autobiographical or whether they are in fact described purely from the author’s own research or imagination? How much does it add to the reader’s experience to be aware of this information? Does the authorship of a novel or play affect its quality or the way we, the public, react to it? The question of whether it was actually Shakespeare who wrote his plays or whether it was one or other of the various prominent Elizabethans who have been suggested as more plausible authors (including Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, Francis Bacon and sundry earls) has generated a vast body of research, literature and debate. We will probably never have a definitive answer. Whilst not comparing Ferrante, whom I confess to never having read, to Shakespeare, the true name, background and biography of the author in either case is surely immaterial. It is the writing that counts.
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