Outting the Writer Against their Will

Not reading anything new, although did peruse a sample of My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and then later came across this interesting editorial entitled The outing of Elena Ferrante and the Power of Naming. Which resonated on a certain level, particularly since I prefer being under a pseudonym online and almost didn't tell you about the novel I published for fear of losing that sense of anonymity. I came thisclose to publishing my novel under a pseudonym with no author bio, but was advised against it.

Initially, she published under the pseudonym out of fear. "Timidity prevailed" in her early days, she says. Later, she developed some hostility toward an industry that "doesn't pay attention to books themselves and values a work according to the author's reputation." This struck her as a devaluation of the literature. "It's not the book that counts, but the aura of its author," she says, and "if the aura is already there, and the media reinforces it, the publishing world is happy to open its doors."

And "if it's not there but the book miraculously sells, the media invents the author, so the writer ends up selling not only his work but also himself, his image."

For Ferrante, that image-peddling was toxic, not just to her, but to the work. For her, the pseudonym became a principled form of resistance to celebrity authorship, the publishing industry, and the way women are received there. She sees a real and poisonous relationship between literary marketing and literary work: "The demand for self-promotion diminishes the actual work of art," she says. And if the priority is the art rather than catering to an industry that commercializes the person producing it, one should clearly do the former because it enables the artist to function: "What has never lost importance for me, over these two and a half decades, is the creative space that absence opened up for me," she has said.

Once I knew that the completed book would make its way into the world without me, once I knew that nothing of the concrete, physical me would ever appear beside the volume — as if the book were a little dog and I were its master — it made me see something new about writing. I felt as though I had released the words from myself. - [Elena Ferrante]

Her point is quite clear: Attaching her real name, and, by extension, her real body — her appearance, her biography, her history, her relationships, her contacts, her family — would, in this particular literary landscape, subordinate her work to the story of her person. Naming happens to women differently than it does to men. And names matter.

I have to agree. People who read my book asked me -- which character was based on me. All and none of the above. I'm not a memoir writer. I don't like them and refuse to write them. It's amongst the few literary genres that I can't abide. The other is "true crime" - I despise that genre.

I think I've only read a handful of memoirs, and most were about a specific topic, so not true memoirs. True crime novels I avoid like the plague, also television and film adaptations. So equal opportunity on that front.

Everything else, I'm pretty much open too.

Never understood the necessity of outing or naming people. A few years back there was huge kerfuffle in the lj sci-fi community, when coffeeandink was named and outed during a fight. I think she fled LJ for a bit and it was by the way done by a man. And a result of a fight about how minority and female characters were portrayed in science fiction novels. So this actually is relevant to the above and is evidence its happened before.

JK Rowling -- used the pseudonym Robert Galbraith and was quickly outted. And I remember Stephen King getting outted -- he had started writing under a pseudonym as well, in part to see how well his books were received without his name attached. (Richard Bach). There's also romance novelists who choose to write under pseudonymes for other genres - such as mysteries, in part because they fear the mystery reader won't pick up the book. That's why Nora Roberts writes as JD Robb.

Some writers just don't want the attention. Or want their words to be sent out there without them attached to it. That's what I wanted in regards to the Buffy and Angel meta I wrote. I wanted it to be anonymous to a certain extent. I also find the anonymity of the name Shadowkat67 or just shadowkat freeing. There's a lot of shadowkats online and I can get lost in the crowd.

I don't like standing out and while awards are nice I suppose, I never really wanted them -- I don't like attention. It makes me edgy.

The problem is that we have become an increasingly ego-driven society. As the current election in the US reveals all too well, I think. We are far too concerned on how others view us, on external accolades and awards. On the image that we've presented, the marketing and promotion of the package - then what lies within the package itself. Or what lies at its core.