Big news from the New York Times this weekend! Oh, maybe not the news you’re thinking of. A totally different outcome of deep investigative reporting that excavated long-held secrets…
they’ve announced the unmasking of Elena Ferrante, author of the Neopolitan Quartet of novels.
Whether or not the name Elena Ferrante rings any bells with you, her work has become wildly popular worldwide, which I suppose is what made her a target ripe for unmasking. The fact that there is no “Elena Ferrante” — that this is a pseudonym — was not a secret. But an investigative journalist decided that the true identity of this author was something readers needed to know, and now they know it.
I haven’t linked to the actual article for several reasons:
- I have deep misgivings about it.
- Why give them the clicks?
- The name isn’t likely to mean anything to the average person (this is hardly a Robert Galbraith situation), so what’s the point of knowing it?
- Plus, if you really really care, the simplest of Google searches will do the job
As an author who writes under a pseudonym, this bothers the heck out of me. Not because I think this means I’m about to be unmasked by investigative reporting in a major American newspaper and the international press. No, there are already dozens if not hundreds of people who know what other name I write under, and plenty of connections between my two identities, so the “investigation” could probably be conducted and completed in the time it takes to watch an episode of “Seinfeld,” plus no one would care once the truth were “revealed”, so what would the point be?
I’m troubled by this because it seems to indicate that authors’ identities a) matter and b) belong to the world.
Do our identities matter?
Sure, in a way. We write how we write because of who we are. But we are also fiction writers whose gifts must include imagination. We step into the shoes of people we are not. We write about places we’ve never been, about worlds that may not even exist, peopled with characters who were never born, speaking words that were never spoken. Where we ourselves grew up and went to school has very little to do with whether or not our words on the page are compelling.
Do our identities belong to the world? The New York Times and other outlets seem to be saying that yes, they do, if we happen to write anything that’s wildly successful. (Those of us selling fewer than a million copies under a false name are allowed to go about our business in peace.) The woman who writes the Elena Ferrante novels now has to contend with a level of scrutiny she never did before. Her life will be analyzed and examined. For what? Will it help readers understand her work better, or read it differently? Even if it does, it’s hardly worth it, in my opinion. The best way to reward a writer for what she’s written is to let her write more of it, not to yank away the comfortable anonymity in which she used to write.
[NOTE: This piece was edited to clarify that while the New York Times was among outlets publishing the information this weekend, the investigation was conducted by an investigative journalist for the Italian publication Il Sole 24 Ore. The results were initially released to several publications, including the New York Review of Books.]
Do you want to know who the authors who wrote your favorite novels really are? Or are you comfortable with the identities they choose to write under, if if they aren’t “real”?
About Jael McHenry
Jael McHenry is the debut author of The Kitchen Daughter (Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books, April 12, 2011). Her work has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, Indiana Review, and the Graduate Review at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. You can read more about Jael and her book at jaelmchenry.com or follow her on Twitter at @jaelmchenry.
The piece was covered in the New York Review of Books which is not the New York Times, fyi.
Jessica, thanks, I will put a correction in the piece — the NYT also printed the information this weekend but credited the NY Review of Books investigation.
This may sound a bit harsh, but I don’t really give a flying fig about the personal lives of the authors I read. I don’t go searching out websites, twitter feeds, blogs or instagrams–I just don’t care. And if the author’s writing under a pseudonym, I have no great desire to know who it is behind the “mask.” You’ve got a reason for doing it, it’s your business, not mine.
I don’t know if this makes me different from the average person or just average. Our society’s obsession with “access” bothers me more and more.
“I’m troubled by this because it seems to indicate that authors’ identities a) matter and b) belong to the world.”
Facts don’t belong to anyone. The identity of a person behind a pseudonym, whether Galbraith or Ferrante or Data Guy, is a fact. If someone wants to learn that fact then they have every right to do so.
Facts are facts, but privacy matters, too. Your address is a fact, but do you want that published in the NYT?
People may have excellent reasons for pseudonyms. Maybe there’s a Catholic school teacher who writes erotica under a pen name. An undercover cop who writes crime stories. Is it up to us to determine and decide whether those reasons are valid?
Then again– what if the author has seemed to really misrepresent themselves? Remember that white male poet who submitted work under a Chinese surname? I don’t remember if he was outed or if he announced what he’d done himself. I think if a reporter uncovered that Elena Ferrante was a man (which some had suspected) people would have wanted to know about that and may have been rather indignant.
So, if you think it’s not right to reveal an author’s name, are there cases where you think it’s justified? How is that determination made and who gets to make it?
Who is Jael McHenry?? I am burning to know. Oh, wait. She is Jael McHenry. I’ve met her. Nice woman. She’s…nice. Blogs about food too, I hear.
It’s a laugh, isn’t it? Spend hours in pajamas going over a chapter for the twentieth time, and people want to know what you’re like? Ha. I drink coffee. There’s a revelation! Here’s another one: I ride my bike to work. Wow! What else…mmm…coming up short, here.
That said, some authors’ lives are genuinely interesting and inform how we read their fiction. Shelly. Doyle. Hammett. Hemingway. Plath. Mailer. With others it’s what they have to say about writing that’s illuminating. Forster. Gardner. King.
Creative artists are always going to be interesting because what they do is so magical to others. What they create has power, too, and that is both alluring and threatening.
Given a choice, I suspect most authors would choose the public’s curiosity over house arrest. Or the levels of scrutiny to which our presidential candidates are subjected.
A little intrusiveness is little enough to pay for the privilege of practicing the art. Anyway, it goes with the territory.
“A little intrusiveness is little enough to pay for the privilege of practicing the art. Anyway, it goes with the territory.”
This seems a strange answer coming from someone who works with so many authors.
Anonymity is pursued for many reasons, and sometimes those reasons are huge.
Such as…hiding from an abusive ex or family.
Or writing material that could be dangerous for one’s health if outed, such as a gay or trans person writing about their experiences while living in a hostile community, or a black person writing about experiences they had with cops while being unable to move from the community they happened in. Possibly they’re ducking a stalker. Or, in the case of women, writing anything at all seems to be enough to get rape and death threats and have all the crazies at your door.
Or it could be the author–or someone in their family such as their spouse or children–may not be mentally or physically able to handle a hefty dose of fame.
And any of these things could be a career-ender to a previously extremely monetarily lucrative writer. Which means any time or effort sunk into them will have become an expensive waste, as well as depriving the publishing company and agents of all future profits.
And while I realize publishing companies are lackadaisical about small fry, the author who was outed was not remotely small fry. She has threatened to quit writing forever if her identity was ever outed, and with how jealously she guarded it that may well be true. If she does choose to walk away and doesn’t write her next one or five or ten beloved novels marketed and sold to people all over the world, how much profit has been lost for her publishers?
Far from being blase or simply stating “it goes with the territory,” I’d expect someone like you to dig in to protect their financial interests, at the very least, even if you didn’t much care about the authors…which I have no reason to believe you don’t.
Interesting article! While I am not yet published, I will be, and I will probably be using a pen name. I can’t for the life of me imagine anyone caring about whether or not it’s a pen name, or caring about my day-to-day life (not the stuff of high drama—that’s one of the reasons I write). I’ll look on an author’s website, but I’m generally contented with what information she chooses to share. To be honest, I’m more interested in her work.
There’s an older movie where one of the characters is Pulitzer winner. During an interview he is asked what he has been working on since then. His reply created a great deal of interest. He had been writing westerns under a pseudonym. The original prize money did last very long.
Europeans seem to be more concerned with the artist than do we. To me, if you want to know about an artist of any genre, their art would be the path to find them. But, apparently, some disagree.
We do seem to get a bit star-struck over the artists in this country. Watch one episode of American Idol and you’ll see people losing their minds over someone they hardly know. I always warned my kids against such behavior. They’re just people. And if they want to be anonymous, we should respect that. Enjoy the art. Let the artist be a normal person (because they are).
Jael, until I became a writer myself, I didn’t pay much attention to the authors themselves, unless I was reading an autobiography and I have plenty of those on my shelves. But now, if someone’s work really resonates, I look them up. I like to know how they came to weave this magic. Many have websites or blogs that are interesting, but in the end, it’s always the books that draw me in. I’ll pick up other titles.
There are many reasons to use a pseudonym but it really doesn’t matter to me. However, if someone wants to uncover the mask, it’s fair game. Once your work becomes public, some people will want to know who’s behind it.
No offense to any writers, but I’m not terribly curious about the authors behind the books. The only time I MIGHT visit an author’s website is to see what other books they have but even that I can find out on Amazon.
Now from the standpoint of a writer myself, I might be curious to investigate an author’s website if they also teach courses on writing.
But other than that, I’m buying their fiction to immerse myself in the fictional world, not real life. I don’t know if this translates to authors, but the actors behind characters are seldom anywhere as interesting (or upstanding) as the characters they portray.
I don’t feel authors owe me anything except great stories. I’m not that curious about who they are in the real world but rather how engaged I am in the world they’ve created. In fact, there have been times when I wish I didn’t know anything about a particular author because their personal lives are disappointing and that disappointment intrudes into my enjoyment of future reads by that author. I wish it didn’t but I’m human, and it does.
I will admit, though, that sometimes I play a little game with myself if I’m reading a novel by an unfamiliar author. I don’t look at their photo and bio, or check out websites or blogs, until I finish their book. Once I’ve read their novel I will try and guess what they might look like, how old they might be, male or female if their name doesn’t give that away, kids or no kids, married or unmarried…. It’s fun to see how close or how far off I am.
I wanted the fun of pretending to be someone else, of going to a convention as my alter ego – but then I realized how much extra energy it would cost me, and I don’t expect to go to any cons.
So I gave husband one last chance to say if he didn’t want his last name associated with my writing – as I’ve used the complete version since we married – he said he didn’t care, and I published under my own name.
But sometimes I’m wishful for that alter ego. She crops up in funny places, credited with some of my work.
I think what that investigative reporter did was shitty. And then to claim that it’s just a matter of doing his job is also a shitty defense. What good was served?
There was a John Mellencamp song back in the day called “Rain on the Scarecrow,” where the singer tagged a banker for foreclosing on a farm, and then claiming it was “just his job.” Mellencamp’s point – with which I agree – was that just because something is your job doesn’t necessarily make it right.
We choose what we do for a living. To me, this reporter is no better than the paparazzi.
That said, in this digital age, privacy is simply GONE. So I certainly wouldn’t put too much effort into trying to maintain a genuinely secret identity. It’s become virtually impossible, and will only become more difficult. That’s a bummer, but it’s reality.
You said it, Keith.
I agree, Keith.
I find the reason he outed the author to be disgusting. Not that he was doing his job, but that she was lying about her background and he doesn’t like liars. What a smug, self-righteous jerk. Of course in order to discover that her pen name and the pen name’s origin was not that of the writer herself, he had to have already done all the work of “investigating”.
It’s an excuse to justify getting a little tingle of power over another person, (that she’s female might have had something to do with it. He got a chance to ” punish” her for doing something he doesn’t approve of.) The whole thing is sick and this “journalist” is a sleazy creep.
Sorry about the rant. The situation just pushes a button.
If an author wants anonymity, then that author should have anonymity. Simple.
Will Elena censor herself now that she’s been unmasked? I hope not. I’ve read the books. But whatever drove her to seek anonymity in the first place must still be in effect, so we don’t know.
The only reason I would possibly care is in case the author has written something else under a different name, in which case I might want to read that too. Apart from that I’m quite happy knowing nothing about the author.
I heard an interview on WBUR’s show “On Point” yesterday about this very matter. And author Lily Tuck, whom I’ve always liked, called in and identified herself on air! Not surprisingly, I guess, because she thought the author formerly known as Elena had no right to privacy. Also, she HATES the books and thinks her husband wrote much of the content.
I do not care if a writer writes under a pen name. Just so long as I have something to call them by when I talk about their books, I’m good. I have no right to anything that is personal, not their name, not their address, not how many dust bunnies live in their house, nothing.