 History of Pseudonyms’ documents how some went public, privately "Pin It")
A writer’s inner struggles can become like a series of public myths: the compulsions followed by purges, inner ego wildfires sandbagged with unbearable doubt, the ignoring of health issues, losing partners, weird habits and confessions of allegedly horrible secrets. These bad habits are sometimes no fun to be around, but stories of self-invention are always interesting to read about, especially in Carmela Ciuraru’s “Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms.”
Through mini-biographies full of odd and little-known trivia, the book discusses 18 authors who found enormous success while using names they gave themselves. Ciuraru creates intrigue without getting gossipy — i.e., calling out Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) as a “Victorian Michael Jackson” and leaving it at that — and peeps into these people’s lives without stripping them of dignity.
The ways we trick ourselves into productivity rarely involves inventing a whole other person, yet that’s what Eric Blair did to pull out his works as George Orwell. The book cites other reasons for creating a literary double: to escape the law (O. Henry), to hide from irrationality and leaden gloom (Sylvia Plath), to appease an overbearing mother (Romain Gary), femaleness (the Brontë sisters), Danishness (Isak Dinesen), lesbianism (Patricia Highsmith). Samuel Clemens approached the invention of his noms de plume almost as if he were naming a hamster — the best one was simply “Josh.” Not one of these authors was ashamed of his or her work. Some really did not like publicity, some wanted to heighten it and some chose an alternate name to explore other versions of the self.
“As I worked on this book,” writes Ciuraru, “one thing I found really fascinating was that in some cases, a pseudonym wasn’t merely functional — a name slapped on a page to get published — but an essential key to unlocking creativity. That was so interesting to me, the idea that some writers actually can’t access their imaginations without assuming a nom de plume first.”
Take, for instance, Romain Gary, who spent almost as many years of his life searching for a pen name as he took to write his works. Or Fernando Pessoa, who felt his own physical self was like a lily pad, a place from which all other invented personalities could leap. He saw himself as an organism with intense, gnarled roots anchored to nothing, yet his other characters — each a writer himself — had rich histories and desires.
How did a move so full of productivity become a potentially dangerous pretense? Trying your hand at creating a personality-driven literary double these days might get you sued (hello, “J.T. Leroy”) or get your book recalled (“Love and Consequences” by Margaret Seltzer). The way we craft personal identity these days is based on full-blast exposure, not tease; it’s all anyone can do now to drop a personal pin on some kind of contemporary artistic map. If you want to go anonymous — or faux anonymous — you’re likely going to be swallowed whole.
But it wasn’t always such, and Ciuraru’s book presents a persuasive argument that the generative powers of the pseudonym should persist. “Nom de Plume” clearly took a great deal of research and reading to produce, and it, in turn, encourages one to be a better reader of books and of the self. The book also temporarily fractures its reader’s self, pushing you as you read to identify here and there with bits of other people’s pain or triumph or redemption. The further Ciuraru examines how some writers found themselves by shunning familiarity, the more the reader is encouraged to pitch himself or herself into metaphorical darkness in order to find a guide. By denouncing some version of the self, Ciuraru seems to say, we can find a certain essence of identity.
Through mini-biographies full of odd and little-known trivia, the book discusses 18 authors who found enormous success while using names they gave themselves. Ciuraru creates intrigue without getting gossipy — i.e., calling out Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) as a “Victorian Michael Jackson” and leaving it at that — and peeps into these people’s lives without stripping them of dignity.
The ways we trick ourselves into productivity rarely involves inventing a whole other person, yet that’s what Eric Blair did to pull out his works as George Orwell. The book cites other reasons for creating a literary double: to escape the law (O. Henry), to hide from irrationality and leaden gloom (Sylvia Plath), to appease an overbearing mother (Romain Gary), femaleness (the Brontë sisters), Danishness (Isak Dinesen), lesbianism (Patricia Highsmith). Samuel Clemens approached the invention of his noms de plume almost as if he were naming a hamster — the best one was simply “Josh.” Not one of these authors was ashamed of his or her work. Some really did not like publicity, some wanted to heighten it and some chose an alternate name to explore other versions of the self.
“As I worked on this book,” writes Ciuraru, “one thing I found really fascinating was that in some cases, a pseudonym wasn’t merely functional — a name slapped on a page to get published — but an essential key to unlocking creativity. That was so interesting to me, the idea that some writers actually can’t access their imaginations without assuming a nom de plume first.”
Take, for instance, Romain Gary, who spent almost as many years of his life searching for a pen name as he took to write his works. Or Fernando Pessoa, who felt his own physical self was like a lily pad, a place from which all other invented personalities could leap. He saw himself as an organism with intense, gnarled roots anchored to nothing, yet his other characters — each a writer himself — had rich histories and desires.
How did a move so full of productivity become a potentially dangerous pretense? Trying your hand at creating a personality-driven literary double these days might get you sued (hello, “J.T. Leroy”) or get your book recalled (“Love and Consequences” by Margaret Seltzer). The way we craft personal identity these days is based on full-blast exposure, not tease; it’s all anyone can do now to drop a personal pin on some kind of contemporary artistic map. If you want to go anonymous — or faux anonymous — you’re likely going to be swallowed whole.
But it wasn’t always such, and Ciuraru’s book presents a persuasive argument that the generative powers of the pseudonym should persist. “Nom de Plume” clearly took a great deal of research and reading to produce, and it, in turn, encourages one to be a better reader of books and of the self. The book also temporarily fractures its reader’s self, pushing you as you read to identify here and there with bits of other people’s pain or triumph or redemption. The further Ciuraru examines how some writers found themselves by shunning familiarity, the more the reader is encouraged to pitch himself or herself into metaphorical darkness in order to find a guide. By denouncing some version of the self, Ciuraru seems to say, we can find a certain essence of identity.
