Newspaper Article

SUCCESS AND THE PSEUDONYMOUS WRITER: TURNING OVER A NEW SELF

Joyce Carol Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor at Princeton University. Her pseudonymous novel, "Lives of the Twins," is being published this month, Oates, Joyce Carol

1987

Overview

In 1984 the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters awarded one of its distinguished fiction prizes to a new and presumably young Chicano writer named Danny Santiago, for his first novel, ''Famous All Over Town.'' Subsequent to the award it was revealed, with some embarrassment, that the newly discovered Chicano writer was not Chicano at all: ''Danny Santiago'' turned out to be the pseudonym of 73-year-old Daniel James, author of several previously published books, and better known as a playwright and screenwriter, a former Communist Party member who had been blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950's. By his account, James wrote ''Famous All Over Town'' as a consequence of his experience doing volunteer work in Mexican-American districts of Los Angeles in the 1950's and 60's, and chose to publish it under a Hispanic pseudonym because he had lost confidence in his own writing ability. Yet it is plausible to assume that he chose ''Santiago'' over ''James'' because, while writing the novel - which is narrated by a 14-year-old Chicano boy - he felt closer to ''Santiago'' than to ''James.'' (Though ''Famous All Over Town'' alone should have been the issue, and not its author's identity, the awards committee confessed that they might have had second thoughts about giving the novel their prize, had they known its author was ''Anglo'' and not ''Chicano.'') It may be that, after a certain age, our instinct for anonymity is as powerful as that for identity - or, more precisely, for an erasure of the primary self in that another (hitherto undiscovered?) self may be released. [Romain Gary], writing as the unknown ''[Emile Ajar],'' is no longer writing as Gary, but as Gary-through-''Ajar''; the Danish noblewoman Baroness Karen Blixen, choosing ''Isak Dinesen'' (''Isak'': one who laughs) as a pseudonym, is writing as Blixen-through-''Isak Dinesen,'' thereby evoking an ancestral, magisterial and certainly unfeminine self. Jonathan Swift, behind the mask of ''Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.'' in the deadpan satire of 1708-09 known as the ''Bickerstaff Papers,'' is Swift-through-''Bickerstaff'' - and should one doubt the existence of ''Bickerstaff,'' his thought-tormented likeness is reproduced in The Tatler in 1710. When, for instance, Gore Vidal published several mystery-thrillers in the 1950's under the name ''Edgar Box,'' the novels were praised as successes of their genre by the very publications that were, at the time, ignoring Mr. Vidal's serious fiction. (By Mr. Vidal's account, the American literary establishment was so offended by his third novel, ''The City and the Pillar,'' for its ''perverted'' - i.e., homosexual - subject matter, that his next five books were boycotted by major reviewing publications. In order to support himself he wrote the ''Box'' novels, each in eight days. And though they were well received when issued under the name ''Edgar Box'' they were conspicuously less well received when reissued under ''Gore Vidal'' some years later.) FOR a woman to write under a male or a male-sounding pseudonym - ''Currer Bell,'' for instance, instead of Charlotte Bronte; ''George Sand'' instead of Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baroness Dudevant - may be a decision based upon practical expediency in a male-dominated culture; but it may also stimulate the imagination in unanticipated ways. As Robert Southey, then the Poet Laureate of England, explained to young Charlotte Bronte: ''Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.'' Consequently the Bronte sisters chose androgynous pseudonyms: ''Currer Bell'' (Charlotte Bronte), ''Ellis Bell'' (Emily Bronte), ''Acton Bell'' (Anne Bronte) for ''Jane Eyre,'' ''Wuthering Heights'' and ''Agnes Grey'' respectively. When ''Jane Eyre'' appeared in 1847 it was an immediate success - ''Currer Bell'' became famous overnight - and much speculation raged concerning the probable sex of the author. The intelligence, vigor and passion of the work argued for its having been written by a man, commentators noted; at the same time, its sensitivity, and, of course, its point of view in the heroine Jane, argued for its having been written by a woman.

• Publisher: New York Times Company
• Subject: Ajar, Emile / BOOKS AND LITERATURE / Bronte, Charlotte (1816-1855) / Gary, Romain / Lessing, Doris May (1919-2013) / Men / NAMES, PERSONAL / Oates, Joyce Carol (1938- ) / Somers, Jane / Women