Not just Erin Doom: The Writers’ Game with Pseudonyms

The case of Elena Ferrante remains unique in many ways, in the ever crowded panorama of literary pseudonyms: because despite being generally recognized in Anita Raja, translator and wife of Domenico Starnone, she continues to remain firmly enclosed within her anonymity. It is a matter of extreme patience, or conviction; he relates it to illustrious examples such as Romain Gary, who only by dying decided to reveal his double identity as an author – he had in fact invented a young writer, Emile Ajar, twice his size; or of the very mysterious B. Traven, a German author who fled to Mexico in the Twenties, and of great success above all in the European left of the Germanic area (the publisher Wom has just published in a revised and corrected translation «The dead ship», one of his favorite books).

In the thick forest of pseudonyms, very few resist to the end. Sooner or later one is recognized, also because more or less unconsciously too many clues have been left about one’s literary journey. Today, however, something radically different is happening, perhaps induced by the social media ecosystem: the pseudonym was born with a sort of expiration date, because it has become a possible driving force. A good success is achieved and at this point the mask is removed, relaunching the attention around oneself.

It’s always a tough bet, of course, which will be played out in a few days at the Book Fair: where some Italian women, not too mysterious, have decided to show up in person.

In the first place Erin Doom, who after being the best seller of the last year (her name is Matilda, she is a public Emilian for Salani) and having now closed contracts for countless translations, has already done so on Sunday on TV by Fabio Fazio (a by the way, best wishes to the conductor and to Littizzetto forced to move from Rai); but it will be repeated in a meeting organized to present the new novel, Stigma. So will Kira Shell with her «Dark Secrets», part of a saga published by Sperling & Kupfer, as well as Felicia Kingsley (Serena Artioli, from Modena) best sold by Newton Compton.

We are in full pink with strokes of fantasy, we certainly cannot speak of literary writing: no scandal however, it is a market segment that has always existed, aimed at a perhaps naive, very youthful and unpretentious public. On the other hand, the editorial mechanism is interesting: the three, but there are also others (or others, who knows) have had a short life as “ghosts”, and having been successful ghosts, the time has come for a change.

The discriminating factor is all there: many try, few succeed. The history of literature, indeed let’s say of publishing – here we are not discussing the relevance of texts, but only of the market – is, moreover, very rich in cases of this kind, as well as at least partial defeats.

In the past, however, it was a sort of bare-handed combat, without being able to hope for tik tok or whatspad, which today amplify the phenomenon, or at least accelerate its times. And the pseudonym itself has never been a guarantee of attention, except in exceptional cases.

Among the many who in the literary history of the last centuries have chosen it for the most varied reasons, it happened, for example, to Doris Lessing, who saw two novels rejected by her usual publisher when she sent them signed Jane Somers – and decided to publish them under her own name for another brand; or to Stephen King, who invented another by signing five novels like Richard Bachman. They did not have particular prominence and he, finally discovered by an astute bookseller, caused his poor pseudonym to die of cancer making full as well as sarcastic confession.

Signing while hiding is basically becoming the ghost writer of oneself, a very pleasant situation if, for example, one is hostile to excessive worldly or media exposure. We fly very high, then, up to EI Lonoff, The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth, who is locked up at home and does not accept awards, interviews, visits and invitations, «as if associating his face with his work was a ridiculous irrelevance.

That said, if there are ghosts (or ex) at the Lingotto, there will be no shortage of “hunters”: that is, the students of the publishing laboratory directed by Roberto Cicala at the Cattolica in Milan, who bring the results of their research enclosed in a very rich, a sort of atlas of pseudonymous authors, entitled «In the shadow of a name»: where it is demonstrated, among other things, that the choice of a pseudonym hides, most likely, a perhaps unconscious desire to be unmasked. And if that doesn’t happen, today that we’re in a hurry, the author himself will think about it himself.