The Author and The Mask: On Pseudonyms

The discussion of pen names recently came up on my Gothic Literature course this semester, notable because in the earliest days of gothic fiction, many authors resigned their stories to the ownership of “Anonymous,” as to add to the mystery of the text’s publication or discovery. What better way to write untold horrors than through the eyes of the unknown narrator? Horace Walpole didn’t disclose his authorship of Castle of Otranto until after it had become such a massive success, and many shorter, less famous works have never been credited to a proper author. My class chuckled about this at times, particularly in stories like “Ruins of The Abbey of Fitz-Martin,” where the unknown narrator, upon reading an old text’s contents, conveniently finds that parts of the story are “too decayed” to be deciphered and so skips scenes. A mighty fine way to avoid fixing a plot point when readers and critics don’t even know who penned the tale to begin with.

“Anonymous” is rarely seen standing in for authors these days, but pen names still function as a type of anonymity, much in the way that online personas do. I actually have fond memories of writing under an online pen name as a teenager, between 13 and 17- doing so mostly due to my age and need for privacy. It allowed my young author persona to take on her own life and I found power in doing so. I wrote amongst authors much older than myself, I made friends outside of my usual peer group, and was admired for my writing alone (or so I felt, anyway.) There was control and freedom in a pen name, and it allowed me to flourish. These days, I don’t run under the banner of “Anonymous,” and often reject the idea of a pen name in the wake of more “serious” writing, because if I am to own my work in my mind, it must be my name on the thing I created. There is a certain dark side to the pen name now with regards to minorities and women. Scores of female writers- even well into recent history, have taken a male pen name to avoid judgement on their books due to the “femininity” of their given names: George Eliot is a fine example of such things. (Mary Anne Evans, though popularly known as poet and novelist, George Eliot).

Likewise, many white authors have been caught outright pretending to be of another race to promote diverse fiction in the past, a fact that warrants serious scrutiny as cultural appropriation, an otherwise overused term. So, I take ownership of the words I wrote. They are mine, after all. Or… are they always? In many ways, I suspect the author persona is also a kind of character. Whether we intend it or not, there are masks we wear in our creative process. We must be the wild writer, the cool-headed editor, the inner child that still speaks with imaginary friends, the stern adult who pens all of our serious queries. These facets of ourselves are still very much us, but how we choose to express them comes down to our needs. Much in the way that our own characters, intentionally or not, are reflections of us in fractals, so must the author persona act as a version of the writer who puts on a good face for the crowd. In renaming our author persona, perhaps we turn him/her into their own person, giving them center stage so that we may better create in the background? If this is the case for an author, they are often met with a clash on social media. 

What of networking then? What if you want personal accounts for Twitter and Instagram, and author pages on these as well? That is a lot of usernames and passwords to recall when you really get down to it. Our global movement is not built for the anonymous author, simply trying to keep their professional and personal lives separate. But is it truly social media that holds us back, or the idea of remaining unknown? The names of many early authors have been lost to time, or otherwise omitted for effect of the story. Although J.K. Rowling wrote mystery novels under a pen name, she didn’t separate the two for very long, and boosted sales for her other series as a result of the reveal. The same can be said of Anne Rice’s various pseudonym-marked projects. Elena Ferrante was outed from her anonymous state by the media, a fact that remains controversial, as the author simply wanted her privacy to write books in peace. We don’t like when authors hide from us. So, what if we didn’t reveal the author behind the persona? What if, in this world of visibility and likes and connections, a work was allowed to stand on its own, either at the side of pseudonym or under “anonymous”? Could we stand it, an unknown author behind our favorite works. Or we as the author, going without credit for the beloved thing we created? It’s not diluted my love of old Gothic fiction, nor stories like Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, nor the original legends and myths that hold no credit, created by generations of storytellers. In the age of copyright and protection, likely not- and perhaps with good reason. Thieves come in all forms, after all. But we must ask ourselves, in creating an author persona, do we intend to share our stories, or the brand we’ve created? Or is there still merit in the idea of anonymity and invisible work?