The “Unmasking” of Elena Ferrante

Once I knew that the completed book would make its way in the world without me, once I knew that nothing of the concrete, physical me would ever appear beside the volume—as if the book were a little dog and I were its master—it made me see something new about writing. I felt as though I had released the words from myself.

I feel whoever investigated this knowingly taken away her art from her. It isn't super hard to identify someone who has written so much and the fact is that she never made it like a sport or challenged anyone. It's like someone with a gun has this need to hunt deer who was just minding her business just to assert their skills.

All these articles weigh in, ponderously, on the ethics of this, but continue to spread the information. Presumably, and hopefully, a report on doxxing would not include the personal information that was released, but that's essentially what's being done here. Why? (The author herself seems to be acknowledging in the quoted sentence that this is undesirable.)

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There is an experimental music act that calls themselves the Residents. For years, they performed in costumes; mostly with three members wearing giant eyeballs over their head, and one wearing a stylized skull. They have been deliberately cagey about their names ever since they first appeared in the mid-seventies.

It used to be that if you really wanted to know their names you could, but you'd have to dig. And anyone who cared enough to dig had a good chance of caring about their schtick enough that they'd respect their desire to be anonymous.

Now, though? Type "The Residents" into Google and you get a big sidebar that helpfully lists various information parsed from their Wikipedia page and elsewhere. Including their real names. And that, too, makes me sad.

'Much ado, not by accident: Elena Ferrante has spoken frankly about exploiting the gossip mill to drive book sales — to The Financial Times 06/10/2016'

https://post-gutenberg.com/2016/10/06/9645/

Does that seem a fair point to ardent Ferrante fans?

Do I think using a real name or pen name or any kind of pseudonym is a fool-proof, legally protected avenue to avoid being the responsible person for one's art? Not really.

>Ferrante’s steadfast artistic choice to be anonymous can only be that: an artistic choice, made at the beginning of her writing career for private reasons that she deemed essential. The cost of anonymity is high; she told her publisher that she would do nothing to promote her books, and, indeed, they could well have sunk to the bottom of the literary river without a trace. That they succeeded, and reached the kind of audience they have, has happened, if anything, in spite of Ferrante’s anonymity, not because of it.

Mostly I feel that because the novels were presented as fiction then researching the "fictitious" author using a pen name is against the spirit of art. Sharing art is very risky, emotionally speaking, and I feel the tradition of using pen names is worthwhile. It's not quite like journalism where there are mechanisms to protect sources who would be personally / professionally endangered by speaking out, but I think they're closer then we may believe.

The article brings in quite a bit of gender-related discussion that could be appropriate, but kind of rubs me the wrong way. It somewhat - and not too forcefully - asserts that women have not had access to writing and publishing historically. As a studied male, I can surely assert that writing has traditionally been seen as a feminine and not masculine enterprise, much like teaching or nursing are seen in modern times. Women flat out effing dominate literature historically, so I don't really like inferences to the contrary. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating here but women in literature are plentiful and highly respected.