Does an author have the right to their own identity? The answer seems obvious: Yes, of course they do, just like anyone else. But, actually, it's not that easy to answer.
After all, there's an evolving consensus that authors don't have the right to determine how their books are read. Once a book is written, its interpretation is the property not of the author but of its readers, collectively.
It's also true that books are increasingly read through the prism of who their author is. As the writer of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver pointed out in a much-discussed - and much-criticised - speech recently, book criticism and reception increasingly revolves around concepts of expression, ownership, and appropriation of voices and identity.
Given these two tenets of postmodern criticism - that the interpretation of a book depends on its writer's identity, and that the interpretation of a book is the property of its reader - it surely follows that the identity of the writer is also essential knowledge, almost the property, of the reader?
It may logically follow that it does. But, frankly, it is an unpalatable conclusion. Many of the same people who subscribe to these two tenets - as judged at least from their furious response to Lionel Shriver's speech criticising the idea of authorial identity as a crucial component of a book's reception - are also justly appalled by the revelation in several major publications, including the New York Review of Books, of the likely identity of the best-selling Italian novelist Elena Ferrante.
I have not read Ms Ferrante's books, but I have watched with interest as they have become the sort of social phenomenon that causes people in one's social network to use its characters as allegories for, or for criticism of, real-world people. ("Oh, don't be such a Pietro.") It's unsurprising that the many who are so attached to her work have seen the "outing" of Ms Ferrante as persecution. And it is also true that the fact that Ms Ferrante is a woman must have something to do with it; many have remarked the not-so-subtle implication lying behind the supposed fact that the "real" Ms Ferrante is married to a best-selling novelist. Surely a woman could not have become a best-seller all on her own, right?
Ms Ferrante actually has excellent, well-argued reasons for writing pseudonymously for so long (her first book came out in 1991). She objects to the idea that a book should be judged on the basis of its author; she objects to the idea that an author should be judged on the basis of her books; and she objects to the circus surrounding book promotion that puts the author on display like a dancing bear, with her opinions on every other subject under the sun solicited and examined. These reasons are correctly cited as why the outing of Ms Ferrante was a poorly thought-out endeavour and, well, mean.
The journalist who did the outing, the well-regarded Italian investigative reporter Claudio Gatti, has a simple defence. He told the BBC instead that "I think readers have the right to know something about the person who created the work… she is a very much public figure".
But consider this: What if Mr Gatti had revealed that Ms Ferrante was not, in fact, a woman. Would the revelation still be an act of sexism? Would it affect how we read these books - supposedly a brilliant exposition of the female mind? Would it matter then that Ms Ferrante has insisted that she is, in fact, a woman, and that women writers are now "on furlough from gender stereotypes"? Would people then rise to her defence? I don't know. Perhaps not. Some would then justify Mr Gatti's reporting. But my instinct is that the principle of whether outing the "real" Elena Ferrante is right or wrong is a principle, and should not in fact depend on the actual identity of Elena Ferrante.
So here's my very simple question. If we are to respect Ms Ferrante's choice to conceal her identity - as I insist we should - should we not also recognise that Lionel Shriver was right? That the identity of an author should not be part of how we judge a book? Truthfully, logically, we would have to. We may run from it, it may anger and upset us, but that doesn't make it any less true.
m.s.sharma@gmail.com
Twitter: @mihirssharma
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