Inner bloke or invisibility cloak?
The revelation of J K Rowling’s pen name marks the end of a long tale of writers’ anonymity. By Ben Macintyre
ON FEBRUARY 25, 1925, a Berlin newspaper published a short story under the pseudonym B Traven. Two years later Traven published his most famous novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which would be made into an Oscar-winning film by John Huston in 1948. In all he wrote some 12 books, adventure novels with anarchist themes, several of them bestsellers and all under his false name.
B Traven was not the first or last writer to use a pen name. He is, however, the only one I know of who successfully concealed his real identity throughout his writing life and after his death. Today there is still widespread uncertainty and disagreement about who B Traven really was, where he came from and even what language he originally wrote in.
B Traven’s reason for wanting to remain anonymous was very simple: ‘‘The creative person should have no other biography than his works.’’ He was determined to separate the writer from the writing and, uniquely, he succeeded.
J K Rowling had given a similar reason for wanting to write her new detective novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, under the name Robert Galbraith. She wanted, she said, to ‘‘fly under the radar’’ and by concealing her identity ‘‘to go back to the beginning of a writing career in this new genre, to work without hype or expectation and to receive totally unvarnished feedback’’. She wanted to hide her literary biography, the Harry Potter past, in an invisibility cloak.
B Traven protected his real identity unto death and beyond. Robert Galbraith, by contrast, was revealed as Rowling within weeks of publication, instantly catapulting The Cuckoo’s Calling to the top of the bestseller list.
In the digital world, anonymity is debased by being universally available and almost impossible to maintain. Any internet troll can hide behind a false name, but today no famous writer can hope to be separated from their writing for long. As a literary device, the pen name is dead, and with it has gone a venerable tradition and a playful but important genre of writing.
Some pen names have been utilitarian. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte began their careers as Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, women determined to be published as equals in a male-dominated publishing world. The prolific Stephen King adopted the nom de plume Richard Bachman because his publishers doubted fans would buy more than one new book from the same author in a single year. Eric Blair and Samuel Clemens believed that they would sell better as George Orwell and Mark Twain.
Yet at a deeper level, a pseudonym can unlock creativity in remarkable ways, allowing writers to hop between genres, genders, voices and writing styles. Only professional criminals are equally adept at adopting, adapting and discarding new identities.
The Lithuanian-born Roman Kacew became one of France’s most popular writers in the 1940s under the name Romain Gary, but he found the fame of his pseudonym restrictive, so he adopted another and achieved a second, equally successful, career as Emile Ajar. ‘‘To renew myself, to relive, to be someone else, was always the great temptation of my existence,’’ he wrote. Rowling put it less grandly but her aim in becoming Robert Galbraith was the same: ‘‘I successfully channelled my inner bloke.’’
The most obsessive pen-namer was the Portuguese writer and poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) who took on at least 72 distinct literary personalities, or ‘‘heteronyms’’, starting with the Chevalier de Pas, created at the age of 6.
Each of Pessoa’s alter egos had his or her own writing style, opinions, biography and astrological chart. They even reviewed and criticised one another’s works: ‘‘appalling and rigid’’ was how one part of Pessoa’s split literary personality described the writing of another.
The need for literary disguise was once motivated by artistic impulse, a genuine need for secrecy or a practical calculation that a real name would be constricting or embarrassing. Today a false identity is more likely to be used for deception, for hit-and-run assaults by online critics too cowardly to flame under their own names or as a political mask. During the Arab Spring many protesters hid behind false names on the internet; but so too did the forces of repression. Syrian security officials routinely bombard the web, under the guise of civilians, to sing the praises of Bashar Assad.
In the virtual world all identity is fluid, false flags are endemic and anonymity is seen as the tool of the hoaxer, the fraud or the manipulator. Rowling’s anger over her exposure as Galbraith was largely fuelled by the suggestion that her nom de plume had been a ploy to boost sales, rather than a genuine (and successful) experiment in literary ventriloquism.
Rowling’s brief life as Galbraith would have been applauded by B Traven, whoever he was.
The author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre may have been Ret Marut, a German actor and anarchist. His real name may have been Otto Feige, from Schwiebus, now in Poland. Or he was a Midwesterner of Scandinavian origin who travelled to Mexico on a Dutch steamer at the age of 10. Or not.
At various times, he was represented by two shadowy literary agents, Berick Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves. Any, or all, of these people may been Traven, or none of them.
He was rumoured to be the illegitimate son of the Kaiser, or the American writer Jack London or a gold prospector from Hamburg. His address was a post office box: ‘‘ B. Traven, Tamaulipas, Mexico’’. Life magazine offered a US$5000 reward for anyone who tracked him down. No one definitively did. A man calling himself Croves, who died in Mexico City in 1969, may or may not have been B Traven.
B Traven was so successful in keeping his life and work apart that today, while the books are almost forgotten, his own biography remains his most intriguing mystery story.