Author of My Brilliant Friend explains her anonymity in Paris Review

[Mark Thibodeau]

Yeah.

Because those deep roots have really played a huge part in the
marketing of Pynchon's literature over the years.

I mean, whatever could Monsieur Bailey possibly have been thinking?!

On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 3:35 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
>> It's quite odd that Pynchon doesn't write under a pseudonym, isn't it?
>
>
>
> Taking into account the long tradition of his family in America,
> I do not think that this is "odd."
>
>
>
>
>
> On 15.01.2016 04:30, John Bailey wrote:
>>
>> It's quite odd that Pynchon doesn't write under a pseudonym, isn't it?
>> He doesn't want anonymity - he must have known reporters or fans would
>> at least try to track down some biographical detail.
>>
>> But at the same time he was refusing interviews and photos etc from
>> the very first. How crazy is it for a 27-year-old debut author to do
>> that, when there must have been publisher pressure to get out there
>> and promote the thing?! It makes sense for a Delillo or someone to
>> assert their privacy but I imagine it would be almost impossible for a
>> young writer to pull a Pynchon today.
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 2:18 PM, Becky Lindroos<bekker2 at icloud.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks for the Paris Review interview, Paul!
>>>
>>> I’ve read The Neapolitan Quartet (all of it- as they came out!) and I
>>> loved it.  The first book (My Brilliant Friend)  is probably best with the
>>> last book (The Story of the Lost Child)  being a close second.
>>>
>>> I think what Ferrante writes about is more personal than what Pynchon
>>> writes about.  I can’t say as I blame her not wanting her name in the press
>>> for all her old Naples neighbors to see - even if the Naples neighborhood
>>> today is nothing like what it was in the 1940s (for MBF).   Also what she
>>> said about Italian novelist recognition was interesting to me - that they
>>> have to be an academic first and then their novels might get noticed - that
>>> certainly says Umberto Eco (and others).
>>>
>>> And that idea mirrors the career of Elena in the Quartet where she
>>> becomes a famous writer but only through academia.  I wonder if Ferrante is
>>> or was an academic - I suspect so.  I suspect that the Quartet is comprised
>>> of the fragmented memories and reconstructed/re-imagined narrative of her
>>> life (I appreciated her answer to the narrator’s question in the interview.)
>>> Imo, this will be a classic in women’s studies.
>>>
>>> I thought Pynchon avoided the press because of the change it might
>>> produce in the way he approached his writing.  He was writing for either
>>> whomever he imagined his readership to be, or strictly for himself.  He
>>> didn’t want to get hung up on writing for a specific readership as indicated
>>> by some reporter.  I can’t see him ever talking to an interviewer about the
>>> type of stuff Ferrante discussed with the Paris Review people.  (But then,
>>> he doesn’t write the same kind of fiction!)  American novelists are famous
>>> in their own right - in fact some readers love debut authors while others go
>>> for the old standards.  Our novelists are often teachers of creative writing
>>> somewhere and/or graduates of the Iowa program (not so much anymore?)  Our
>>> novelists are not usually the scholars that Eco -  or Tabucchi
>>> (languages-literature) or Barrico (philosophy) lol.
>>>
>>>
>>> Becky
>>>
>>>> On Jan 14, 2016, at 10:56 AM, ish mailian<ishmailian at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   Isn't the complaint about the media yet another clever spin on the
>>>> death or disappearance of the author? One that, in protesting preserves the
>>>> author privilege while suppressing the real meaning of his death or
>>>> disappearance?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 12:40 PM, Mark Kohut<mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> I like all this and think TRP might agree. look what publicity has
>>>> done for-to-Franzen, just for one example.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 11:06 AM, Paul Mackin<mackin.paul at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> "Elena Ferrante" is more Pynchonian than Pynchon.  Now considered
>>>>> leading
>>>>> Italian novelist of her era.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> INTERVIEWER
>>>>>
>>>>> Many American reviews seem to make a direct connection between the work
>>>>> you
>>>>> do writing—its sincerity, its honesty—and your keeping out of the
>>>>> public
>>>>> eye. As if to say, the less one appears, the better one writes.
>>>>>
>>>>> FERRANTE
>>>>>
>>>>> Two decades are a long time, and the reasons for the decisions I made
>>>>> in
>>>>> 1990, when we first considered my need to avoid the rituals of
>>>>> publication,
>>>>> have changed. Back then, I was frightened at the thought of having to
>>>>> come
>>>>> out of my shell. Timidity prevailed. Later, I came to feel hostility
>>>>> toward
>>>>> the media, which doesn’t pay attention to books themselves and values a
>>>>> work
>>>>> according to the author’s reputation. It’s surprising, for example, how
>>>>> the
>>>>> most widely admired Italian writers and poets are also known as
>>>>> scholars or
>>>>> are employed in high-level editorial jobs or in other prestigious
>>>>> fields.
>>>>> It’s as if literature were not capable of demonstrating its seriousness
>>>>> simply through texts, but required “external” credentials. In a similar
>>>>> category—if we leave the university or the publisher’s office—are the
>>>>> literary contributions of politicians, journalists, singers, actors,
>>>>> directors, television ­producers, et cetera. Here, too, the works do
>>>>> not
>>>>> find in themselves authorization for their existence but need a pass
>>>>> that
>>>>> comes from work done in other fields. “I’m a success in this or that
>>>>> field,
>>>>> I’ve acquired an audience, and therefore I wrote and published a
>>>>> novel.”
>>>>> It’s not the book that counts, but the aura of its author. If the aura
>>>>> is
>>>>> already there, and the media reinforces it, the publishing world is
>>>>> happy to
>>>>> open its doors and the market is very happy to welcome you. If it’s not
>>>>> there but the book miraculously sells, the media invents the author, so
>>>>> the
>>>>> writer ends up selling not only his work but also himself, his image.
>>>>>
>>>>> INTERVIEWER
>>>>>
>>>>> You were saying that the reasons for staying in the shadows have
>>>>> changed a
>>>>> bit.
>>>>>
>>>>> FERRANTE
>>>>>
>>>>> I’m still very interested in testifying against the self-promotion
>>>>> ­obsessively ­imposed by the media. This demand for self-promotion
>>>>> diminishes the ­actual work of art, whatever that art may be, and it
>>>>> has
>>>>> become universal. The media simply can’t discuss a work of literature
>>>>> without pointing to some writer-hero. And yet there is no work of
>>>>> literature
>>>>> that is not the fruit of tradition, of many skills, of a sort of
>>>>> collective
>>>>> intelligence. We wrongfully diminish this collective intelligence when
>>>>> we
>>>>> insist on there being a single protagonist ­behind every work of art.
>>>>> The
>>>>> individual person is, of course, necessary, but I’m not talking about
>>>>> the
>>>>> individual—I’m talking about a manufactured image.
>>>>>
>>>>> What has never lost importance for me, over these two and a half
>>>>> ­decades,
>>>>> is the creative space that absence opened up for me. 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.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6370/art-of-fiction-no-228-elena-ferrante
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>>
>>
>
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