Elena Ferrante - The Neapolitan Novels

so many writers have written books with pseudonyms. and don't have their picture taken. and nobody cares. but her popularity and the romantic idea that these books were somehow a re-telling of someone's actual past helped create this thing. which is why you get such strong reactions, i think.

this is all just reminding me that i still have to read 3 & 4.

"It must be like having your star soccer player wear a mask all the time."

yeah, this is true too. italy wants to pat her on the back and she doesn't want to be patted on the back. how dare she? this whole thing is very human and right out of a novel written by a human.

If that deadspin article wasn't talking about ruining peoples lives just for the hell of it, it would be laughable. It can only discuss this in the terms of 'journalistic policy' and what people think in 'the field of journalism'. The self-obsession amongst these dipshits is so immense that it can't for one minute enter their minds, that this might actually have been a question about art and literature, and should be up to fans, critics and academics to figure out. No, this is a journalistic question, so here's how the most important people in the world, the journalists, should think about it. I honestly hope some stupid billionaire sues this piece of shit publication into oblivion as well, the world would be so much better without these assholes running around.

"literary scholars have tried to track her down by analyzing the text and the biographies of various possible Ferrantes. The problem here seems to be that Gatti actually got it RIGHT. Part of the Ferrante phenomenon — a sensation that I don’t think it’s crass to call massively profitable — was driven by the mystery of who the author was. People are naturally curious about the people who make the culture they consume, especially when it’s culture that they feel as strongly about as they do about Ferrante. And especially when the books themselves seem to invite a conflation between narrator and author. Despite her anonymity, Ferrante has given plenty of interviews, especially recently. If the pseudonym allowed us to encounter her work in a specific way initially, the status of the work has changed in the last several years: Enormous success comes with burdens as well as benefits, but it certainly makes her identity more newsworthy than it was when she first started writing under a pseudonym."

NYMag thing says it a lot better than i do...

The Deadspin piece needs to get more precise about what a journalist's obligations are. One moment he's saying that journalists can't be obligated not to expose a public figure, the next that there's a positive obligation to do so. Which is it? and why is this an obligation as opposed to simply a reason, which can be outweighed by other reasons? I'd grant that a journalist has (mainly self-interested) reasons to expose Elena Ferrante, but that doesn't mean that there aren't stronger reasons not to. I also wonder about the implication that journalists have some special set of duties that are different from those of non-journalists. Does he think that it would be wrong for a non-journalist to expose her?

bit eliminationist there frederik

if an anonymous artist, male or female, becomes successful, people want to know their identity. I think the outing was creepy and unnecessary and I reckon most people, despite curiosity about her identity do too. some of the reactions to the outing act as if the entire literary world stood up and applauded spitefully thinking "now we've put her in her place" - like many such things, I didn't see any such reaction, it was all assumed in the name of thinkpiece, I mean apart from a screengrabbed one-line comment or two, as usual considered a convenient stand-in for wider public opinion.

i think that ny mag thing is the last thing i need to read about it. i agree with most of what she says and it's really well-written. and i've got real reading to do now!

Hm, most of what I've seen uses the public uproar against the doxxing exactly as proof that it was unnecessary?

Scott, you're again quoting a journalist telling us what the rest of the world wants, without asking anyone but themselves. There's a massive difference between speculation based on literary analysis, and doxxing someones personal finances.

all the extremely woke takes on this seem rote and sort of stupid abt how the world works, wish ppl had gone for some kind of 'professional anonymity of the kind ferrante enjoys is a symbol of the new opacity of wealth and is thus bad' take instead of this especially as a woman verz.

Writers should be able to be fucking anonymous if they want to. Even if they become successful. Even if they are middle class instead of working class.

writers can be anonymous, and some do, they just have to hide their tracks better

'professional anonymity of the kind ferrante enjoys is a symbol of the new opacity of wealth and is thus bad'

it was her wealth that allowed her to be tracked down though, no?

yes, the wealth she partially earned by being mysterious and anonymous!

So you think being anonymous is part of her job, and yet you think it's okay to wreck her livelihood?

No one will ever buy her books again now that they know she's this person she is

i just thought it was kinda cool that i live with someone who has translated stories by christa wolf. small world! personally, i would never have tried to find out the true identity of elena ferrante. legally or illegally. i didn't really care who she really was. i liked the books i have read so far. that's enough for me. you will find in this world that when you ask someone not to do something they sometimes will do it anyway. that much i know.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-dont-want-to-know-who-elena-ferrante-is-1787411405

Don't really see how this is any different from journalists (or fans!) pursuing Salinger or Pynchon - every mystery creates a detective.

― Foster Twelvetrees (Ward Fowler), Tuesday, 4 October 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If you listen to the journalist you'd think Ferrante was as deceitful as a politician, except she isn't one. Really you'd think the concept of fiction is lost on him. Ferrante has actually been generous, given interviews (brilliant interviews at that) and has asked to be left alone, that she has specific reasons, she wants the space etc.

Many of the reactions from women such as this one come from a place of hurt, from women who generally feel hounded by men and find it tough to find a way in literary circles. Ferrante's fiction (where women are often brutalised and hounded) speaks to that.

OI MEMBA BURIAL WAS SOME BLOKE INNA HOODIE INNIT

all the extremely woke takes on this seem rote and sort of stupid abt how the world works

otm. so much stuff with a tone of "typically she can never get the respect she deserves" when it's like, erm no, she has massive respect. or a lot of stuff mentioning knausgaard (whom i like) as some contrasting figure who is adored, whereas ferrante is suddenly now a figure of ridicule apparently, when it's p clear to see that ferrante has way more literary cred than knausgaard, and comparing the two is just some reaction to their being thrown together due to both being successful simultaneously, rather than any significant similarity.

it actually knocks ferrante down to be defending her in this madly precious manner. like fuck the expose but she isn't part of some mass cause or solidarity movement, her anonymity absolved her from that too.

"OI MEMBA BURIAL WAS SOME BLOKE INNA HOODIE INNIT"

it was one of the guys in Blur. same with Banksy.

Not sure comparing ferrante with professional selfpublicists like kardashian is useful

Kim is actually playing Lila in the Netflix mini-series.

That could well be true for all i know, world is fukt

she will be a vampire though.

is it weird that i struggle to understand why this is a big deal? create a mystery and people will try to figure it out.

I don't know if it's a huge deal, but the NYRB was a baffling read. Long as shit about some James Bond antics just to go against this woman's wish. I think if a name with connection just dropped in the lap of other publications they'd publish it, but to dig through trash like this..

Oh now I remember what it reminds me of, in all its gleefulness.

In October of 1778, when Evelina was entering its second print run, George Huddesford published his satirical poem Warley. In the poem (his first published work, as Evelina was for Burney), Huddesford exposes (Frances) Burney as the author of Evelina in terms which are less than endearing:

Poetasters I hold it a sin to encourage,
Let a pump or a horse pond supply them with porridge.
Will your scurrilous dogg’rel a dinner ensure ye,
Or the fee-simple pay of your Manor of Drury?
Will your metre a Council engage or Attorney,
Or gain approbation from dear little Burney*?

An asterisk next to Burney’s name laconically explained, at the bottom of the page, that she was “The Authoress of Evelina,” destroying, at a stroke, the complex undertakings which Burney had made to protect her identity.

Burney told Susanna this was a “vile poem” and “she couldn’t eat or sleep for a week” because of “vehemence
and vexation” (Harman 129).

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/books/review/elena-ferrante-beach-at-night.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=wide-thumb&module=mini-moth®ion=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/books/review-elena-ferrante-frantumaglia.html

Despite his being the author of 'Capital', a rather good short bit by John Lanchester on the Ferrante unmasking: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n20/john-lanchester/short-cuts

"That, in fact, is what anonymity, that idea so tempting to so many writers, has become in contemporary society: a tool for empowering and magnifying misogyny. Tens of thousands of men using anonymity to berate, abuse and threaten women online? A daily reality. We as a culture are fine with it. A woman writer using pseudonymity for creative reasons? Put an end to that right now. Who does she think she is?"

This is a text by Anita Raja, a terrific essay discussing Crista Wolf, Bachmann and Buchner: http://www.asymptotejournal.com/criticism/anita-raja-translation-as-a-practice-of-acceptance/

I see it was taken from a lecture delivered two years ago. I wonder if Raja will make appearances again as a translator..

Sorry last year.

This was an ok rev of her latest book: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-ferrante-frantumaglia-20161006-snap-story.html

A woman writer using pseudonymity for creative reasons? Put an end to that right now. Who does she think she is?"

who actually said this? i've yet to see a single person defend the outing. yet i've seen hundreds of people say almost exactly what lanchester said, putting these words into imaginary mouths.

the idea that the identity of a similarly feted and pseudonymous male literary phenom would have garnered no attention or journalistic investigation seems speculative, to put it mildly

as does the idea that people are wildly speculating or bitching about a literary critical darling who is barely a concern to the general public. the people who have heard of elena ferrante aren't exactly likely to be knives out misogynists. it's actually worse to propagate sexist tropes which nobody else is propagating in an effort to erect a strawman.

any widespread desire to find out who she is is just the same faintly tedious need to expose the person behind an alias that we've seen with like banksy, or burial, or lol rex the dog.

I'd agree that this is more in line with a number of tabloid hack jobs (plenty of anon blogs as well) except in the context of what Ferrante has said about why she needs to be left alone to create as a woman and what her writing depicts in terms of women being tracked and hounded and brutalised in a masculine Italian culture (which Raja actually dwells upon in her piece). There is definitely something to that charge.

A point which Lanchester doesn't make.

I think the charge will be felt by her fans, many of whom are women who often feel hounded. It doesn't have to be strictly and factually true.

yeah i mean i disagree with the outing, utterly, as i said upthread. i just don't think anyone supports it. maybe within an italian context there's something there but i've not read an italian perspective on it.

No one supports it - but the point is that it has happened! So why did it happen?! Why couldn't the supposedly nice people, thoughtful people at NYRB told this guy to fuck off w/his 'scoop'! That's as much of an issue in the literary culture.

Its an Italian context but its also all over Ferrante's fiction too.

The NYRB are hilarious - there must be thousands of pages of reviews on Feminist theory and novels, sociological type studies detailing how gender inequality manifests itself and operates in both the West and the rest of the world..and then they do this.

The TLS shortly came out with a snarky article saying they would never do it. The TLS is now edited by the former managing director of The Sun. Of course they would've!

Bet the LRB would've done it as well. Its infested by male London literary scene morons who waste pages on any ink that the likes of McEwan and Amis publish.

actually i think none of those three claims are really true: i've been reading the nyrb since the early 80s and there's really been very little in it on feminist theory and the rest of it; contrariwise for the lrb, which is p good on gender (tho yeah, i'm not really a fan of adam mars-jones, who reviewed "like punk never happened" and chris cutler's pre-rewrite "file under popular" and enthused about the wrong one) (in the tls, in the early 1800s) -- and i think the tls, which i read least, has actually done p well to retain its trademark prissiness (stig abel seems to be treating it as the means of his intellectual atonement)

i read the tls the least by some way, so this is the one i'm likeliest to be wrong about

In the last few years there often are articles that will come at or review some kind of work on the gender and its inequalities/where are we at. Not that I've counted. And yes, not feminist theory as such, but here is a recent example:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/hot-sex-young-girls/

The point stands - if they publish this but then don't extend any courtesy to Ferrante - and there has not been any editorial answer to the anger this has provoked either that I've seen - then something is wrong.

I'd say LRB is very much male London Literary scene for most of the time I've been reading, especially in regards to their coverage of fiction. Just as a thing they don't keep an eye on (but given their reviews on gender they probably should) (ironically enough the latest LRB has two fictional works by women reviewed in it)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n15/adam-mars-jones/the-love-object

Adam Mars-Jones gave this book by the only female member of Oulipo a bad review in the LRB last year. It was actually pretty convincing to me.

who do you mean then re lrb? i mean yes, they do cover every other amis/mcewan probably -- which seems unnecessary -- but which other novelists/reviewers do you have in mind that fall into that category? adam mars-jones isn't in it very often thankfully; lanchester? mainly does the big stunt pieces now (which i never read bcz i don't think he understands economics AT ALL); andrew o'hagan? i tend to like his journalism i have to say (which again is mainly what he's there for)

maybe i just bleep that kind of stuff out (i probably skip more of the fiction articles than not)

i totally agree there's something wrong w/nyrb publishing the ferrante piece, i just don't think they keep up with gender stuff as well as you seemed to imply

haha i think my mars-jones radar just goes "still an idiot hence not representative of a TYPE" (abd ditto amis/mcewan to be honest) -- the settings on my in-built killfiles are too high to allow me to judge the aggregate content properly :)

To me its the lack of any meaningful fiction coverage in the LRB..a lot of unneccesary booker nominated stuff that I just usually groan at (don't have any names rn as my box of 100+ issues are at my parents'). I'll mostly read for the non-fiction. I am observing the absence of it rather than counting what there is of it.

The Brian Dillon piece on Claire-Louise Bennett was terrific (I think it was his favourite book last year), but they don't do much of that in comparison to the McEwan types.

Their only fiction reviewers I like are Jenny Turner and Michael Hoffmann (just because he is so mad and rude when reviewing the male literary types/has no respect; but its often a performance, and it plays a role for the editors of the LRB against the London literary blah charge)

(Point taken on NYRB, I only read the free articles on the web and only buy the odd issue of the LRB these days)

lrb is definitely terrible at reviewing fiction by women, and at getting women to review anything written by men