Hey kids, it’s Akatzen with another Book Report for you!

Today I want to talk about a particular device authors use when they wish to hide or mask their identity for any of a variety of reasons: the pseudonym.

Pseudonym: n, SU-doh-nim. A false name. (Derived from the Greek, pseudonymon)

Sometimes an author uses a pseudonym to separate their personal life from their work. Sometimes, a pseudonym is created because more than one author worked on the book, such as the detective novelist Ellery Queen, actually authored by two cousins: Daniel Nathan and Manford Lepofsky. Their work covered 42 years of detective writing, heavily influencing the genre. The cousins also wrote four novels about detective Drury Lane using the pseudonym Barnaby Ross.
A group of 20th Century mathematicians created the pseudonym Nicolas Bourbaki to publish their work as a collective.

Two of the most famous pseudonyms, or pen names, are Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll (covering for the identities of Samuel Clemens and mathematician Charles Dodgson, respectively)
Charlotte Bronte originally published Jane Eyre (and also Shirley) under the pseudonym Currer Belle. Her sister Emily originally published Wuthering Heights under the name of Ellis Belle. Many of their characters were inspired by neighbors, and so they published under the pseudonyms to avoid embarrassing them.

One popular French author, Romain Gary, started publishing books under the name Emile Ajar to see if people liked his books because they were good or because he was popular. Turns out they liked his books no matter who was writing them.

Who else uses pseudonyms?
Stephen King published his early non-horror novels as Richard Bachman because he wasn’t sure readers would accept his break from genre.
Popular storyteller O. Henry was a pseudonym used by William Sydney Porter.
Jane Austen published Sense and Sensibility using “A Lady” as the author.
Eric Arthur Blair is more recognizable as George Orwell.
Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum published as Ayn Rand.
Fantasy author Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr. He also wrote under the names Reagan O’Neal and Jackson O’Reilly.
And, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, when Dave Eggers writes with his brother Christopher, they use the names Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey

And, I’m sure you’ve noticed one or two of the writers on Semantink use pseudonyms.

Pseudonymitry is a time-honored practice, and while a reader may sometimes wonder, “who are you, really?” most often the mystery is part of the appeal.

Last week Ben, Mr. Wolff, and Sgt. Angle tossed their two cents into the fountain of remakes, doing their part to change the quality of the water. (I think I’m starting a subconscious habit to out-do the random metaphor I came up with in my previous post.)

I’ve been thinking about doing an author spotlight every couple of posts for quite a while, and since remakes are in the air, I thought I’d mention an author who just published a remake of his own.

In 1963 Maurice Sendak published the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. It was incredibly popular, and by 2008 had sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. In 2009, “Where the Wild Things Are” was released as a feature film, directed by Spike Jones and adapted from Sendak’s book by Spike Jones and Dave Eggers.

The same week the movie hit the screens, Eggers released his book, “The Wild Things”, a total reimagining of Sendak’s 10 pages into a full length novel, and also where you find most of the plot points that happened in the movie.

2009 was a good year for Eggers. In June his screenplay (written with his wife, Vendela Vita) “Away We Go” hit the screens under the masterful direction of Sam Mendes. In July, he released his novel Zeitoun, the nonfiction account of a Syrian man on the flooded streets of Katrina attempting to provide for his family and help any survivors who also stayed, and his vilification and subsequent disappearance by American authorities. And then in October Wild Things hit shelves and movie screens.

Not that life always went swimmingly for the author. In 1991, when he was 18, Dave was forced to take responsibility for raising his 8 year old brother after both his parents died of cancer only a few weeks apart. His first novel, the alternatingly gut-wrenching and hilarious A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), tells the story of how it happened, lightly fictionalizing the story but in no way diminishing the very true loss. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize that year.
In 2002, Eggers published You Shall Know Our Velocity! (the film is currently in pre-production). It is the story of a young man and his friend traveling around the world, always moving East, and their frustrating attempts to give away money. More than that, it is a story of Generation X and how they’ve grown up without any sense of direction.
Surviving Justice hit shelves in 2005. The book was a compilation of interviews of former prisoners who were given the death sentence but were later exonerated.
And in 2006, Eggers published What is the What? Though he wrote the novel, due to the extensive interviews and it being written in the first person, he published the novel as an autobiography. The subject of the novel is Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Sudanese Lost Boys, who survived 15 years of civil war, horrid genocide, and refugee camp exile before fleeing eventually to the United States in 2001. Essentially nonfiction, because some characters of composites of several real people and most of the storyline was reshaped and reordered for narrative effect Eggers released the book as fiction. In spite of that, the book captures the life of Achak Deng clearly, and tragically. The book is beautifully written, but there were several chapters that made me sick to my stomach and unbelievably sad that the world is really like this.

Eggers also co-authored several humor books with his younger brother, using the pseudonym “Dr. and Mr. Haggis-On-Whey” and the book Jokes Told in Heaven About Babies (writing as Lucy Thomas).

In all his novels, Eggers manages to capture, in a very real sense, the triumph and tragedy and humor of the human spirit. He is always worth reading, and the perfect subject to begin my spotlight series. Give him a read.

Until next time,
Still paddlin the old knew…
Akatzen

P.S. The next Mythoi Origin Story is out. Go take a look at Mythoi Birth: Vito! It’s free.