It was almost like magic. They were speechless. “Joanne,” they said, “it’s you!”
“Yes,” said Joanne with a grin, taking off her plastic nose and moustache, “it’s me.”
“But I’m confused,” said Ron confusedly. “Where’s Professor Galbraith?”
Over the weekend it emerged that a little-known detective novel, by an author called Robert Galbraith, had actually been written by JK Rowling. Sales of The Cuckoo’s Calling promptly increased by 507,000%. This, in turn, revealed the verdict of publishers and public alike on the question of whether you should judge a work of art purely on its own merits.
Rowling says she found the experience “liberating”. Given that she lives under the weight of constant expectation – with clamouring children, overgrown children and the global media ready to swamp her whenever she walks within 10 metres of a pen – this isn’t entirely surprising. But she also falls into a long tradition that I only learnt to appreciate after I’d worked out the identity of the author who always signed off as “Anon”.
Writers have long valued the “liberating” privileges of a secret identity, for many reasons. In the Middle Ages, for example, most writing was anonymous. I came into contact with some of it during my degree, and can see why people might have been reluctant to put their names to it. No doubt it’s a lot of fun describing the vision you had while lying face down in a hedge after several gallons of turnip mead – but would you want your distant descendants to know that was you? The same thinking, I suspect, lies behind many anonymous blogs today.
It was when writers started wanting to make mischief that anonymity became really useful. Some of the greatest satirical literature was published anonymously, or under pseudonyms (Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, had at least three different names). This was simply the best way to make fun of a lazy king – or spread rumours that a corrupt aristocrat had contracted an embarrassing illness – without ending up on the wrong side of a bayonet. And it’s a practice that magazines like The Onion and Private Eye continue to uphold – although, in these more genteel times, they tend to be dodging colossal lawsuits instead.
But anonymity isn’t just for disgruntled writers. It can be an essential tool for those who are actually doing something about their discontent. Take the brightly coloured balaclavas of Pussy Riot, for example, or the Guy Fawkes masks of the Anonymous hackers.
Of course, there are pitfalls. Anonymity provides one of the only platforms around for those men who march into their cellars each day, stripped down to string vests and socks, with the sole purpose of dumping abuse at the bottom of any article on the internet written by a woman. And for all the bravery of the Pussy Riot protesters, it’s probably safe to assume that the figure in a balaclava, filmed throwing a traffic cone through the window of Currys at three in the morning, wasn’t making a point about the awfulness of Vladimir Putin or multinational corporations.
But these problems don’t outweigh the benefits of anonymity, whatever the government of Bahrain, which recently banned the import of Guy Fawkes masks, might say. And it’s worth remembering that, even without the protection of anonymity, there’ll still be the multitude of atrocities that people willingly commit in their own names – from coldblooded murders to the columns of Liz Jones.
JK Rowling would always have struggled to keep her identity secret. But in an age of increasing surveillance, true anonymity is becoming ever more elusive. If the anonymous voices we rely on to champion our freedoms lose their cover altogether, the outlook could be grim indeed.
But since I don’t really have a world-changing message to convey – and I do, like most people who write things, have an ego to placate – I’ll take my byline this time, thank you very much.
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