Hooked on Books: What’s in a name? Sometimes, a slight (but forgivable) subterfuge 

A particularly pithy observation in the esteemed author Sigrid Nunez’s latest novel “The Vulnerables” caught my attention and made me chuckle: “Some writers use pen names so that they can be more truthful; others, so that they can tell more lies.”

The opinion expressed therein carries a little more weight, because Nunez’s narrating protagonist is herself a highly literate author.

But unregenerate cynic that I am, I’m going to hazard a guess that there is a third, possibly more frequent motive for adopting a pseudonym, one that might have compelled Archibald MacLeish to take the stage name Cary Grant and Gordon Sumner to go by the moniker Sting. Some advertised names are bound to magnetize more sales, be it of movie tickets, record purchases or, in our present case, books.

It’s hard to imagine a more famous or, indeed, more successful literary adopter of a pseudonym than Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who built a long and robust career spinning yarns under that name, which he later claimed to have appropriated from a boat captain who would shout it out to note that the river water measured two fathoms deep.

But it was hardly the first of the multiple pen names he deployed as a hard-scrabbling newspaperman in Nevada and California in the 1860s. As author Ron Powers points out in the prologue to his definitive 2005 biography “Mark Twain: A Life,” Twain experimented with “W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab” and “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass,” among others, before finally settling upon the nom de plume we all know him by today.

Nor should Twain’s explanation of where his chosen byline came from necessarily be taken as the unimpeachable account. Author Gregory Crouch tells a slightly different story in a 2018 article in Time magazine, suggesting Twain acquired the name well before it first appeared in print in Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise in 1863. As an occasional habitué of the Old Corner Saloon in that frontier city, he would call out “Mark Twain” to the barkeep upon entering as a signal to pour him two whiskeys and make two chalk marks against his account on the back wall.

Whatever the genesis of the Twain persona, the reasons that writers have long turned to pen names are many and multiform. For “Silence Dogood,” writing letters as a middle-aged widow to the New England Courant in 1722, she (he) was trying on the disguise to fool the older brother who founded and published the paper. Benjamin Franklin, then a 16-year-old apprentice at said paper, knew that James Franklin would not approve, and when Franklin the elder did find out who authored the extremely popular series of missives, he was not happy about it, and it created a rift between the two.

Coincidentally, the first of many pseudonyms adopted by Washington Irving, “Jonathan Oldstyle,” was also put in service to furnish epistles to a newspaper, the New York Morning Chronicle, edited by his older brother. But Irving, then age 19 and the youngest of 11 children, apparently was trying to impress and entertain his older brothers with this 1802 series of letters mocking the styles and customs of the day, eventually evolving into theater criticism that stirred up quite a ruckus. A couple of the last of the nine missives were filed by Oldstyle’s alleged friend “Quoz,” and subsequent pseudonyms Irving deployed for other writings were “Launcelot Langstaff,” “Geoffrey Crayon,” “Deidrich Knickerbocker” and “Fray Antonio Agapida.” He finally published under his own name in 1828 with the historical fiction book “A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.”

Rampant sexism, it should be supposed, could induce aspiring authors to disguise their real names, as was the case with all three Brontë sisters —Charlotte, Emily and Anne—who published a collection of poetry without the knowledge of their disapproving minister father in 1846 as “Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell,” keeping each of their initials intact. All three continued to send manuscripts under those pseudonyms, with Charlotte later acknowledging in print that the motive was “dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming names positively masculine.” (It was not until the novel “Jane Eyre” met with such wild success in 1847 that Charlotte fessed up to her father, who was bewildered by the sudden and massive amount of fan mail pouring over the Brontë family transom.

While the nom de plume was a popular publishing phenomenon in the 18th and 19th centuries in America, it also was widely adopted overseas, persisting into the 20th century. English journalist Eric Blair, for instance, wrote scathing social commentary under his own name early on, but changed his name to George Orwell in 1930, declaring it “a good round English name” (George for the patron saint of England and Orwell after a favorite river in Suffolk). As the “Homage to Catalonia” and “Animal Farm” author garnered more and more literary success, he was asked by a close friend if he had considered legally changing his name to Orwell. He replied in the affirmative but added that he would then have to adopt a different pen name!

Another British author, the late crime writer Ruth Rendell, became famous for creating the Chief Inspector Wexford character, featuring him in 24 novels from 1964-2013. But in 1986, she struck out in a somewhat different direction, adopting the pseudonym Barbara Vine to produce 14 more novels that were more psychological in nature. She explained herself in a forthright admission to the National Post, saying the two bylines allowed her to develop distinct voices. The Rendell works, she said, featured more “excitement” and “sensation,” while the Vine works “don’t have any sort of mystery in them, they don’t have any revelations, really. They’re just really about people.” Throughout her long life (she died in 1915 at 85), she piled up a slew of literary awards—under both rubrics —even landing once on the long list for the Man Booker Prize.

Many Stephen King fans are aware that the acclaimed horrormeister also wrote seven novels under the Richard Bachman pseudonym, the first in 1977. He also was straightforward about it, quite a bit later, posting on his website that he did it early in his career because he was so prolific as Stephen King, he thought the market would not bear getting flooded by more, more and more. But when a bookstore clerk noticed the similarity in the writing styles, King confirmed his Bachman alter ego and killed him off, announcing that he had died of “cancer of the pseudonym.”

In the pipeline: Due out at the end of July is another memoir from a member of the Trump family. Fred Trump III, nephew of the ex-president and older brother of Mary Trump, whose “Too Much and Never Enough” came out in 2020 and was a New York Times best-seller, will hit the bookstands with “All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way” on July 30. Published by Gallery Books, a subdivision of Simon & Schuster, it contains the admission from the author, who has not been outspoken to date, that “silence is golden only when there is nothing that needs to be said.” Fred can only hope to hit as big as little sis: Her book sold a whopping 650,000 copies on the day of its release, breaking the record at Simon & Schuster.

An early alert: The venerable San Francisco-based book festival Litquake, which has hosted some 10,500 authors and attracted 275,000 attendees since its founding in 1999, has launched a new initiative for this year’s iteration, which will take place over multiple venues from Oct. 10-26. With four new board members and new executive director Norah Piehl weighing in and inspired by the movie “My Dinner With Andre,” Litquake is hosting four “My Dinner With” events before the festival that feature intimate chow-downs in private conversational settings. Tickets are $250 per person ($175 tax deductible) and seating, as you can imagine, is limited. The June 24 dinner with “Labor Day” author Joyce Maynard has passed; the schedule offers “1,000 Acres” author Jane Smiley in Berkeley on Aug. 3, “Autonomous” author Annalee Newitz on Aug. 22 in Berkeley and Daniel Handler of Lemony Snicket fame on Sept. 19 in San Francisco, already only wait-list available. Find more information at litquake.org.

Hooked on Books is a monthly column by Sue Gilmore on current literary buzz and can’t-miss upcoming book events. Look for it here every last Thursday of the month.     

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