It is hard to write or speak openly and honestly in this country, at this especial moment, without risking one’s reputation. Naturally, if one’s surname is rare and city is small the risk extends to his family members. I’m talking parents, siblings, brothers- and sisters-in-law in particular. If one is a boor with women, his mother’s friends may hear of it. If one is an office boob, his father’s might. And if one writes boldly, if not stridently on occasion, to the editor of his local newspaper (or in a diaristic blog), they certainly will. I do, and they have.
Ben Franklin sometimes published as Caelia Shortface or Silence Dogood, Washington Irving as Diedrich Knickerbocker, Eric Arthur Blair as George Orwell, Karen Blixen as Isak Dinesen. In the Age of Information and the internet, a pen name may ultimately do very little to obscure one’s identity (and protect his loved ones). Then again, with a little ingenuity and tact, it may “do the trick.” Claudio Gatti says Anita Raja is Elena Ferrante, but doubts persist. (Ask any disgraced public figure: once sown, they endure.) And, even if Gatti’s revelation is true, such intensive sleuthing couldn’t possibly visit a nobody, moi, for whom fame—ha!—and fortune— ha ha!—won’t come, if ever, until he is long dead.
I don’t think I’ll go mononymous, like Stendhal or Voltaire or Tupac. (One should earn that kind of ostentation.) And Pseudonymous Bosch is taken. (A pox on you, Raphael Simon, whoever you are.) But it’s decided: going forward I will write (hide) under a nom de plume, a fraud through and through. I want to be free to broach chancy subjects, to speak inappropriately and unreservedly, to die on my cross. I don’t want to bring shame or embarrassment to the living, unless they deserve it. (None whom I love does.) So, I’ll be changing (transitioning?), and moving.
I’m only sorry I can’t bring you along.
Impolitic 