| |
| | JOYCE CAROL OATES: LAUREN KELLY |
 | | It may be that, after a certain age, our instinct for anonymity is as powerful as that for identity; or, more precisely, for an erasure of the primary self in that another (hitherto undiscovered?) self may be released. |
 | | Romain Gary, writing as the unknown "Emile Ajar," is no longer writing as Gary, but as Gary-through-"Ajar"; the Danish noblewoman, Baroness Karen Blixen, choosing "Isak Dinesen" ("Isak": one who laughs) as a pseudonym, is writing as Blixen-through-"Isak Dinesen," thereby evoking an ancestral, magisterial, and certainly unfeminine self. |
 | | (Romain Gary compared his "doubling" with "Ajar" in terms of Macpherson's with "Ossian.") When the now-famous Karen Blixen/"Isak Dinesen" published a parablelike novel called The Angelic Avengers in 1944 under the pseudonym "Pierre Andrezel," she arranged for her longtime secretary-companion Clara Svendsen to be named on the title page as the translator. |
| jco.usfca.edu /laurenkelly.html (2433 words) |
|