Next week sees the second anniversary of the revelation that JK Rowling had written a crime novel as “Robert Galbraith”, a chap with a “background in the army”. But such pseudonyms look to be fast becoming a thing of the past.
While posh writers are more drawn to pop genres than ever, literature’s class system is becoming less rigid, and they no longer behave as if they’re shiftily slumming undercover in the various underworlds of crime fiction, SF, fantasy, graphic novels and formulaic TV dramas.
The Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, for example, recently explained why his latest thriller appears under his own name, after five previous books as Sam Bourne; and former Costa book of the year winner AL Kennedy sees no need for a nom de plume in publishing Doctor Who: The Drosten’s Curse, a Whovian romp set at a golf spa hotel (it opens enticingly with a man being “eaten alive by a bunker”) that comes out on Thursday. Sophie Hannah, Helen Dunmore, Julie Myerson and Jeanette Winterson didn’t adopt more intimidating identities when recently producing horror novellas for Hammer; and the likes of Michael Chabon and Dave Eggers in the US don’t hide behind pen names when writing for comics.
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While posh writers are more drawn to pop genres than ever, literature’s class system is becoming less rigid, and they no longer behave as if they’re shiftily slumming undercover in the various underworlds of crime fiction, SF, fantasy, graphic novels and formulaic TV dramas.
The Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, for example, recently explained why his latest thriller appears under his own name, after five previous books as Sam Bourne; and former Costa book of the year winner AL Kennedy sees no need for a nom de plume in publishing Doctor Who: The Drosten’s Curse, a Whovian romp set at a golf spa hotel (it opens enticingly with a man being “eaten alive by a bunker”) that comes out on Thursday. Sophie Hannah, Helen Dunmore, Julie Myerson and Jeanette Winterson didn’t adopt more intimidating identities when recently producing horror novellas for Hammer; and the likes of Michael Chabon and Dave Eggers in the US don’t hide behind pen names when writing for comics.
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