{"id":82601,"date":"2015-02-11T13:42:37","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T18:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=82601"},"modified":"2015-02-11T18:15:49","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T23:15:49","slug":"pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/","title":{"rendered":"Pulling a Rabbit Out of a Glass Hat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Price and the evolving\u00a0role of pseudonyms<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"books1f-2-web\"<\/a>

From the cover of The Whites<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Richard Price\u2019s new novel, The Whites<\/a><\/em>, isn\u2019t by Richard Price, except that it is. It\u2019s by Harry Brandt, Price\u2019s pseudonym, but it\u2019s also not really <\/em>by Brandt\u2014Price\u2019s name is on the cover, too, and so Price is<\/em> Brandt, obviously, and it follows then that Brandt is<\/em> Price, and thus, uh \u2026<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start over.<\/p>\n

Richard Price\u2019s new novel, The Whites<\/em>, is by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt. It says so right there on the cover. Big deal, you might say; another author slumming it in genre fiction by creating a false identity for himself. But by publishing both his name and his pseudonym on the cover, Price has parted with centuries of pseudonymous convention. He hasn\u2019t just pulled back the curtain. He\u2019s brought up the house lights and waved to the audience. And he did it all, according to the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, because he got sort of annoyed. <\/p>\n

Price wanted to adopt a pseudonym, the Times<\/em> reports<\/a>, \u201cwith the aim of writing a fast-paced, plot-driven crime novel\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

He wanted to inoculate himself against literary critics who might sneer at him for writing a slicker, more commercial book. He was already late on delivering a separate novel \u2026 and hoped to hide the fact that he was moonlighting. And he wanted to see if he could write a stripped-down, heavily plotted best seller, without sacrificing his literary credentials.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Price may have yearned for this kind of escape for a while. \u201cWhen you write your first book you\u2019re just a writer,\u201d he told The Paris Review <\/em>in 1996<\/a>. \u201cThen you become an author \u2026 the whole thing changes. You have a track record. You have a public. A certain literary persona. You can become very self-conscious and start to compete with yourself. No fun at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so Harry Brandt was born\u2014prematurely, it turns out. Price couldn\u2019t bring him to life, or inhabit his skin, or do whatever creepy metaphorical thing it is that one does with one\u2019s pseudo-selves. This Brandt fellow, supposedly speedier and seedier, was no more than a body double for Price himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed like a good idea in the beginning, and now I wish I hadn\u2019t done it,\u201d he said. \u201cThis pen name is like pulling a rabbit out of a glass hat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

After a tussle with his publisher and editor, who argued that the pen name would result in \u201ccommercial suicide,\u201d Mr. Price agreed to reveal his identity by using a transparent pseudonym. The result is a somewhat awkward double identity on the book\u2019s cover: \u201cRichard Price writing as Harry Brandt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cSomewhat awkward\u201d as it may be, the double identity sets a fascinating new precedent\u2014I can\u2019t think of another book that\u2019s been attributed this way*. Writers have gone under false names, sometimes even more than one at once; they\u2019ve added fake coauthors or ghost writers to their covers; and they\u2019ve given writers posthumous life by assuming their identities (\u201cEric Van Lustbader writing as Robert Ludlum<\/em>\u201d). But have they ever invented a pseudonym only to draw attention to its hollowness? As an alter ego, Harry Brandt is such a uniquely malformed specimen that scientists should hold him for closer study.<\/p>\n

Price as Brandt ramifies in strange ways. Reviewing The Whites<\/em><\/a> in The New Yorker<\/em>, Joyce Carol Oates seems willing to ascribe the conventional benefits of the pseudonym to it; she describes it as \u201cmore of a policier<\/em> than Price\u2019s previous fiction\u2014more plot-driven and less deeply engaged by the anthropology of its urban communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michiko Kakutani, on the other hand, treats the book as a Richard Price novel<\/a>, using his name and Brandt\u2019s interchangeably and drawing attention to the ruse: \u201cMr. Brandt immerses us so fully in his characters\u2019 lives that the larger contrivances almost completely fall away. No one has a better ear for street language than he (er, Richard Price) does.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the tack Price\u2019s cohort has taken, too. \u201cI think he\u2019s wrong,\u201d Dennis Lehane told the Times<\/em>. \u201cThis is another Richard Price book; it\u2019s not a supermarket book.\u201d But Lehane misses, I think, the true shrewdness of the Price-as-Brandt tactic, which asks, Why should Richard Price books and supermarket books be mutually exclusive?<\/p>\n

Writing as himself and Brandt gives Price the benefit of the doubt from everyone. Readers who want to find evidence of Price\u2019s literary talents are invited to see them in The Whites<\/em>. Readers who\u2019d prefer to regard this as a lark\u2014and thus to disregard any lapses in style or taste\u2014can do that, too. Price isn\u2019t the first author in history to have it both ways, but he may well be the first to have it both ways at once.<\/p>\n

Other authors have indulged in this kind of winking play-acting\u2014most obviously John Banville, who, as the Times <\/em>points out, has written a series of crime novels as Benjamin Black. Banville is more effusive about his pseudonym, though, and far more willing to give the other guy a life of his own. In his Art of Fiction interview with The Paris Review<\/em><\/a> in 2009, Banville went so far as to refer to Black as his \u201cdark brother\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

I sat down at nine o\u2019clock on a Monday morning, and by lunchtime I had written more than fifteen hundred words. It was a scandal! I thought, John Banville, you slut. But then I remembered it was Black, not Banville, who was writing \u2026 Everyone tried to persuade me not to use the pseudonym, but I wanted people to realize that this wasn\u2019t an elaborate postmodernist literary joke, but the genuine article, a noir novel from Banville\u2019s dark brother Benjamin Black. It was pure play when I invented Benjamin Black. It was a frolic of my own \u2026<\/p>\n

For Black, character matters, plot matters, dialogue matters to a much greater degree than they do in my Banville books \u2026 What you get in Banville is concentration, what you get from Black is spontaneity \u2026 I have always been two people, professionally. Going back and forth between John Banville and Benjamin Black is just an extension of that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That claim for authenticity confuses me\u2014if Banville wanted Black to be \u201cthe genuine article,\u201d wouldn\u2019t he have tried to hide his identity as Black\u2019s creator, thus ensuring that Black would have an unadulterated life of his own? Or would that only make this more of a literary prank? Pseudonyms come with so much po-mo, self-referential baggage that it can feel impossible to don one without living out a Paul Auster plot.<\/p>\n

In any case, as transparent as Banville has been, he\u2019s never gone so far as to put his own name on the cover of Black\u2019s novels. That, too, would risk undermining Black\u2019s separate identity. The more you think about it, the less Banville and Price have in common: Price has far less patience for the games of selfhood involved in constructing a new name for yourself. Put differently, Benjamin Black is a nom de plume<\/em>\u2014Price as Brandt is a nom de guerre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

John Wray, who has written all his books under that quiet pseudonym, defended the practice last year<\/a> by recalling the sense of wonder it gave him growing up:<\/p>\n

\n

Mark Twain and George Orwell and Isak Dinesen were something more than they would have been without their pseudonyms, or so it seemed to me. Their desire to reconfigure their real, lived experience was so great that it had broken the constraints of their fiction and bled, if only ever so slightly, into the actual world \u2026 They were taking something foisted on them, the identities they\u2019d been assigned, and refashioning them to suit their own designs. They existed as authors and as characters simultaneously. How could that be tolerated?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Very easily, I think Richard Price would say\u2014you just have to remember that it\u2019s all pretend, and in the Information Age it\u2019s never been easier to remember that. \u201cMany books were published anonymously or under noms de plume in that first great age of the novel,\u201d Wray writes, \u201cand determined sport was made of exposing the persons behind them.\u201d Price has made it clearer than ever that the sport is over. Short of changing his legal name to Richard Price Writing As Harry Brandt, there\u2019s no more radical step he could have taken to signal the thrilling new vacuousness that lives behind our pseudonyms.<\/p>\n

*Update: a reader points out that Ian Rankin did the very same thing with his Jack Harvey novels<\/a>. For more on \u201ctransparent pseudonyms,\u201d see this 2010 piece from The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, which I ought to have found before writing this one.
<\/small><\/p>\n

Dan Piepenbring is the web editor of <\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Price and the evolving\u00a0role of pseudonyms. Richard Price\u2019s new novel, The Whites, isn\u2019t by Richard Price, except that it is. It\u2019s by Harry Brandt, Price\u2019s pseudonym, but it\u2019s also not really by Brandt\u2014Price\u2019s name is on the cover, too, and so Price is Brandt, obviously, and it follows then that Brandt is Price, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[8379,7583,17000,16999,7002,16998,8952,4468,9798,2015,5504,7579,747,7578,2594,17001,7782,282,40,16997],"class_list":["post-82601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-benjamin-black","tag-crime","tag-dennis-lehane","tag-false-names","tag-genre-fiction","tag-harry-brandt","tag-identity","tag-john-banville","tag-john-wray","tag-joyce-carol-oates","tag-michiko-kakutani","tag-noms-de-plume","tag-novels","tag-pseudonyms","tag-richard-price","tag-robert-ludlum","tag-the-art-of-fiction","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-the-new-yorker","tag-the-whites"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRichard Price and the Rise of the \u201cTransparent Pseudonym\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Price\u2019s new novel, \u201cThe Whites,\u201d plays with its author\u2019s identity in a way that no other book ever has.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pulling a Rabbit Out of a Glass Hat by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 11, 2015 \u2013 Richard Price and the evolving\u00a0role of pseudonyms. Richard Price\u2019s new novel, The Whites, isn\u2019t by Richard Price, except that it is. It\u2019s by Harry Brandt,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-02-11T18:42:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-02-11T23:15:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/books1f-2-web.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"970\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"390\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\"},\"headline\":\"Pulling a Rabbit Out of a Glass Hat\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-02-11T18:42:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-02-11T23:15:49+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/\"},\"wordCount\":1496,\"commentCount\":7,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/books1f-2-web.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Benjamin Black\",\"crime\",\"Dennis Lehane\",\"false names\",\"genre fiction\",\"Harry Brandt\",\"identity\",\"John Banville\",\"John Wray\",\"Joyce Carol Oates\",\"Michiko Kakutani\",\"noms de plume\",\"novels\",\"pseudonyms\",\"Richard Price\",\"Robert Ludlum\",\"the art of fiction\",\"The New York Times\",\"The New Yorker\",\"the Whites\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/\",\"name\":\"Richard Price and the Rise of the \u201cTransparent Pseudonym\u201d\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/books1f-2-web.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-02-11T18:42:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-02-11T23:15:49+00:00\",\"description\":\"Price\u2019s new novel, \u201cThe Whites,\u201d plays with its author\u2019s identity in a way that no other book ever has.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/books1f-2-web.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/books1f-2-web.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Pulling a Rabbit Out of a Glass Hat\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\",\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Dan Piepenbring\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dpiepenbring\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Richard Price and the Rise of the \u201cTransparent Pseudonym\u201d","description":"Price\u2019s new novel, \u201cThe Whites,\u201d plays with its author\u2019s identity in a way that no other book ever has.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Pulling a Rabbit Out of a Glass Hat by Dan Piepenbring","og_description":"February 11, 2015 \u2013 Richard Price and the evolving\u00a0role of pseudonyms. Richard Price\u2019s new novel, The Whites, isn\u2019t by Richard Price, except that it is. It\u2019s by Harry Brandt,","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2015-02-11T18:42:37+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-02-11T23:15:49+00:00","og_image":[{"width":970,"height":390,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/books1f-2-web.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Dan Piepenbring","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Dan Piepenbring","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/"},"author":{"name":"Dan Piepenbring","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8"},"headline":"Pulling a Rabbit Out of a Glass Hat","datePublished":"2015-02-11T18:42:37+00:00","dateModified":"2015-02-11T23:15:49+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/"},"wordCount":1496,"commentCount":7,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/books1f-2-web.jpg","keywords":["Benjamin Black","crime","Dennis Lehane","false names","genre fiction","Harry Brandt","identity","John Banville","John Wray","Joyce Carol Oates","Michiko Kakutani","noms de plume","novels","pseudonyms","Richard Price","Robert Ludlum","the art of fiction","The New York Times","The New Yorker","the Whites"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/","name":"Richard Price and the Rise of the \u201cTransparent Pseudonym\u201d","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/books1f-2-web.jpg","datePublished":"2015-02-11T18:42:37+00:00","dateModified":"2015-02-11T23:15:49+00:00","description":"Price\u2019s new novel, \u201cThe Whites,\u201d plays with its author\u2019s identity in a way that no other book ever has.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/books1f-2-web.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/books1f-2-web.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-glass-hat\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Pulling a Rabbit Out of a Glass Hat"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8","name":"Dan Piepenbring","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Dan Piepenbring"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dpiepenbring\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82601"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82643,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82601\/revisions\/82643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}