{"id":92650,"date":"2015-12-08T09:09:40","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T14:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=92650"},"modified":"2015-12-08T10:35:36","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T15:35:36","slug":"the-greatest-literary-impostor-and-other-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/08\/the-greatest-literary-impostor-and-other-news\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Literary Impostor, and Other News"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_92653\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/la-vie-devant-soi-emile-ajar-7784-mlm5271503893_102013-f.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-92653\" class=\"wp-image-92653 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/la-vie-devant-soi-emile-ajar-7784-mlm5271503893_102013-f.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"528\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/la-vie-devant-soi-emile-ajar-7784-mlm5271503893_102013-f.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/la-vie-devant-soi-emile-ajar-7784-mlm5271503893_102013-f-300x264.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-92653\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From the cover of Emile Ajar\u2019s <i>La Vie Devant Soi<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>Sam Sacks opens <a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/124463\/writing-art-career\" target=\"_blank\">his review of our anthology <em>The Unprofessionals<\/em><\/a> with a litany of all that\u2019s been co-opted by careerism in literature: \u201cConsider the extraliterary responsibilities expected of authors who have had their novels accepted for publication: Develop an active presence on Facebook and Twitter (and, for the truly motivated, on Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest); create an accompanying web site, video trailer, and soundtrack; go on a book tour, naturally, but also participate in a variety of reading series in anticipation of and well after the publication date; take part in panels and signings at book expos; give interviews to blogs and podcasts and write personal essays about your background, your development as a writer, and your process of creation; not only review other books but join the great merry-go-round of blurbing \u2026 \u201d (He also calls <em>The Unprofessionals <\/em>\u201ca showcase for serious literature.\u201d)<\/li>\n<li>The tropes and psychology of anorexia have always been embedded in literature, Katy Waldman tells us: \u201cAnorexia mirabilis\u2014the saintly loss of appetite\u2014signaled an embrace of Christ-like abnegation and suffering \u2026 And guess what? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/double_x\/cover_story\/2015\/12\/we_need_to_reject_the_false_narratives_around_anorexia.html\" target=\"_blank\">The archetype of the fasting mystic had a daughter. Equally lovely, equally slender\u2014in her the delicacy of spirit won out once more over the coarseness of tissue<\/a>. She rebelled against her mother by applying her native rigor not to prayer, but to an artistic sort of femininity. Think Jane Eyre, \u2018delicate and aerial,\u2019 or Elizabeth Gaskell\u2019s Ruth, \u2018little\u2019 and \u2018beautiful lithe.\u2019 Consider Dorothea Brooke from <em>Middlemarch<\/em>, her \u2018hand and wrist \u2026 so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters.\u2019 That Mary reference is not coincidental\u2014like her mom, the new anorexic was pure and asexual. Yet she was also a creator, driven and intense \u2026 The economic and social realities of nineteenth-century England conspired to idealize female slenderness.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Not unrelatedly: Upon first publication, the Bront\u00eb sisters\u2019 novels were reviewed variously as \u201cvulgar,\u201d \u201cbrutalizing,\u201d \u201cpernicious,\u201d \u201cgodless,\u201d and \u201cvenial\u201d\u2014probably because critics believed the authors were men. For Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, as they chose to be known, male pseudonyms meant freedom: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/prospero\/2015\/12\/elena-ferrante-and-bront-sisters\" target=\"_blank\">It allowed their imaginations to trespass in the darkest crevices of the psyche and return with tormented monsters like Heathcliff, the Ahab of the moors, and dynamos like Miss Eyre<\/a>. Their pseudonyms strengthened their moral resolve, emboldening them to speak truth to that most tyrannical seat of power: ordinary society.\u201d For Charlotte, the revelation of her true identity came at a steep cost, and she did her best to forestall it: \u201cCharlotte insisted on the charade of separating Currer Bell from Charlotte Bront\u00eb in public, as Thackeray found out to his cost. He hosted a party for her at his house, and as he was leading her to dinner on his arm (she came up to his elbow), he addressed her as Currer Bell. \u2018I believe there are books being published by a person named Currer Bell,\u2019 she snapped back, \u2018but the person you address is Miss Bront\u00eb\u2014and I see no connection between the two.\u2019 After dinner she sat in a corner and refused to mingle; Thackeray fled to his club.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>From the annals of good old-fashioned fraudulence: In 1974, a little-known writer named \u00c9mile Ajar won the Prix Goncourt. Ajar was actually \u201cthe Lithuanian-born Free French aviator, onetime French consul general in Los Angeles, and award-winning novelist Romain Gary \u2026 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/jewish-arts-and-culture\/books\/195432\/romain-gary-literary-impostor\" target=\"_blank\">Gary\u2019s novels are autobiographical, and much of what he claims to be memoir is made up, complicating any attempt at unraveling the true from the false<\/a> \u2026 In France, which celebrated the centennial of Gary\u2019s birth last year with conferences, exhibits, and the publication of his last interview, <em>Le sens de ma vie, <\/em>none of his thirty-plus novels, memoirs, and essays have ever gone out of print. In the United States, few of them still are \u2026 He was far more successful as a storyteller than as a stylist. But his propensities make it difficult to find a place for him in French literary history, where he does not fit into that story that others have told.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Tired of bookstores where only <em>some<\/em> of the books are recommended by the staff? Head to Aaron Hicklin\u2019s shop, One Grand, in Narrowsburg, New York, where everything comes with institutional approval. \u201cHis concept was to present collections of volumes handpicked by various creatives\u2014including Tilda Swinton, Michael Stipe, Lena Dunham, and Edmund White\u2014in response to the question, \u2018If you were stranded on a desert island, which ten books could you not do without?\u2019 \u2026 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/12\/07\/t-magazine\/one-grand-bookstore-aaron-hicklin-profile.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">Hicklin aims to make bookselling more selective and personal<\/a>\u2014in other words, everything that Amazon is not\u2014by attaching familiar names to titles and having them explain why those books have shaped them.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sam Sacks opens his review of our anthology The Unprofessionals with a litany of all that\u2019s been co-opted by careerism in literature: \u201cConsider the extraliterary responsibilities expected of authors who have had their novels accepted for publication: Develop an active presence on Facebook and Twitter (and, for the truly motivated, on Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest); [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2512],"tags":[20472,20471,4217,20475,20473,20476,2998,20474,16641,5035,19251,11296],"class_list":["post-92650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-shelf","tag-aaron-hicklin","tag-anorexia","tag-charlotte-bronte","tag-currer-bell","tag-desert-island-books","tag-elizabeth-gaskell","tag-jane-eyre","tag-katy-waldman","tag-professionalism","tag-romain-gary","tag-the-unprofessionals","tag-victorian-literature"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast 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