The Cuckoo’s Calling was released back in April, but it was only this weekend that it was revealed by the Sunday Times as the latest effort from the Harry Potter author.
It’s little surprise that Rowling settled on some playful deception following the mixed response (but huge sales) her ‘adult fiction’ debut The Casual Vacancy was met with last year. When the author was still believed to be a debut from the fictional ‘military policeman’ Galbraith (the name cheekily inspired by economist JK Galbraith), The Cuckoo’s Calling was met with positive reviews from both critics and reviewers. However, it was only the revelation of ‘his’ true identity that has sent the book soaring up the charts.
Rowling has said “I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name”.
Rowling is by no means alone in her use of a pseudonym to publish work, though. Here’s three of the most intriguing examples that can identify some of the psychology behind the practice:
Richard Bachman aka Stephen King
Until this weekend’s Galbraith reveal, Richard Bachman was probably the most famous author to be ousted as a nom de plume of a commercially successful author. The secret lasted longer in this case - despite long-running suspicions about his true identity, Bachman had published five books before a bookstore worker Steve Brown definitively proved in 1984 that it was indeed Stephen King behind the scenes.
Commercially, publishers agreed to Bachman as they didn’t want to dilute the King ‘brand’ with more than one book a year. For King, Bachman was not only a chance to be more productive but also an experiment to see if his huge commercial success was down to talent or luck, and whether he could repeat it with a new identity.
King has also used several other pseudonyms and pet names over the years. He has published two more novel under the Bachman name, most recently 2007’s Blaze. However, King has chosen to remove Bachman’s first novel Rage (1977) from sale due to some narrative and thematic similarities to high school shootings in the US.
Paul French aka Isaac Asimov
Asimov - most famed for his sci-fi novels and associated ‘rules of robotics’ - wrote a book called Lucky Starr, Space Ranger after being asked to develop a story that would go on to be adapted for television. However, concerned about the risk of the TV show being a disaster or embarrassment, Asimov chose to publish the book as Paul French instead.
Ultimately, the TV adaptation was dropped. Asimov revealed himself as the author, but continued publishing Lucky Starr books under the French name. Asimov later abandoned fiction almost entirely, and the Lucky Starr books were left behind too.
Benjamin Black aka John Banville
There’s no major deception here: the Benjamin Black alter-ego has always been intended to remain distinctly separate from the works printed under Banville’s own name. With Black’s output primarily crime novels - or, as Banville puts it, “cheap fiction” - the Irish author has separated his career between the “artist” Banville and the “craftsman” Black.
They’re not completely separate personalities, though, with the author once stating “sometimes, in the middle of the afternoon if I’m feeling a little bit sleepy, Black will sort of lean in over Banville’s shoulder and start writing. Or Banville will lean over Black’s shoulder and say ‘Oh that’s an interesting sentence, let’s play with that’”.
(Photo: Daniel Ogren)
