4 ms·

Elena Ferrante does not exist.

by lostjohnny 8y ago

krapp 8y ago
neither does "lostjohnny."
- lostjohnny 8y ago
  Her books are not even hers. Elena Ferrante is a product, we should not speak about the influence of the author(s) of the books, but about the influence the marketing department has.
  - krapp 8y ago
    Every famous author is a "product", it doesn't make them any less real. JK Rowling has a much bigger marketing machine around her, for instance, but it would be wrong to claim that she, or her books, aren't worth mentioning in a discussion about Harry Potter, only Bloomsbury and Warner Bros.
    - lostjohnny 8y ago
      That's where the confusion kicks in. I'm sure in good faith you believe Elena Ferrante is a woman, but we don't even know if the books have been written by a single person or if each book has a single author... It's an interesting marketing phenomenon nonetheless, but we are not looking, IMHO, at someone writing under a pseudonym for personal reasons. We are looking at the absence as a marketing tool, that amplifies the curiosity around the product. It would be like talking about Hawthorne Abendsen as a real author.
      - Veen 8y ago
        It’s interesting to think about whether it really matters. The text is the same either way. If you judge a book on the words on the page, it doesn’t matter much how they came to be there, so criticising ‘her’ work on different factors seems irrelevant.
        lostjohnny 8y ago
        That's my point. We should talk about the books and not about anything else. My first answer was to someone who wrote, and I quote > I don't blame any writer for wanting to be anonymous. In today's world, your race, gender, sexual orientation, age, hair color, clothing style, political affiliation, birthplace, and any other discernible group identity will be used to analyze, market, and categorize your work into the appropriate tribalist-identity. There's no evidence that this is the case, in fact the evidence point to the exact opposite direction.

Elena Ferrante does not exist.

krapp 8y ago

neither does "lostjohnny."

lostjohnny 8y ago
Her books are not even hers. Elena Ferrante is a product, we should not speak about the influence of the author(s) of the books, but about the influence the marketing department has.
- krapp 8y ago
  Every famous author is a "product", it doesn't make them any less real. JK Rowling has a much bigger marketing machine around her, for instance, but it would be wrong to claim that she, or her books, aren't worth mentioning in a discussion about Harry Potter, only Bloomsbury and Warner Bros.
  - lostjohnny 8y ago
    That's where the confusion kicks in. I'm sure in good faith you believe Elena Ferrante is a woman, but we don't even know if the books have been written by a single person or if each book has a single author... It's an interesting marketing phenomenon nonetheless, but we are not looking, IMHO, at someone writing under a pseudonym for personal reasons. We are looking at the absence as a marketing tool, that amplifies the curiosity around the product. It would be like talking about Hawthorne Abendsen as a real author.
    - Veen 8y ago
      It’s interesting to think about whether it really matters. The text is the same either way. If you judge a book on the words on the page, it doesn’t matter much how they came to be there, so criticising ‘her’ work on different factors seems irrelevant.
      - lostjohnny 8y ago
        That's my point. We should talk about the books and not about anything else. My first answer was to someone who wrote, and I quote > I don't blame any writer for wanting to be anonymous. In today's world, your race, gender, sexual orientation, age, hair color, clothing style, political affiliation, birthplace, and any other discernible group identity will be used to analyze, market, and categorize your work into the appropriate tribalist-identity. There's no evidence that this is the case, in fact the evidence point to the exact opposite direction.