by Mike Ekunno
I
have had occasions in the past and present to dissemble. I hide Mike Ekunno and
go for something more or less cryptic depending on what I assess to be the
risks. In situations where there is likelihood of a future reward like the
recent literary contest I entered, I take a pseudonym that is closer to the
real thing. You never can tell when a prize would come calling and you’d need
to prove your identity. Not that it’d be a difficult thing, all things being
equal. There is after all, the email address, phone number and bio details that
can be matched. But all things are not equal in my society. The anti-corruption
agency once laid hold on some laundered funds and dared its genuine owner to
come forth and take the rap. A slew of claimants answered the call. The dollar
amount was much. So in such circumstances where a potential benefit is in view,
I choose something close to “the name my papa gave me.” It was Chukx Michaels
in one such recent contest with pecuniary benefits for the winner. Chukx comes
from my Igbo middle name which is hardly in the public domain. As for Michaels,
its Hebrew etymology is almost a give-away that the bearer couldn’t be for real
as surnames go in my society. But it is a better risk because the society
boasts a tiny demographic that bear English/Hebrew surnames led by no less a
figure than Mr President himself, Goodluck Jonathan. Above all, the name
maintains fidelity with the adage of my people that a lie is better told in English
(read foreign language). How I came about submitting with a pseudonym in that
contest is another story.
A
contentious issue had arisen in the Yahoo group of literary minds where I hold
membership. I dived into the fray and aired my views carpeting some other
viewpoints and, by extension, egos. Not long after this comes the contest in
which some of my victims wield judicial influence and I couldn’t resist
applying. I had to play it safe with a pseudonym just in case somebody wants to
be vindictive. I’m not as foolhardy as I am outspoken.
There
are times I have come up with pseudonyms that are simply unrelated to my name.
One such occasion was when I had to comment on a disgraceful conduct by a high
public office holder. As a public servant, the rules bar me from critical media
interventions. But the pull of polemics did not prove resistible. Not when
aberrant conducts suffuse the public space on a daily basis. So I penned a
shooting-from-the-hips piece to the newspapers under a pseudonym unrelated to
the real name. I’ve not got another job, you know. It was when the piece
appeared in the dailies that a round of regret overtook me. Reading one of the
outings and seeing the huge support on the comments thread, I rued not being
able to blow my cover. The opinions I canvassed in the piece were nothing to be
ashamed of. Neither were they libellous (if not, the editors wouldn’t have dared).
But here was I, the “author and finisher” of those germane viewpoints not able
to bask in the glory of their potential to advance the cause of humanity in one
little area. Vanity? Maybe.
We
who trade in ideas and words find ourselves holding on to our creations as the
capitalist entrepreneur would his bank account. In a way, our ideas and the
peculiar ways we put them together represent our capital in a world of other
capitals of a more gross material hue. To watch such vital accumulation being credited
to a phantom figure must be akin to a woman having to give up her adorable baby
for adoption and worse, knowing that the adoptive parents are non-existent.
Using
a pseudonym is a form of anonymity. But not all forms of anonymity oppress my
sense of identity. As speechwriter to a cabinet minister, I have sat in on
engagements where my boss’s speech elicited ovation. At none of such times did
I feel any tinge of possessiveness or jealousy at not being the one on the
podium. You could say I was duty-bound to craft those speeches or that I
couldn’t be minister, anyway (don’t bet on it). Whatever, but I never begrudged
my boss the glory from any of my applauded lines. This also happens with ghost
writing. We can argue that the fees have effectively extinguished the ghost
writer’s claim to any emotional affinity with his creation. Or has it? Legal
rights can be bought off but emotional ties with spores are not necessarily
extinguished thereby. Ask the Michael Jackson estate, if you doubt.
Parsing
on matters of identity recently got me thinking of this pull to hide as well as
be known at the same time. What could inform this ambivalence among writers who
blow their covers yet keep the pen names? Could they be suffering from the same
tension I suffered over my loss of proprietary rights on quality that is lost
to anonymity? What motivates an artiste to be anonymous or take a pen name can
be varied. Circumventing conflict of interest (or, at least, not letting the
public know) is one. Being free to bring candour to freedom of expression is
another. However, these excuses have to battle the pull for credits for writers
and artistes who have done exceptional work. And this is where a different form
of conflict of interest takes over—between the real identity and the faux. When
the false identity begins to garner accolades which do not redound to the true
owner, can pseudonyms be sustained?
It
was not this pull that caused the unmasking of JK Rowling, the Harry Potter
author who became Robert Galbraith in her second novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling. Rowling’s cover was blown via investigative
journalism by Britain’s Sunday Times.
Her motivation for the cover up was “to publish without hype or expectation
and...get feedback under a different name.” That feedback had been largely
positive before Rowling’s true identity was revealed and the book’s sales on
Amazon went bullish. Which raises the question of what would have happened if
it had been otherwise. The glee with which Rowling took her outing would be
different if The Cuckoo’s Calling had
been a failure whose association with the Rowling brand would bring erosion of
brand capital.
Only
few artistes whose false identities have done well in the market place have been
able to resist the pull to out. They deserve canonisation for resisting the
vainglorious urge for recognition. Rene Brabazon Raymond (1906-1985) remained
James Hardly Chase to all in my generation for whom he and his crime fiction
novels achieved cult followership. In
Nigeria, one Afro jazz recording artiste maintains both the anonymity of the
person and the name. Lagbaja—his brand is eponymous for his masked identity.
Only his male gender seeps out of this anonymity. I am in vicarious distress
for his achieving so much fame and not being able to even be waved on in
traffic on that account.
Newspapers
make a show of having columnists writing under pen names but whose identities
are known either within a select, in-house group or among the readers. Those are
the instances of pretend anonymities that baffle and sicken. Eating one’s cake
and having it only exists in fiction and ostrich hiding is used in the
pejorative sense.
On
the comments thread of online platforms, I have never felt the urge to hide my
identity. That is not to say that while disclosing who I am, I do not still
remain anonymous. Without the surname, anyone of a million Mikes could have
been the one commenting. This partial disclosure is a halfway house that
enables me maintain some integrity in nomenclature without fully unveiling the
cloak of anonymity. Online discussions in fractious societies can be, and often
do get, bigoted and highly vituperative. Comments are profiled using the names
behind them to know who is Christian, Muslim, or to know their ethnic
affiliations. While I scroll down the trolling for academic reasons, I try
mostly not to join, not even with a pseudonym.
Mike Ekunno (real name!) comes from a background in real
estate where he consulted before switching to writing, his first love. He now
works in film classification after working as senior speechwriter to Nigeria’s
last Information and Communications Minister. He freelances as copy editor and proof-reader
and likes reading Old Testament stories in his spare time. His short fiction,
essays and poems have been published in Warscapes,
BRICKrhetoric, Cigale Literary Magazine, The African Roar Anthology, Sentinel
Literary Quarterly, The Muse, Bullet Pen and Storymoja. The last two publications came with wins in
continent-wide contests.
What an enthralling read.
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