The first letter was
published in The Sunday Age on
To The Editor
The Sunday Age
11.9.95
Dear Sir,
I cannot understand
why The Sunday Age (
On the strength of
his personal opinion that both Helen Darville’s and Fotini Epanomitis’
novels are “poorly written and boring”, Mr Kakmi infers that Australian writers
with foreign surnames are given preference by the judges for literary awards. Is
he vain enough to think that his judgement of a novel is absolute? Is he naive
enough to expect every award-winning novel to be a masterpiece every year, and
not just to be the best of the bunch in the eyes of the judges? Does he really
believe that the judges for the various literary prizes in
Since there is no
convincing irrefutable evidence that Helen Darville and Fotini Epanomitis’
novels won awards because of “sentimental multiculturalism” (as was implied by
Robert Manne in The Age on 26 August), or that the judgement of the
judges was affected by the perceived origins of the writers, we must in fairness
assume that these novels won awards because in the year they were submitted they
were considered by the judges to be the most deserving. Why do otherwise
intelligent people have a problem with this, and why has Helen Darville’s use of
a pseudonym appropriate to the subject matter of her novel caused so much
consternation? Along with Dame Leonie, I too “hope that someone will analyse the
reasons for the sustained and vitriolic attack” on Helen Darville and her novel.
I also hope that that someone will not be forced by the evidence to conclude
that some newspapers used the Demidenko affair as one more excuse to cast
aspersions at multiculturalism.
Yours Faithfully
Pavlos Andronikos
Monash University
To The Editor
The Sunday Age
26.9.95
Dear Sir,
Saul Bastomsky may
be right when he argues that Helen Darville used the pseudonym Demidenko to add
credibility to her writing, but it is not the only plausible motivation, and
since none of us are mind readers we can do no more than guess at what her
motives may have been.
What I am certain of is that neither Ms Darville’s use of a pseudonym nor her
subsequent public role-playing warranted the attacks they inspired. They do not
constitute a crime, and yet she has been subjected to a virtual trial by media,
which seems to assume that she is guilty until proven innocent. It would be more
just to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that whatever she did, she
did in a spirit, let us say, of youthful exuberance. Or perhaps she was
practising a literary version of method acting.
On
the matter of pseudonyms generally, there are probably as many motives for using
them as there are writers who have used them, but it is a time-honoured practise
to use a pseudonym to “add credibility” to one’s writing. The first edition of
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was attributed to Robinson Crusoe himself, and
Moll Flanders was presented to the
public as an edited version of Ms Flanders’ “own memorandums”. Similarly,
Mary Ann Evans published her first book of fiction
Scenes of Clerical Life under the
pseudonym George Eliot, not as is often thought because she was a pioneering
women writer who had to use a man’s name to be accepted—there had already been
many women writers before her—but because her publisher assumed the work was
written by a clergyman due to the subject matter and style, and she did not want
to disillusion him. She consciously assumes in that work a male authorial voice,
which reminisces nostalgically, remembering at one point how the boy George
Eliot was given bread and butter in church by his nurse. Although Charles
Dickens suspected the work to have been written by a woman, most readers were
fooled, and the real name of the author was not made public until Mary Ann Evans
was forced to claim the work as hers in order to prevent a real clergyman from being credited with it.
One
could go on citing examples but I think the point has been made. Helen
Darville’s use of a pseudonym to “add credibility” to her work may be unusual in
our own times but it is not without eminent literary precedents. As for her
public role-playing, it is not so dissimilar from what many rock stars do when
marketing an image. The example of John Lennon’s marriage being kept secret in
the early days of the Beatles comes to mind. Or better, Robert Zimmerman’s
fictions about himself in the early days in Greenwich village, when he was
transforming himself into Bob Dylan.
The
controversy over The Hand That Signed the
Paper began of course with accusations of anti-Semitism. It is certainly
true that the novel contains expressions of a shockingly racist point of view,
but it is not at all certain that these are views to which the author is
sympathetic or that as a novel it adds up to an anti-Semitic tract, rather than
an attempt to understand man’s inhumanity to man. Each reader will have to
decide for him or herself, but that is in the nature of the reading experience.
I simply wish to make it clear that I in no way condone anti-Semitism, or for
that matter any other form of racism. That is why I find it both ironic and
disturbing that what began as a controversy condemning perceived racism should
have turned into an excuse to attack multiculturalism with innuendoes that it
has led to widespread preferential treatment of non-Anglo-Australian writers.
As I made clear in my previous letter this is an extremely gullible point of
view with no hard evidence to support it. In fact the contrary seems to be the
case. For example, Dr Con Castan of the University of Queensland, who has
conducted research concerning Australia Council’s literary grants came to the
conclusion that writers from non-English speaking backgrounds were
under-represented in the lists of recipients.
In
my view, we should be proud of Australia’s multiculturalism, and the traditions
of racial tolerance and fairness that characterise it. And we should be
extremely wary of vague criticisms, often based on flimsy evidence and
prejudices, which are aimed at multiculturalism in general rather than at
specific policies and practises. The Demidenko affair has little to tell us
about multiculturalism, the response to it tells us we have a fair way to go.
Yours
Faithfully
Pavlos Andronikos
Monash University
© Pavlos Andronikos.
All Rights Reserved.