An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are • Hacker News Board

Re: An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are

#71

Post by CptFribble » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

dna_polymerase wrote: post #63

> After all, as one of the most famous writers in the world today, you are a legitimate subject for inquiry, whether you welcome it or not. No she isn't. She doesn't owe jack shit to you or anyone else. The sense of entitlement in this piece is really off putting. Read her books or don't. That's it. For once accept the work as it is and don't try to interpret it against the background of the authors views, opinions o…

While I think Elena would agree with you (having said "a book, once written, has no more need for it's author" though I'm probably paraphrasing), she isn't trying to stay out of the public eye.

Despite refusing book tours and interviews, she has done many interviews-by-email. She has a regular column in The Guardian, which frequently discusses exactly these issues of gender and authorship.

I think if you want to stay anonymous but keep your public platform, you're welcome to try, but it won't be easy. And I think it isn't wrong to try to understand the people with platforms making public statements and influencing large and important discussions.

Re: An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are

#72

Post by betenoire » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

__s wrote: post #62

domador wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's a problem with fictional works' authors being unknown or anonymous. The problem lies in nonfiction works that seek to directly convey any kind of knowledge or wisdom that is difficult to judge and evaluate independently on its own merits (with would cover just about everything outside the hard sciences). There is value in knowing the identity and character of an author, as well as the fact that…

Plea to authority & ad hominem, agree & disagree, respectively

You've listed the names of various fallacies. Logical fallacies. But what logic are you saying is fallacious in the parent comment? The commenter has their own set of biases and hueristics for choosing what to spend their limited time in.

Unless they follow it up with, "and for these reasons, these are the correct books to read" then there is no fallacy.

Re: An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are

#73

Post by toyg » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #29

avvt4avaw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the other people on the list this year. Donald Trump. Cardi B. Hugh Jackman. Satya Nadella. Sean Hannity. Jacinda Ardern. Elon Musk. Oprah Winfrey. You can argue about the exact selection of people. You can say that Time is 'politicised'. But this is clearly a list of people who are very well known. It's not embarrassing to admit that you had a blind spot about a particular author, musician or politician. But…

I live in the EU, which is quite Americanized by any standard, and I'd bet nobody around me would recognize the name of Sean Hannity (or Nikki Haley, another name on the 2016 list). That list just seems hopelessly parochial to me.

I live in the EU and know the cancer that Sean Hannity is. The global village is reality.

Re: An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are

#74

Post by edanm » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

onlydeadheroes wrote: post #46

marchenko wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's a legitimate global superstar in fiction writing. Her books are popular enough to move the percentage of total book sales represented by translated fiction in English-speaking markets (she` writes in Italian). Strangely enough, her approach is often considered a kind of anti-marketing: no book tours, few interviews, strangely downscale cover art - people, mostly women, just really love her writing.

I guessed I stepped on the wrong narrative because just questioning this author's superstardom has gotten me to -4 on a mostly male site where most people can't even downvote. I have no opinion on this author, but can we please stop pushing everything like it is the second coming of christ just because women like it? As I said, marketing.

> I have no opinion on this author, but can we please stop pushing everything like it is the second coming of christ just because women like it?

Look, I think you're seeing things that aren't there. Your first comment probably got downvoted because it's wrong - you claimed it's "only marketing", but apparently there are good reasons to think she really is superstardom-level popular (or close to it, at least, for an author that is).

Your further comments seem to keep attributing the downvoting to "the censorship of gender politics". But seriously, you are the only one bringing gender politics into this! Like I said I haven't read her books, she wasn't described to me as some #metoo movement hero or anything. Maybe she is and maybe she isn't, but that probably has nothing to do with why you were downvoted!

Stop seeing demons that aren't there.

Re: An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are

#75

Post by squarefoot » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

fishtank wrote: post #58

squarefoot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... will be used to analyze, market, and categorize your work into the appropriate tribalist-identity." And destroy you should you write something that others don't like. Privacy is becoming an invaluable good whose loss can't be undone.

Who has been destroyed in this fashion?

There are numerous examples of kids bullied up to the point they committed suicide. Sometimes it starts at school or in the neighborhood and later moves online but there were also people victimized just by writing something the dominant pack found worth of being bullied for.

Re: An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are

#76

Post by InterestBazinga » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 7:37 PM UTC

victor9000 wrote: post #25

Why are people being so antagonistic in this thread? Personally, I'm ignorant about this author. If you know their work, could you let me know what I'm missing?

The Neapolitan Novels were quite well recieved. Eventhough they are widely loved, it never felt like the story was simplified in order to reach a large audience. Ferrante wove together the culture and politics of Naples over the decades with the intimate personal lives of the characters. I look forward to revisiting these books when I'm older, since I'm sure my perspective on main character’s various life stages will change as my own life changes (I'm 28 now).

Re: An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are

#77

Post by nickelcitymario » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 8:07 PM UTC

fishtank wrote: post #70

c0nfused wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To pick an example, as a kid I read Ender's Game Because it was SF and had a cool cover. Now, because of the odious nature of the author's personal politics, I don't read his books. This is entirely his own fault, but if he was just another name on a book I would still be buying his novels. To pick another example, there stuff like this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55f1...

In neither case is the person's tribal identity used against them for writing things that others don't like. Orson Scott Card holds a professorship. He just published a book this year. A large corporation made a mass market film out of his book, well after he had been writing things that others didn't like. The controversy with the poet seems like a different issue, but even so -- Michael Derrick Hudson seems to be i…

Maybe OSC isn't a good example of an author being destroyed, but it IS a good example of being unable to separate the person from their work.

If you really need examples of how a public identity can impact how your work is viewed, see every famous person who has been named in the #MeToo movement.

(Please don't attack me for that statement. I'm implying neither support nor opposition to #MeToo in this post. That's not the point.)

So in the case of Ender's Game, I first read it without any knowledge of who OSC was or what his views were. And I came away from reading it as being about the underdog, about how complicated power and morality can be, about trying to do the right thing. I thought it was a wonderfully complex story because almost every character sees themselves as trying to do the right thing, yet are seen as villains by others.

Then I read about OSC and think: Did I miss the point? Did he? How can the person who wrote this wonderful story not see that they are in turn bullying others? It complicates the whole relationship to the story.

Of course, you may argue that I'm the one who is mistaken. That's fine. But we have to at least agree that the more we know about the artist the more we think about their art differently, and vice versa.

Re: An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are

#78

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 8:18 PM UTC

onlydeadheroes wrote: post #53

marchenko wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you, but those who did probably decided your response was not particularly well-informed. Men might dominate HN, but women are over-represented as consumers of fiction (and nonfiction), in both print and ebook format-in the UK market, for example, they buy over 2/3rds of fiction books. So simply being popular with women is enough to be a literary phenomenon.

While I don't disagree with your reasoning, I haven't read this author. However another user describes this author as "what Paulo Coelho was back in the 1990s, but adapted to the #metoo and gender politics momentum." Now when I saw the heavy handedness of my comment's downvoting, I was surprised. Having further looked into this, I now find the root of the rot of modern discourse: the censorship of gender politics. So…

I imagine you were downvoted because you posted shallow dismissals and flamebait, both of which break the site guidelines. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them when posting here.

Re: An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are

#79

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 8:19 PM UTC

vahji wrote: post #13

Ah well. If the absolutely not politised Time magazine has placed her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, then the guy you replied to is a dork. No questions asked! ;P

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18646781 and marked it off-topic.

Re: An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are

#80

Post by skybrian » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 8:27 PM UTC

ordu wrote: post #40

victor9000 wrote: post #25

Why are people being so antagonistic in this thread? Personally, I'm ignorant about this author. If you know their work, could you let me know what I'm missing?

I'm wandering the same. I have read this open letter and I cannot understand what the letter about. What author tries to tell? Why he have wrote this letter? Unclear message with unclear motives... My guess based on this, that the letter is exploded emotional instability caused by books of Elena Ferrante. But, I'm not sure: if I cannot understand something, it doesn't mean that it is nonsense. Seems the only way to c…

It's not spelled out, but along the way she writes about various clues that (my interpretation) the books might be some sort of collaboration between a prominent Italian author and his wife. And who knows, maybe others?

But never mind the essay. For what it's worth, I liked the first book in the series and got bogged down in the second. It's an interesting glimpse of a particular time and place in Italy.