In Defense of Anonymity - Anonymous
A blast from the past. I can't believe I found something this old online. Thanks to VQR for making their archives available. At some point, I'm going to be unable to provide links to the essays that I am reading. I appreciate the quarterlies and journals putting their older issues online and letting us visit them for some enlightenment. A good essay isn't diminished by time.
The question here is whether or not we have a good essay.
Part I is the story of the author's escape by ship from France as the Nazis overrun western Europe. The author uses this experience as an example of how we affect each other, by helping or harming, all while never knowing each other's names. This is strong writing and brings home the point of her essay effectively.
Then...there is Part II. Yawn. A laundry list of anonymous literature over the ages and across the globe. Thanks. But I am not sure that other than a lightweight checklist what point the author wanted to make. She talks about the need for recognition and ego-size in today's world. Well, that's the market more than ego. If someone creates, they expect to be paid for the use of that creation. Seems more a financial concern than ego-based.
She does make one funny salient point: if all publications were forced to be anonymous, then the only people who would publish are those that are compelled to write. The age of the ghost written memoir would vanish. Hear hear!
UPDATE (Jan. 11, 2010): I've been thinking about this a bit, because this is the first essay that's over 20 years old here, it's perspective nagged at me. Then, it hit me, as I was perusing some blogs and reading the malicious, ridiculous comments found there. Anonymity isn't such a great respect-inspiring idea when it is available and easy to practice. How many people hide behind their anonymity to lob intellectual (rather anti-intellectual) grenades? Sure, you can speak your mind without restraint when your identity is unobtainable, but should you? Does civility die with anonymity? There will always be jerks, but have they come out of the woodwork in the age of the faceless Internet? Maybe anonymous is confusing anonymity with simple honorable behavior. Maybe the anonymous works of the past are so because there weren't any remunerative ways to transmit stories.
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You're welcome, Gordon. I was really glad when I stumbled across that article in our archives, too—I found the essay interesting. FYI, we have articles on our website from all the way back in 1925. We're gradually getting the entirety of our archives available online, for free. The information in them is just so valuable—often to a very small number of people, but to them it can be just essential—it seems like a shame to keep it locked up on paper.
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