Authors – at least as far as their relationship with the public goes – fall into several distinct categories. There are those who wish they had a public at all, who long for an invitation to speak at a book festival, and whose publishers try in vain to tempt journalists to interview them and podcast producers to book them. This category embraces a larger proportion of authors than most people would like to imagine; the average income earned by writers from writing (as opposed to teaching, or other day jobs) is £12,500, according to a recent study.
Then there are those who have a sufficient standing to attract the attention of festivals, book clubs and other public events, and a publisher who can be persuaded to fork out travel expenses for them to attend. These events are almost invariably poorly paid, and at their worst – when audience members and sales are few – can be dispiriting. On the other hand, good literary festivals pride themselves on being welcoming and warmly social places, where authors can enjoy swapping solitary hours of writing for intelligent interaction with readers and conversation with colleagues.
For less outgoing writers such events are obligations – to be met dutifully, if anxiously. It is only a very few writers who can afford, in this day and age, entirely retreat from the spotlight. The market for literary writing is mostly too harsh to allow for such shrinking violets. Writers are now more or less obliged to be performers (in the press, in person, on social media, in creative-writing departments at universities).
Even a writer who is as feted and popular as Margaret Atwood gives interviews, tweets, and appears in public. Maybe she need not, these days, but for her a public persona is deeply ingrained because it was once absolutely necessary: when she was a young writer, she has said, she used to drag boxes of her books through the snow, strapped to a sleigh, to sell them.
In fact, the celebrated “reclusive” writers of the past – the likes of JD Salinger, Harper Lee and Thomas Pynchon – are fading into history. Hardly anyone any more is a real recluse. Elena Ferrante is, perhaps, a unique case: she gives interviews, but by email, and is a columnist for this newspaper. She is not exactly a recluse but, rather, someone who fiercely protects her privacy and identity in an age of self-revelation – a fact that has presented an irresistible challenge to some, who have attempted to unveil her.
Nor do recluses have to be misanthropes. The thriller and crime writer Thomas Harris, famous for the Hannibal Lecter novels, whose first new book for 13 years was announced last week, is another so-called “reclusive” author. According to his friends, however, he is an extraordinarily courteous man and a good cook. Stripped of its romantic aura of mystique and its image of the tortured, ink-stained eccentric locked in a garret, “reclusive” very often translates as “reluctant to give interviews, and successful enough not to need to”.
