21st century pseudonyms, or “furthermore known as the JAMMs”

On 23rd August, Faber will publish “2023: A Trilogy” by the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. Written by (I am assuming) Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, whose best-known guise is The KLF, the publication date will mark exactly 23 years to the day since the pair set fire to a million pounds in a disused boathouse on Jura. Shortly afterward, they wrote a contract promising not to speak about the event for a period of 23 years, put the contract in a car and pushed it off Cape Wrath, Britain’s most northerly point.

Drummond and Cauty always had a keen sense of ritual, and so the book, we must presume, is the last revelation, the final act of that particular part of their long (for want of a better) “career”, which has been superbly written about in “The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds” by John Higgs.

Do I expect the book (“a utopian costume drama, set in the near future, written in the recent past”) to reveal their secrets and reasons? No, of course not.

Do I expect it to reveal the meaning of life? No. And in any case, it’s “23”.

Will it be rubbish? Quite possibly. But I hope not.

Will I buy it anyway? Of course.

But that’s not the point of this post.

What I find interesting is the name they’re using. The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu were Drummond and Cauty’s original late 80s sample-heavy outfit, charting with the thundering 1990 hit “It’s Grim Up North“. But again, that’s not the point. “”2023: A Trilogy” by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty” would have been one thing, but to have the author’s name be that of a band is, for me, the masterstroke.

I suppose this entire post could just be a single question: “why don’t writers use band-type names as pseudonyms”? Because that is my point.

Off the top of my head – although I’m sure there must be some others – I can only think of one book that has been similarly attributed*, and that’s The Manual: How to Have a Number One The Easy Way by The Timelords, the band behind the genius/godawful novelty smash hit “Doctorin’ the Tardis”. The Timelords were – but of course – Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty.

Let’s ignore for now the fact that all band names are, to an extent, absurd. What is it that’s so different between the music-buying public and the book-buying public that one finds abstract pseudonyms not only normal but desirable, while the other expects it’s authors to have real – or at least realistic – names? It isn’t as if these two publics are different people, after all.

I’m not asking why don’t bands write books, but rather why don’t more authors publish under an abstract or collective name?

It’s convention, isn’t it? Authors have always used pseudonyms, but collective names for artistic purposes (again, please correct me if I’m wrong) I am guessing began early last century with various modernist movements such as the Dadaists, Futurists and Surrealists, who self-consciously used such descriptors. Should we take it as a sign of one of Modernism’s failings that this didn’t cross into literature (other than for the purpose of those groups’ manifestos)?

“The death of the author” was announced by Roland Barthes 50 years ago, we accept such innovations as e-books, the Romantics’ idea of art as self-expression has been called into question for a long time, yet still we cleave to the idea of authenticity that a “real” name above a title evidently confers. No matter what experimentation or deconstruction of the form goes on within the text, still the book-as-object appears earnestly signed off by an identifiable figure. I’d love to see someone else follow Drummond and Cauty’s lead.

*Q by Luther Blissett doesn’t quite fit the bill here, being written by a collective yet appearing as “by” a single figure, though is interesting nonetheless; Luther Blissett in this case being not the former Watford and England footballer, but an Italian group for whom he was a cult hero.