Anonymity about the author is the only test a writer can run alone

The argument

A second argument for this explanation concerns what a writer can and cannot find out. Proponents begin from a position of uncertainty familiar to anyone who has been turned down: a writer refused repeatedly cannot tell, from the outside, whether the work is not good enough or whether it is not being read as it would be if somebody else had written it. Rejections rarely come with reasons, and the reasons they do come with are chosen to be easy to give rather than to be complete. On this account the choice of a man's name is the one experiment available to a writer who wants to know. It changes a single variable, leaves the manuscript untouched, and produces an answer that no amount of reflection could produce: if the work is taken when it was previously refused, something other than the work was deciding. Proponents hold that this diagnostic motive is distinct from the commercial one, because the writer is not primarily buying sales; she is buying information about her own position. The explanation also accounts for a feature the others handle less well, namely the mixed feelings that attach to the practice. A writer running this experiment is not endorsing the arrangement she is working around, and the result is unwelcome either way: confirmation that she was being read differently is a grievance, while a second refusal removes the last available excuse. Proponents conclude that the name is adopted as a means of finding out what is true about a process the writer cannot otherwise see into, and that prejudice appears in the explanation because it is the hypothesis being tested rather than merely the thing complained of.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents object that the experiment described is not a good one. A submission under a new name differs in timing, in the reader it reaches and in the state of the market, so an acceptance establishes very little and a refusal still less. They add that the account attributes a deliberately investigative motive that would be unusual in a writer who mainly wants to be published, and that the simpler explanations of reaching readers or escaping categorisation do not require it. Where the diagnostic reading is strongest, critics note, it tends to rest on an outcome already known rather than on a test set up in advance.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Opponents hold that detailed feedback, comparison with peers and repeated submission give a writer considerably more information than the argument allows. [Rejecting P2] A submission under a new name also changes timing, recipient and market conditions, so more than a single variable moves. [Rejecting P3] An acceptance after such a change is therefore weak evidence that the earlier refusals turned on the author rather than on the work. [Rejecting C] A motive of testing a hypothesis is an unusual thing to attribute to a writer who mainly wants to publish, and the simpler explanations do not require it.