Character Auctions: Name May Be Slightly Mutilated

JA October 13

If any of you are reading Margaret Atwood’s latest novel Year of the Flood right now, you’ll probably have come across the name Rebecca Eckler (she comes in early on in Toby’s narrative). What you may or may not know is that Rebecca Eckler is not just a Gardener and worker at the SecretBurger fast-food chain, but also a writer and journalist from Canada. Two years ago, she bid $7000 in a charity auction to have her name featured in the Booker-prize winning author’s next book – Year of the Flood was the culmination of that.

Eckler has written an interesting article for Mcleans on the subject. It seems that she and Atwood kept steady contact throughout the writing process, although I’m not sure if they knew each other beforehand.

When the book arrives, I quickly skim, looking for my name. I find it on page 30. Rebecca Eckler is working for a cruel, malicious manager at a chain called SecretBurgers (“the secret of SecretBurgers was that no one knew what sort of animal protein was actually in them,” Atwood writes). One of my character’s first quotes is, “Praise the Lord and spit. I’m too black and ugly for him…” There you have it. Rebecca Eckler is no longer skinny, neurotic and Jewish.

Eckler continues to say that she feels ‘something like a shock of electricity’ every time she sees her name throughout the 400-odd pages: ‘There’s my name! (I’ve made turnip pie?) There’s my name! (I helped kill someone?) There’s my name! (Did I really just say, “Once he’s stuck his pole in some hole, he thinks it’s his?”)’.

Turns out, character charity auctions have been going on for quite a while. Back in 2005, Neil Gaiman held an auction on ebay for the right to name a cruise ship in Anansi Boys. ‘It’s not a particularly exceptional cruise ship,’ he wrote on his blog, ‘nothing much happens on it, and it will only get mentioned by name a handful of times in the book’. Nevertheless, the exercise raised $3533 for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The ship, incidentally, was called ‘Squeak Attack’.

Gaiman, along with many other writers including Stephen King, Lemony Snicket, Jonathan Lethem, Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon, held a similar auction later that year for the First Amendment Project. Snicket warned that the winner’s name ‘may be slightly ‘mutilated’’. Here’s what Stephen King offered:

One (and only one) character name in a novel called CELL, which is now in work and which will appear in either 2006 or 2007. Buyer should be aware that CELL is a violent piece of work, which comes complete with zombies set in motion by bad cell phone signals that destroy the human brain. Like cheap whiskey, it’s very nasty and extremely satisfying. Character can be male or female, but a buyer who wants to die must in this case be female. In any case, I'll require physical description of auction winner, including any nickname (can be made up, I don’t give a rip).

A reader named Pam Alexander won the auction, bidding over $25 000, and generously gave the prize to her brother, who was given the honour of being a rampaging zombie.

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