Who’s Writing This? Fifty-Five Writers Joke About Having Multiple Personality

From the back cover…

“Who is really controlling the pen? Editor Daniel Halpern was profoundly curious about the creative process—so he asked fifty-five world-renowned writers to briefly muse on ‘the fictional persona behind the scenes,’ the alter(ed) ego who takes over when there is true literary work to be done.”

The fifty-five writers…

Jorge Luis Borges, Diane Ackerman, Edward Albee, Max Apple, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Frank Bidart, Roy Blount Jr., Paul Bowles, Harold Brodkey, Cecil Brown, Rosellen Brown, Robert Olen Butler, Frank Conroy, Guy Davenport, John Fowles, Paula Fox, William H. Gass, Gail Godwin, Edward Gorey, Allan Gurganus, Jim Harrison, John Hawkes, Mark Helprin, Alice Hoffman, Maureen Howard, Evan Hunter, Diane Johnson, Edward P. Jones, Ward Just, Ivan Klima, Ed Koren, Elmore Leonard, Romulus Linney, William Matthews, Peter Mayle, Leonard Michaels, James A. Michener, Arthur Miller, Czeslaw Milosz, Mary Morris, Thylias Moss, Joyce Carol Oates, Edna O’Brien, Cynthia Ozick, Darryl Pinckney, Francine Prose, Henry Roth, James Salter, Josef Skvorecky, Jane Smiley, Susan Sontag, Paul Theroux, Scott Turow, John Updike, Helen Vendler

In the context of yesterday’s post about the meaning of mirrors in Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the only quote I will make from Who’s Writing This? is by Edward Albee:

“I look at myself in the mirror and see I am not looking back at myself. I am seeing him. I am seeing him looking at me…”

Daniel Halpern (Editor). Who’s Writing This? Fifty-Five Writers on Humor, Courage, Self-Loathing, and the Creative Process. Harper Perennial, 1995.