NY Times Book Review interviews Sue Grafton (post 6): People with multiple personality “disagree with themselves,” and their characters “spark to life”

In tomorrow’s Book Review, Sue Grafton, bestselling author of the Kinsey Millhone detective novels—“X,” the twenty-fourth novel of the alphabetically-titled series was recently published—is interviewed.

She is asked which of her novels she likes the least. Grafton answers: “N is for Noose, though I bet if I went back and read it, I might disagree with myself.”

People with one personality may change their opinion or be ambivalent, but people with multiple personality may disagree with themselves.

What book most inspired Grafton’s literary career? Grafton says: “I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane. I’m not saying I fell in love with the book, but after Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie, what a revelation! I was 12, and it may have been the moment when the spirit of Kinsey Millhone first sparked to life.”

Notice how she refers to her main character, Kinsey Millhone. Grafton doesn’t say that she decided to create a character or that she thought up Kinsey Millhone. No, Kinsey just “sparked to life.”

Objectively, Kinsey was a product of Grafton’s imagination. But subjectively, Grafton did not construct or willfully imagine Kinsey. No, Kinsey just “sparked to life” during Grafton’s childhood, which is when multiple personality begins.

If Grafton’s subjective experience had been of having actively created and imagined Kinsey, then she would experience Kinsey as a kind of puppet, whose thoughts and actions are determined by Grafton. But that was not Grafton’s subjective experience of how Kinsey came into being.

Since Grafton’s experience was that Kinsey “sparked to life” of her own accord, it naturally follows that Grafton would experience Kinsey as having a mind of her own, which is how Grafton does experience Kinsey.

Grafton, like most novelists, has, uses, and enjoys a normal version of multiple personality.