John Cheever’s Journal: Biographers say that he used multiple names, and referred to himself in the third person, in his journal. Multiple personality?

“…the journal was both a laboratory for fiction and a means of exorcising demons and fine-tuning the work-in-progress known as John Cheever” (1, p. 113).

“In his journal, Cheever often referred to himself in the third person, using alter egos such as ‘Coverly,’ ‘Bierstubbe,’ or ‘Estabrook’ “ (1, p. 220).

“He had a roster of fictional names and personalities that he wove around his family and friends and used in his journals, and more than half a dozen names for himself, or the characters that had originally been based on himself: Toby, Tom, Streeter, Bierstubbe, or Mr. Bierstubbe, to mention just a few” (2, p. 41).

1. Blake Bailey. Cheever: A Life. New York, Vintage Books, 2009.

2. Susan Cheever. Home Before Dark: A Biographical Memoir of John Cheever by His Daughter. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984.