Daniel Halpern’s Who’s Writing This?: Fifty-five writers are coaxed by their editor to publicly acknowledge a nonclinical version of multiple personality

Multiple personality is implicit in the title, “Who’s Writing This?” It implies that the creative writing is done by a secret, second self, and not by the regular, social self to whom it is attributed.

Daniel Halpern in his Preface asks “Who is doing the writing?…using as prototype the signature Borges mini-essay, ‘Borges and I’…We meet…the writers we always thought were singular entities…”

Is it all just “spoof and play”?

“Well,” says Halpern, “the fiction throughout the essays is not so much in the writing as in the attribution.”

The fifty-five writers include two mentioned in this blog, Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates. And while some writers do give the impression that they are joking, others, like John Updike, straightforwardly describe distinct differences between their writing and social personalities; for example, in his case, the former “stutters” and the latter is “suave.”

Since the book uses euphemism, and does not refer to multiple personality by name, Halpern and the writers may be in denial. Nevertheless, some of the writers are clearly describing a nonclinical version of multiple personality.

Daniel Halpern (Editor). Who’s Writing This? Fifty-five Writers on Humor, Courage, Self-Loathing, and the Creative Process. New York, ecco Harper Perennial, 1995/2009.