BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

— Share site with friends.

Monday, November 9, 2015

Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling) The Cuckoo’s Calling (post 2): a murder vs. suicide detective novel with the most glaring omission in the history of the genre

Lulu Landry, a supermodel who once cut her wrist, and who takes lithium for bipolar disorder, has fallen to her death from her balcony. Was it an accident, murder, or suicide? The police and official inquest have concluded that it was suicide. Now Lulu’s bother hires Cormoran Strike, private investigator, to prove that it was murder.

But the biggest mystery of this detective genre novel is why neither the police nor Strike investigate her psychiatric treatment, and why they never interview, or even mention, her psychiatrist. Had she been taking her medicine? Was the lithium level too high (possibly causing delirium and dizziness) or too low? Had she told her psychiatrist that she had been threatened or felt suicidal? Characters in this genre should want to ask such questions, even if the answers are only red herrings.

I cannot explain this glaring omission, and can only wonder if it reflects some quirk of the Cormoran Strike character or of Rowling’s Galbraith personality.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)