Times Book Review essay, “Which Writer’s Journals Are Worth Reading?” quotes Proust, but should have quoted The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates.

In a New York Times Book Review essay, Pankaj Mishra quotes Proust, who said that a book “is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life, in our vices.”

Proust is acknowledging that most novelists have multiple personality, but he is not a psychiatrist, so he doesn’t put it those terms. For a discussion of how multiple personality manifests itself in his writing, search Proust in this blog.

The most candid writer’s journal I have found—in regard to multiple personality—is that of Joyce Carol Oates (1). It contains a series of entries that were written by alternate personalities. I quote those entries in my post on Oates: search Oates in this blog.

1. Joyce Carol Oates. The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates 1973-1982. Edited by Greg Johnson. New York, ecco/HarperCollins, 2007.