Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo features Multiple Personality in both his memoir “Elsewhere” (2012) and his novel “Everybody’s Fool” (2016).

The memoir is discussed in my two recent posts (search “Russo”).

The present post is about the explicit, extensive, multiple personality of Douglas Raymer, the main character of the novel.

“…the sky was cleaved by yet another shaft of lightening, and he felt a searing heat in his right palm…

“He couldn’t tell how long he’d been howling, but when it was over, he felt a profound change to his being, his psyche…like something essential had been hewn in two. He’d entered the cemetery as Douglas Raymer…Now he felt a second presence…

“Strange that he should feel so familiar with the second presence even before being introduced, as if he’d known this ‘other’ all his life. Call him…what? Dougie, Raymer decided, because the presence he felt seemed younger, like a kid brother. A mean one. The thing about this Dougie? He absolutely did not give a shit…Dougie’s inclination, long held in check, was to kick ass and take names. Get the fucking job done. It was Dougie who would know what came next” (1, pp. 245-246).

“Can I tell you something? Raymer [regular self] asked.

 Anything [said Dougie].

I’m so tired of being everybody’s fool.

He expected to be laughed at, but he wasn’t. I’m here to help” (1, p. 257).

And so Raymer and Dougie continue their dialogue for the whole second half of the novel. Dougie is aware of everything Raymer thinks, but Raymer is not aware of Dougie except when he allows Raymer to be. They work as partners, and Raymer is much more successful with Dougie’s help.

Although Dougie stays mostly behind the scenes, advising Raymer as a rational voice in his head, he sometimes takes over briefly, leaving Raymer with brief memory gaps.

On the last page of the novel, when Raymer might be on the verge of living happily ever after, Dougie is still there, advising Raymer to “Play your cards right for once” (1, p. 477).

Although Raymer rationalizes his split personality as being a new thing, caused by his being struck by lightening—although it is not clear in the text that he was struck—there are suggestions that his condition was not new. For example, at the beginning of the novel, there is an incident when “He couldn’t remember pulling the trigger but must’ve” (1, p. 16), an episode in which he behaved rather aggressively, like it might have been Dougie who pulled the trigger, and that that was why he had a memory gap for doing it. And then there is Raymer’s feeling when he first officially meets Dougie, hundreds of pages later, and felt “so familiar with the second presence even before being introduced” (see above).

Incidentally, Raymer is probably not the only character in this novel with multiple personality. Other characters hear rational voices in their head. For example, the character, Alice, not only has imaginary conversations, but also has amnesia—“I keep trying to remember who you [Raymer] are” (1, p. 11), a cardinal symptom of multiple personality (since one personality may have memory gaps for what another personality knows).

But the main thing to keep in mind when you read this author’s novel is this author’s memoir, which tells us that, to Richard Russo, multiple personality is not just a gimmick or joke.

Another interesting thing is the reviews of this novel, a number of which I’ve read. Most of them don’t even mention Raymer’s multiple personality, even though he is the main character, and his multiple personality is explicit and prominent throughout the whole second half of the novel. And the one review I saw that did mention it, did so dismissively, as though it were a minor thing in the text, when, in fact, it is clearly major. The blind spot that most reviewers have for multiple personality is truly amazing.

To be fair, part of the blame is the author’s. I saw one interview about this novel that Russo had on public television. The interviewer never mentioned the main character’s multiple personality, but neither did Russo.

1. Richard Russo. Everybody’s Fool. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.