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.

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Sunday, October 30, 2016

Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl”: Since its multiple personality passages made no sense to most reviewers when they read them, why didn’t they raise questions?

In my previous post on Gone Girl, the passages I cite that indicate the protagonist has multiple personality do not make sense unless you realize that they indicate multiple personality. And since most reviewers did not realize that, most reviewers did not understand those passages. Yet no reviewer (as far as I know) said that the novel contained passages which made no sense to them. What are the implications?

Do reviewers only skim the books they are reviewing? Perhaps some do, but I assume that reputable reviewers read every word.

Do reviewers assume that a certain percentage of most novels will not make sense—nothing is perfect—and that it would be petty for a review to mention it (as long as it did not prevent a good overall experience)?

Do reviewers assume that if they don’t understand something in an otherwise, obviously, well-written novel, then it must be their own fault, so why bring it up in a review and embarrass themselves?

The reason I raise this issue in regard to Gone Girl is that it is not literary esoterica. It is an extremely popular novel, which would be expected to be completely understandable by nearly everyone. Yet if you haven’t read this blog, even a popular novel like this may not entirely make sense.

All of which raises the question: What is multiple personality doing in this novel? Why is it there? Since it is present in part of the novel, but not in the rest, it does not appear to be an intentional aspect of character development or plot. In short, there seems to be no reason for it to be in this novel. It is gratuitous.

After finding gratuitous multiple personality in many novels, I concluded that it must be a reflection of writers’ psychology.

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