Allegra Goodman, in New York Times Book Review, says she looks and listens with her character’s eyes and ears, and that writing “madness” is easy.

“If a character stumbles upon Ezra Pound, as Aidan does in my new novel, The Chalk Artist, I notice what he notices, and I hear what he hears” (1).

Goodman does not say that she imagines what the character would notice or hear. No, she appears to be saying that she looks and listens with the character’s eyes and ears.

So if I had been conducting the interview, I would have then asked Goodman how the writing experience she describes is similar to, or different from, either the switching from one personality to another personality in multiple personality, or the co-consciousness that some alternate personalities have with each other.

“Madness is easy. A character with good sense is a tour de force” (1).

The concept of madness is nonspecific and the word “madness” is lazy. It might refer, often inadvertently, to any of many different things, including schizophrenic psychosis, the mental disturbance of various medical and neurological conditions, a severe grief reaction, a manic episode, psychotic depression, psychopathic personality, various kinds of obsession, road rage, multiple personality, or creativity (as in Henry James’s phrase “the madness of art”) (search in this blog).

A classic example of the use of the word “madness” is a novel that Goodman mentions, Don Quixote, which she says has “the seeds of a hundred future masterpieces inside it” (1). This novel, as long as it is, never addresses, even in passing, what kind of madness Don Quixote has, which can be excused in a novel from four centuries ago, but not now.

Search “madness” and “Don Quixote” in this blog.

1. Allegra Goodman. Interviewed by The New York Times Book Review. July 13, 2017 (online). July 16, 2017 (print). https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/books/review/allegra-goodman-by-the-book.html