“The Resurrection of Joan Ashby” by Cherise Wolas (post 3): Novel with novelist as protagonist fortunately does talk about fiction writing process.

Previously, I mentioned that Joan Ashby had been asking all the other characters to address her as Ashby, not as Joan. I speculated that her wish to be called Ashby may have had masculine implications. And in a novel with a novelist as protagonist, I hoped that there would be something about the fiction-writing process. In the next eighty pages, I found four things.

First, while all the other characters have been consistently addressing Joan Ashby as Ashby, the narrator has continued to consistently refer to her as Joan. Evidently, in writing this novel, the narrator personality and the character personalities had a difference of opinion about this, and they agreed to disagree, which illustrates that novels are written by multiple personalities.

Second, in the novel that Joan Ashby is writing, the protagonist is a female sculptor who is very successful and has never been married or had children. Joan Ashby’s protagonist has lived the kind of life that Joan Ashby had always considered ideal for herself. In other words, the protagonist of a novel may have been based on the author’s previously existing, idealized, alternate personality.

Third, the single and very successful female sculptor is described as having a “manly” laugh (1, p. 475) and “mannish hands” (1, p. 477), which suggest that my speculations about masculinity in the previous post may not have been entirely unwarranted.

Fourth, the other major character in the novel that Joan Ashby is writing is the sculptor’s assistant, Theo, who “is in Joan’s mind all at once, suddenly fully developed, wanting the chance to start to tell his own tale.” With Joan’s “fingers on the laptop keys, she lets Theo take over” (1, p. 467). Characters who have minds of their own and who take over are alternate personalities.

1. Cherise Wolas. The Resurrection of Joan Ashby. New York, Flatiron Books, 2017.