“The Piano Tuner” by Daniel Mason (post 2): Piano tuner, when tuning, dissociates into alternate personality, leaving memory gap of multiple personality

Two-thirds through the novel, when Edgar, the piano tuner, is in Burma, he recalls what his wife, back in England, had once asked him:

“Edgar…I am asking how you work, I am being serious, Do you see anything while you work?…It just seems that you disappear, into a different place…Edgar laughed…But in truth, he did understand what she was trying to ask. He worked with his eyes open, but when he finished, when he thought back on the day, he could never remember a single visible image…” (1, p. 214).

That is, his regular personality had a memory gap for the period of time that his piano-tuning, alternate personality had taken over. Search “memory gaps” for past discussions of this cardinal symptom of multiple personality.

1. Daniel Mason. The Piano Tuner. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.