“Money” by Martin Amis (post 3): Protagonist’s host personality experiences his alternate personalities as voices who sometime take over

“There are, at the latest count, four distinct voices in my head. First, of course, is the jabber of money…Second is the voice of pornography…Third, the voice of aging and weather, of time travel through days and days, the ever-weakening voice of stung shame, sad boredom and futile protest…Number four is the real intruder. I don’t want any of these voices but I especially don’t want this one…It has to do with quitting work…It has the unwelcome lilt of paranoia, of rage and weepiness…I wish I could flush them out of my head…But once they’re there…they seem pretty determined to stick around” (1, pp. 104-105).

“Then I said, or perhaps one of my voices said it for me…” (1, p. 128).

Comment

The above is a description of multiple personality. I will be interested to see if it is ever recognized as such by any narrator or character, or whether it is treated as a nonspecific emotional disturbance, what I call “literary madness.”

Wikipedia speaks of the character’s “psychosis” (but multiple personality is not a psychosis) and “breakdown” (but that term is not specific) (2).

I have looked at several reviews, but none mentions multiple personality.

1. Martin Amis. Money: A Suicide Note [1984]. New York, Penguin Books, 2010.

2. Wikipedia. “Money (novel).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_(novel)