“Your Duck Is My Duck” by Deborah Eisenberg: Protagonist has memory gap for email sent by alternate personality when host personality was sedated

Since two New York Times book reviews (1,2) and a full-length article in The New York Times Magazine (3) have praised the author and her latest book of short stories, I have read the title story.

And since the Times had not said anything about multiple personality, I was surprised to find clear evidence that the protagonist has it, though it is not labelled as such, and the author may not have thought of it in those terms.

The first-person narrator—an unnamed woman whose painting had been bought by a rich couple who has invited her to vacation with them—sends an email to Graham, from whom she is separated, and who is far away.

She realizes that she has emailed Graham only when she receives his email reply. She has a memory gap for having emailed him. Her email had been sent to him at night when she thought she had been asleep.

Most readers and reviewers think that her nocturnal email is a side effect of the sleeping pill she had taken. But the author provides two kinds of evidence to the contrary. First, the protagonist notes that her nocturnal email says things and uses vocabulary that she wouldn’t have. Second, both earlier and later in the story, during the daytime when no drugs had been taken, the protagonist has “apparitions.”

Earlier: “And as I stood there, a lanky apparition ballooned up into the void at my side, frowning, mulling the situation over. Graham! But the apparition tossed back its fair, silky hair, kissed me lightly, and dissipated, leaving me so much more alone than I’d been an instant before.”

Later: “…I thought about Graham quite a bit, and I longed not for him but for the apparition he fell so far short of, which I called up over and over…” (4).

A person with multiple personality may visualize alternate personalities—and one of her alternate personalities is evidently an idealized version of Graham—which is similar to when children see and converse with imaginary companions and when novelists see and converse with characters.

The main fact to know is this: People with multiple personality may have the experience “of waking up in the morning and finding evidence that they were busy during the night, although they do not remember anything. They may find drawings, notes, poems, relocated furniture, discarded clothing, or other evidence that they have been up and busy” (5, p. 81).

So did the sleeping pill have anything at all to do with the unrecalled nocturnal behavior? Yes, it probably did play a part in a struggle for control between the woman’s host personality and one of her alternate personalities.

The alternate personality had probably wanted to take over and express itself, but the host personality wouldn’t give it a chance. The alternate personality knew that the host was weakest at night when it went to sleep. And the host personality intuitively sensed that something might happen if she fell asleep, and that was why she was having insomnia.

In multiple personality, drugs that will sedate one personality might not sedate another personality. In this case, the sleeping pill sedated the host personality, but did not sedate that alternate personality. So when the woman took the sleeping pill, it kept the host personality asleep, while the alternate personality took over and sent the email.

Now that you know these things, you can understand this story.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/books/review/deborah-eisenberg-your-duck-is-my-duck.html

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/books/review-your-duck-is-my-duck-deborah-eisenberg.html

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/magazine/deborah-eisenberg-chronicler-of-american-insanity.html

4. Deborah Eisenberg. Your Duck Is My Duck (Stories). New York, ecco/HarperCollins, 2018.

5. Frank Putnam MD. Diagnosis & Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, Guilford Press, 1989.