BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

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Wednesday, March 27, 2019


“Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932” by Francine Prose: a novelization of the life of Violette Morris, who led “a double life”

This novel, discussed by Francine Prose in a seven-minute radio interview (1), is based on the life of a real person, Violette Morris (2), and her association with a real Paris nightclub, Le Monocle (3).

What was it about this history, symbolized by this nightclub, that resonated with Francine Prose? In the words of one character, “What moved and gladdened me was that the club’s popularity, its longevity, and its very existence seemed to prove that each of us leads a double life” (4, p. 133).

Does Francine Prose, as a fiction writer, lead a double, multiple personality, life? She has said that she does, in a brief essay on her creative process, “She and I…and Someone Else” (5).

1. http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/wesun/2014/05/20140518_wesun_novel_humanizes_the_hyena_of_the_gestapo.mp3
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violette_Morris
3. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/le-monocle-1932/
4. Francine Prose. Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. New York, HarperCollins, 2014.
5. Francine Prose. “She and I…and Someone Else,” pp. 155-157, in Daniel Halpern (Editor), Who’s Writing This? Fifty-five Writers on Humor, Courage, Self-Loathing, and the Creative Process. New York, Ecco/Harper Perennial, 1995.
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