“As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner (post 12): Darl is depicted as having a split personality, the condition Faulkner said was typical of fiction writers

Darl’s doppelgänger or double (alternate personality)—“Against the dark doorway he seems to materialise out of darkness” (1, p. 126)— burns down a barn. And Darl, referring to himself in the third person (typical of multiple personality, not schizophrenia), is sent to a hospital (1, p. 146).

But Faulkner was sympathetic to Darl. He depicts him as the most articulate character. And he has one of the other characters say: “But I aint so sho that err a man has the right to say what is crazy and what aint. It’s like there was a fellow [an alternate personality?] in every man…” (1, p. 137).

Moreover, in post 7, I have a link to an audio interview of Faulkner in which he say says: “I think that—that a writer is a—a perfect case of split personality.”

Of course, a “split personality” is an informal term that may refer to either a clinical disorder or a nonclinical trait. Darl’s burning down a barn made it multiple personality disorder, a nonpsychotic, clinical diagnosis. But if a person just writes novels and wins Nobel Prizes, it’s what I call multiple personality trait, a creative ability, not a diagnosis.

1. William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying [1930]. New York, WW Norton, 2010.