“Camino Island” by John Grisham (post 2): Why does female novelist, Mercer Mann, have masculine, or at least unisex, name?

Mercer Mann is a female, unemployed, college English teacher, and a novelist with writer’s block, who agrees to go undercover for an insurance company—who will pay off her student debt, plus pay her $100,000—to help them find out if a bookstore owner has possession of stolen F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts (he does).

At the end of the story, Mercer has become employed at a college and is halfway through a new novel. Possible reasons for the end of her writer’s block are her employment, improved finances, and the self-esteem-boosting brief affair she had had with the bookstore owner, and perhaps with others since. But no explanation for the end of her writer’s block is actually given. It is not discussed.

The only remaining thing of psychological interest is the author’s choice of the character’s name, “Mercer Mann,” which means merchant man, in this case suggesting a male commercial novelist. “Mercer” is a unisex name, but it is used twice as often for boys as it is for girls (1).

Thus, although the novelist is heterosexual, her name may inadvertently imply bisexuality, an issue I discussed in past posts about the works of other writers, related to the fact that people with multiple personality often have both male and female alternate personalities.

1. The Name Meaning. https://www.thenamemeaning.com/mercer/