“Nothing to See Here,” Kevin Wilson’s bestseller: Author interview suggests possible connection between his novel and Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects”

Wilson’s current bestseller, “Nothing to See Here,” was recently reviewed in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/books/review/nothing-to-see-here-kevin-wilson.html?module=inline 

In a single paragraph from today’s author interview (quoted below), Wilson’s first sentence is in the present tense. His second sentence is in the past tense. His last sentence is an abstract generalization. Evidently, one part of his mind continues to have his childhood obsession with spontaneous human combustion. Another part of his mind takes a retrospective, psychological view. And a third part of his mind has an empathetic and social point of view:

“Since I was a kid I’ve been obsessed with spontaneous human combustion,” Wilson says. “Sometimes I’d be afraid I might burst into flames and other times I wanted to be a human torch. I wanted to manifest my anxiety physically. But what I’m always trying to figure out with my writing is, how can I create a story where people survive dark things? I don’t want anyone to ever get hurt.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/books/review/dont-hate-kevin-wilson-but-he-wrote-his-best-seller-in-10-days.html

He says he had severe anxiety in childhood. It was emotionally intolerable, so he coped with it by imagining it was converted into something physical (but which evidently didn’t burn him like real fire would). And he hopes nobody else will get hurt like he was.

This seems to be a variation of the scenario of coping with overwhelming, probably posttraumatic, emotions, starting in childhood, by cutting or burning the skin, two usually secret activities that may be more common in people with multiple personality disorder. Search “Sharp Objects” by Gillian Flynn, which (along with her “Gone Girl”) involves multiple personality.