“Blaze” (post 1) by Richard Bachman (Stephen King) (post 16): In Chapter 1, Blaze appears to have multiple personality, not merely a bereavement ghost

I wanted to see what a Richard Bachman novel is like. Bachman wrote Blaze at about the same time that King wrote Carrie (1973).

Conventional Misinterpretation

“The story concerns Clayton Blaisdell Jr. (known as "Blaze" for short, thus the title), a mentally handicapped small-time con artist who kidnaps a wealthy gentleman's baby son, in the hopes of fulfilling the dreams of George Thomas Rackley, Blaze's deceased best friend and partner in crime and who continues to help him.” Genre: “Crime novel, ghost story” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaze_(novel)

First Chapter

It’s night, and Blaze can’t see George, who is “somewhere in the dark,” but hears and converses with George, who calls Blaze a “dummy” and advises him on how to go about stealing a car from the parking lot. “Not that one, you dummy, it’s got bumper stickers all over it. Get a Chevy or a Ford. Dark blue or green. Two years old. No more, no less. Nobody remembers them. And no stickers” (1, first page).

Once Blaze has gotten a stolen car ready to drive away, he decides he couldn’t leave without George. However, a different voice says (italics): “But George is dead. That was bullshit [Blaze thought]. George was just there. He went inside for a beer. He’s dead [the voice reaffirms]. ‘Oh, George,’ Blaze moaned. He was hunched over the wheel. ‘Oh, George, don’t be dead.” And the narrator confirms that George has been dead for three months. (1, p. 12).

Now, if the late George “continues to help him,” not only to steal a car, but to commit a kidnapping, as Wikipedia says he will, then George is not just a ghostly presence during bereavement, but an alternate personality with complex interactions. And as to being “mentally handicapped,” Blaze, as a person, cannot be less intelligent than his most intelligent alternate personality.

Moreover, there is a third, nameless personality: the one who says, “But George is dead.”

If literary criticism fails to recognize psychological, multiple personality stories, it may mistakenly lump them with supernatural, ghost stories.

1. Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman). Blaze [1973/2007]. New York, Gallery Books, 2018.