“The Dark Half” (post 1) by Stephen King (post 9): Novelist’s Pseudonym as Evil Twin (persecutor Alternate Personality)

In Chapter 1, Thad Beaumont, a tenured English professor, and his wife Liz are reading an article in People magazine about his discontinuing the use of his literary pseudonym, or, as the article puts it:

GEORGE STARK

1975-1988

Not a Very Nice Guy

Fifteen years after Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, he has stopped using oddly indented parentheses (see post 8) and is now using italics to indicate a character’s thoughts, but with this distinction: When it is the character’s own thoughts, it explicitly says “he thought” or “she thought.” But when the thoughts are from an alternate personality, they address the character as “you.” For example:

“You’re afraid of a goddam article in People magazine? Is that what you’re thinking? Dumb. Afraid of being embarrassed, of having your colleagues in the English Department look at those pictures and think you’ve lost the poor cracked handful of marbles you had?…Stop it, his mind ordered in the dry, stern tone that had a way of causing even the most obstreperous of his undergrad English students to fall pale and silent. Stop this foolishness right now” (1, p. 22).

This novel’s multiple personality foundation is more obvious than it was in Carrie. But in a Prologue to The Dark Half, it is explained away this way: Thad had had brain surgery at age eleven to remove the residual tissue of Thad’s twin, who had not been born. I expect that Thad’s pseudonym is really Thad’s twin, who had not been successfully eliminated by the brain surgery, who still refuses to be done away with, and is not a very nice guy.

Before the novel’s Prologue, there is an Author’s Note by Stephen King: “I’m indebted to the late Richard Bachman for his help and inspiration. This novel could not have been written without him.” Richard Bachman was Stephen King’s pseudonym for a series of novels (2).

1. Stephen King. The Dark Half [1989]. New York, Gallery Books, 2018.

2. Wikipedia. “Richard Bachman” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman