BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

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Tuesday, August 24, 2021

“The Hair of Harold Roux” by Thomas Williams: In National Book Award novel that resonates with writers, a fiction writer hears voices and has a memory gap


“The novel is a favorite among writers such as Joseph Heller, Andre Dubus III, and Stephen King, who dedicated his 1993 story collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes to Williams and described The Hair of Harold Roux as a book ‘I keep coming back to. I've read it four or five times,’ King said. ‘It's a couple of days in the life of this guy, Aaron Benham, who's writing a book about a man who is writing a book. It's this little house of mirrors. I love it because it tells the truth as I understand it about what it is to be a writer’ ” (1).


Voices

This is the first sentence of the novel: “Aaron Benham sits at his desk hearing the wrong voices” (2). It appears metaphorical, but readers of this blog will not be fooled.


Memory Gap

His wife and children have traveled to celebrate her parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary, but he has forgotten it and they left without him. He feels embarrassed and phones his mother-in-law to apologize.


Comment

I can see why this novel resonates with fiction writers: Hearing voices and having memory gaps are features of multiple personality trait.


I don’t plan to read the rest of this novel, because I don’t have patience for its stories in stories. But you might enjoy them.


1. Wikipedia. “The Hair of Harold Roux.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hair_of_Harold_Roux

2. Thomas Williams. The Hair of Harold Roux [1974]. Hanover NH, University Press of New England, 1995.

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