The New York Times reports a forthcoming TV series based on Lee Child’s character, Jack Reacher (1)

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/arts/television/jack-reacher-amazon.html

I recalled the coining of my concept “gratuitous multiple personality” in the fourth of the five past posts on Lee Child and Jack Reacher:

1/5 — Friday, November 27, 2015

Jack Reacher (protagonist) and Lee Child (pseudonym) are protective alternate personalities, born in a difficult childhood, and all they want is love.

The novelist’s literary friend, Andy Martin, was given access to Lee Child while he wrote Make Me, his twentieth Jack Reacher novel. Martin wrote a book with observations and quotations (1).

Martin noted that when Lee Child writes, he enters an altered state of consciousness or trance in which he interacts with his alternate personality, Jack Reacher, who originated in the author’s childhood:

“When [Lee Child] writes, he goes into a ‘zone’ in which he really believes that the nonexistent Jack Reacher is temporarily existent. [As Lee Child, himself, says,] ‘I know I’m making it up, but it doesn’t feel that way’ “ (1, p. 18).

Lee Child says, “This isn’t the first draft, you know…It’s the only draft!…And remember, I’m not making this up. Reacher is real. He exists. This is what he is up to, right now. That’s why I can’t change anything—this is just the way it is” (1, pp. 32-33).

“Basically,” Lee said, “Reacher is me, aged nine. I used to fight all the time” (1, p. 95).

Pseudonym

Lee Child says that his pseudonym’s first name, Lee, comes from a family joke in which the French word for the, “le,” was pronounced lee (1, p. 102). Thus, his pseudonym, Lee Child means The Child. Additionally, according to the dictionary, the word “lee” means a protective shelter, and so Lee Child is, and writes about, a protector. Since multiple personality is a way to cope with childhood trauma, protector personalities are common.

These originally child-aged personalities may have grown up, but they are children at heart.

Childhood

Lee Child says, “I reckon all writers are trying to compensate for their unhappy childhoods. Or being sick all the time. Lack of affection. They’re all basket cases of emotional insecurity” (1, p. 149).

Can he recall any good times with his father? “Not an hour. Nothing. Blank. He was like a Martian” (1, p. 149).

“And my mother was a monster of martyrdom too, so no help on that side either. I was totally…disliked. My mother said I was dog shit brought in the house on someone’s shoe. Obviously, I’m writing with an idea of getting people to love me” (1, pp. 149-150).

1. Andy Martin. Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me. New York, Bantam Books, 2015.

2/5 — Sunday, November 29, 2015

Lee Child’s Killing Floor: Jack Reacher has two contradictory, alternate personalities—a silent, violent loner and a talkative, friendly, first-person narrator

Two Reacher Personalities

In this first of the series of Jack Reacher novels, the author wants the reader to enter into a long-term relationship with the protagonist. First-person narration promotes intimacy. I understand that.

But Reacher, the first-person narrator, describes himself as a person who travels by bus, because buses don’t keep passenger lists; who always pays by cash; and who does not carry a mobile phone. He is a reticent, violent loner, who doesn’t want anyone to keep track of him or know his business. This Jack Reacher personality is epitomized in the title of a book (quoted in a previous post), Reacher Said Nothing (1).

Therefore, Reacher’s providing an intimate, talkative, first-person narration is completely out of character. So there must be two personalities, as indicated in the title of this post.

Reacher Hears Voices

No issue is made of the fact that Reacher hears voices. It is mentioned in passing, as though most people hear voices, but most people don’t. In a nonpsychotic person, a rational voice may be an alternate personality, speaking from behind the scenes, which is probably the case here:

“I sat there in the back of the police Chevrolet listening to a tiny voice in my head asking me what the hell I was going to do about that” (2, p. 143).

“I…listened to the tiny voice inside my head saying: you’re supposed to do something about that” (2, p. 150).

“All of a sudden I was glad I had jumped off that damn bus. Glad I made that crazy last-minute decision. I suddenly relaxed. Felt better. The tiny voice in my head quieted down” (2, p. 156).

“I…started answering the question the tiny voice in my head was asking me again” (2, p.159).

Other than one personality’s hearing the voice of the other personality, the only other time that one of Reacher’s personalities is described as being aware of Reacher’s other personality is this:

“I noticed with a kind of detached curiosity that I was screaming, too” (2, p. 511). This takes place after the villains had been vanquished. It is a comment by the violent, reticent personality, who is watching the talkative personality celebrate.

E Unum Pluribus

The motto of the USA is E Pluribus Unum (From Many, One), meaning that the many colonies or states came together to form the one United States of America.

This novel reverses the motto for use as code words, which refer to a plot to make counterfeit hundred dollar bills: “E Unum Pluribus. Out of one comes many. Out of one dollar comes a hundred dollars” (2, p. 427). In the plot, one dollar bills were to be bleached, and then the paper was to be used to print hundred dollar bills.

Coincidentally, E Unum Pluribus could be code words for multiple personality, meaning that, from one person, comes more than one personality. Is that what Lee Child meant? Not intentionally.

1. Lee Child. Killing Floor. New York, Jove Books, 1997/2012.

2. Andy Martin. Reacher Said Nothing. New York, Bantam Books, 2015.

3/5 —Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Lee Child’s Make Me: Jack Reacher still hears voices—the “small voice” plus “radio chatter” voices “tuning up for a fight” and “working out the implications”

In my last post, on the first Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor, I discussed the fact that Reacher hears voices; specifically, a “small voice.” Now, in the twentieth Reacher novel, Make Me, I find that he still hears the “small voice”:

“A small voice, full of defeat” (1, p. 384).

“A small voice, full of defeat” (1, p. 385).

These two lines are wedged in on two successive pages without any comment or explanation.

Lee Child doesn’t explain or justify including those two lines, because he evidently still thinks, probably based on his own personal experience, that most people hear voices. But while people with multiple personality do occasionally hear the voices of their alternate personalities, speaking from behind the scenes, most other people don’t hear voices.

In Make Me, Reacher also hears “radio chatter”:

“The back part of my brain knows it was the same guy” [says Reacher].

“How?”

“The radio chatter is off the scale.”

“You hear radio chatter?”

“I listen out for it hard. We were wild animals for seven million years. We learned a lot of lessons. We should be careful not to lose them.”

“What is the radio chatter saying?”

“Part of it is tuning up for a fight. It knows nothing good is coming.”

“What about the other part?”

“It’s having a back-and-forth, working out the implications…” (1, p. 185).

Reacher interprets the “radio chatter” as instinctual perception learned by the evolving brain during millions of years. But his interpretation does not fit his metaphor, “radio chatter,” which implies voices in his head, who happen to be preparing and planning to cope with Reacher’s specific situation, just the way that good alternate personalities would be doing.

1. Lee Child. Make Me. New York, Delacorte Press, 2015.

4/5 — Thursday, December 3, 2015

Lee Child postscript: Jack Reacher hears the rational, autonomous voices of his alternate personalities, an example of unintended “gratuitous multiple personality”

Most readers pay no attention to Reacher’s voices, and rightly so, because they are unnecessary to both plot and character development in these Lee Child novels.

There is no indication the author even knows that rational, autonomous voices imply the existence of alternate personalities.

I have had to invent a term for this situation—gratuitous multiple personality—because so many of the novels discussed in this blog have had it, and have had it for no apparent reason other than that it probably reflects the author’s own subjective experience.

For previous discussions, search gratuitous multiple personality in this blog, for a discussion of the issue in only a small fraction of the novels in which I found it to occur.

5/5 — Saturday, January 16, 2016

Author Lee Child switches among three personal pronouns—“I” “it” “we”—in the review he wrote for January 17, 2016 New York Times Book Review.

Since I have several past posts about Lee Child and two of his novels, I was interested to read his review of “Hunters in the Dark” by Lawrence Osborne: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/books/review/hunters-in-the-dark-by-lawrence-osborne.html?_r=0

Using the above link, you can judge for yourself whether his use of personal pronouns is perfectly ordinary or is consistent with the normal version of multiple personality that is common among novelists.

The first sentence of the review begins: “I read this book…”

The third sentence says: “…the pedant in me reared its caviling head…”

The first sentence of the second paragraph says: “…we can acknowledge…”

Who is “we”? Does it refer to “I” and “the pedant”? Or does “we” refer to we readers? The use of “we” toward the end of the review could easily be interpreted as referring only to we readers.

Yet, it is a rule of good writing to maintain a consistent point of view in a circumscribed piece like a single chapter in a novel or a book review. And when the book review starts from the perspective of “I,” it is a little unsettling to have it switch back and forth between “I” and “we,” plus “it” on one occasion.

If I had not read the Lee Child biography and two novels, I might not have noticed his use of pronouns in this book review. If you have not read my previous posts, you may feel I am making something out of nothing.