“Bel Canto” by Ann Patchett (post 2): How can one of Patchett’s characters recall something to which he had not paid attention?

After one of Patchett’s characters has missed most of what another character has said to him, “he stopped and made himself recall the entire sentence. He could do that. It was as if he had a tape recorder in his head” (1, p. 253).

1. Ann Patchett. Bel Canto [2001]. New York, Harper Perennial Olive Edition, 2010.

The following past post explains how such a thing could be possible.

2018

“The Red House Mystery” by A. A. Milne (author of “Winnie-the-Pooh”): Novel may reflect author’s multiple memory banks, typical of multiple personality

At the beginning of this novel, Antony—an amateur detective, who eventually solves the murder mystery—mentions that he has an eidetic or photographic memory.

But since it turns out that this talent is not essential to solving the mystery, and is not mentioned in most of the rest of the novel, why is it in this novel at all?

And it is a very peculiar kind of photographic memory, for it seems to involve two memory banks, with one of them recording memories outside the awareness of the other, which you would expect to find only in persons with multiple personality.

“Antony…had a wonderfully retentive mind. Everything he saw or heard seemed to make its corresponding impression somewhere in his brain; often without his being conscious of it; and these photographic impressions were always ready for him when he wished to develop them” (1, p. 23).

“Well, I can’t explain it, whether it’s something in the actual eye, or something in the brain, or what, but I have got a rather uncanny habit of recording things unconsciously…I mean my eyes seem to do it without the brain consciously taking part.” (1, p. 58).

He gives an example of remembering how many steps there are at the entrance to a building that he had previously visited. His regular memory would not know how many steps there had been, but if he now wanted to know, then his other memory bank would provide him with a photographic image of the steps, allowing him to count them (1, p. 58).

These multiple memory banks are suggestive of multiple personality, in which the host personality is helped by an alternate personality, who has remembered things that the regular personality had not.

And since neither the plot nor character development of this novel requires the protagonist to have this, it probably reflects the author’s own mentality.

Search “gratuitous multiple personality” for previous discussions.

1. A. A. Milne. The Red House Mystery [1922]. Smoking Gun Mystery Books, 2017.