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.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Monday, June 27, 2022

“Bel Canto” by Ann Patchett (post 3): What makes novels a great read? 


The appendix to this edition of Bel Canto (1) includes “Ann Patchett’s Ten Great Reads,” which includes two novels discussed in this blog: The Ambassadors by Henry James and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. 


The title of The Ambassadors is plural, because the protagonist has "double consciousness" (multiple personality). And Anna Karenina is thrown under the train by her alternate personality (as explained in past posts).


In contrast, Bel Canto does not have any characters with prominent multiple personality issues, but it was award-winning and based on a real life event (2), which might impress some readers.


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

2. Wikipedia. Bel Canto (novel). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel_Canto_(novel)

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