John Banville, Booker Prize-winning novelist, often has memory gap for writing as himself, but not writing as his pseudonym

“Frequently, the next day I go back to read over what I wrote the day before; I don’t recognize it. I can’t remember writing it” (1, p 106).

“If I’m writing and it’s three o’clock in the afternoon, I am so deep in the work that I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I am. I will use a word that I don’t know the meaning of. When I’ve finished writing, I’ll have to look it up, and I’ll discover it was the right word…” (1, p. 125).

Interviewer: “A lot of your characters…are somehow bifurcated…”

John Banville: “Of course Stevenson got it perfectly in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There is somebody else inside that has to be kept in; otherwise, there would be anarchy” (1, p. 60).

Comment: Above suggests Banville has multiple personality trait.

1. Earl G. Ingersoll and John Cusatis (Editors). Conversations with John Banville [1995-2018]. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2020.