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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Thursday, November 3, 2022

“The Maytrees” by Annie Dillard (post 3): Who was responsible for misspelling an unusual word?


Following the accidental injury of their young son, Petie, the married Maytrees have just split, which reminds me of a similar marital breakup in Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist (1985).


“His leaving condemned Petie to being spoiled. And stuck with [his wife, Lou’s] pauciloquoys [sic] (1, p. 70).


“Pauciloquoys” is a misspelling of “pauciloquy,” which means brevity of speech. Who is to blame for using and misspelling this unusual word?


I could blame the publisher’s editor and proofreader, but they probably thought that any author who was erudite enough to use such a word would certainly know how to spell it.


My guess is that the misspelled word was dictated to the author by an alternate personality she trusted, which is a creative, but not a foolproof, system.


1. Annie Dillard. The Maytrees. New York, Harper Perennial, 2008.

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