"Book of Lives, a Memoir of Sorts" by Margaret Atwood: a Writer's Multiplicity (post 1)

“I wish I could have a body double in my real life, I thought. It would be so handy. Of course, I do have one. Every writer does. The body double appears as soon as you start writing. How could it be otherwise? There’s the daily you, and then there’s the other person who does the actual writing. They aren’t the same. But in my case, there are more than two. There are lots… 

'The one doing the writing has access to everything in the memory bank. The one doing the living might have some idea of what the writing self has been up to, but less than you’d think… 

“Is writing a trance state”…Not quite, you can break off…Yet the sensation of something taking over can’t be ignored; too many writers have testified to it. Flow state, inspiration, characters seizing the initiative from their authors…these kinds of testimonies are too numerous to be dismissed…” (1, p. xiv-xix).

1. Margaret Atwood. Book of Lives, a Memoir of Sorts. New York, Doubleday, 2025, 599 pages.

“Relentless Pursuit: Our Battle with Jeffrey Epstein” by Bradley J. Edwards: Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were Rich Neighbors

“Jeffrey Epstein’s house was on a cul-de-sac in the billionaire section of Palm Beach Island, not far from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club (1, p. 25).

“Most of the messages that were confiscated were taken by the butler, who in 2005, was a man named Alfredo Rodriguez. Other messages were taken by Epstein’s various assistants…Someone named Ghislaine Maxwell also took messages and was one of the few people other than Jeffrey who received messages. She was referred to in the messages sometimes as Ghislaine, and other times, by the staff, as Ms. Maxwell. The regular callers included Donald Trump…Epstein’s close friends…left more detailed messages during that time period, which gave better insight into what Epstein was up to” (1. p. 48).

Comment: I have just started reading this book, which was written by a Florida-based victims’ rights attorney. He has not said that Trump was anything other than a rich neighbor and regular caller.

1. Bradley J. Edwards with Brittany Henderson. Relentless Pursuit: Our Battle with Jeffrey Epstein. New York, Gallery Books, 2021.

“The Schopenhauer Cure” a novel by Irvin D. Yalom: The protagonist, an eminent, terminally ill, psychotherapist, reviews the case of a patient he had failed to help twenty years ago: Had the therapist missed the diagnosis of multiple personality?

“PAST HISTORY: Grew up in Connecticut, only child, upper middle class. Father investment banker who committed suicide when Philip was thirteen…Blanket childhood amnesia—remembers little of his first several years and nothing of his father’s funeral…” (1, p. 20).

Comment: The amnesia suggests dissociative identity disorder (a.k.a. multiple personality disorder) in which the current “host” personality cannot remember what a traumatized alternate personality had experienced.

1. Irvin D. Yalom. The Schopenhauer Cure. New York, Harper Perennial, 2005.

2. Wikipedia. “Irvin D. Yalom.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvin_D._Yalom

“The Making of a Monster: Donald J. Trump” by Robert Ragnar: An Astrological Interpretation

“I’m not usually one to engage in astrological prognostication—but according to the star-gazing community, Donald Trump, born June 14, 1946, is the archetypal Gemini. For a man whose supporters claim he’s divinely chosen, such cosmic coincidences can be rhetorically useful.”

“Geminis, ruled by Mercury, are said to possess the gift of communication. They’re also known for their duality—a convenient trait when one needs to maintain two contradictory realities at once. Not to malign every Gemini, but if you have a narcissistic bent toward domination as your preferred playground stratagem, then dualistic thinking makes it all the easier to rationalize deception as a tactic” (1, p. 87).

1. Wikipedia. “Astrology.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology

2. Ragnar, Robert. The Making of a Monster: Vol. 1: Donald J. Trump. ChaosBooks.com, 2025.

 “Hiding in Plain Sight” by Sarah Kendzior (1, 2)

“In the fall of 2015, I predicted that Donald Trump would win the presidential election, and that once installed, he would decimate American democracy…My initial fear that Trump sought to rule like post-Soviet dictators was soon supplanted by the realization he was directly connected to said dictators through his own staff…To see what unchecked corporate power looks like without even the pretense of law, you need look no further than Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Trump views Russia’s brutal hypercapitalism with envy. Putin, who stripped Russia of resources and rights, is rumored to be the wealthiest man in the world…

“For decades, Trump had relied on oligarchs and mobsters from the former USSR for support after Wall Street blacklisted him following his bankruptcies in the 1990’s. The one bank that agreed to take him on—Deutsche Bank—is notorious for facilitating Russian money-laundering…

“Once an autocrat gets into office, it is very hard to get them out…” (1, pp. (3-7).

Comment: I just came upon this book. I have read only what I’ve quoted. It’s not new. We’ll see what happens.

1. Sarah Kendzior. Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America. New York, Flatiron Books, 2020/2021. 

2. Wikipedia. Hiding in Plain Sight (Kendzior book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiding_in_Plain_Sight_(Kendzior_book)