“The Famished Road” by Ben Okri: Should Author’s Cultural Background Override Protagonist’s Psychological Symptoms?

Two-thirds through this 500-page Booker Prize-winning novel (1), I am not yet clear about its cultural premises (Ben Okri was born in Nigeria), or whether the author’s cultural background should be more important than the protagonist’s psychological symptoms.

What kind of boy is the protagonist, Azaro? Is he an “Abiku” (3) or a “Spirit child”(4) and what do these African terms mean? Do they explain why, since early in the novel, Azaro has been hearing the voices of his “spirit companions”? Or should his hearing voices be interpreted psychologically, just like characters in any other novel?

I hope the final third of the novel helps me deal with these issues.

1. Ben Okri. The Famished Road. New York, Anchor/Doubleday, 1992.

2. John C. Hawley. “Ben Okri’s Spirit Child: Abiku Migration and Postmodernity.” https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/engl/70/

3. Wikipedia. “Abiku.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiku

4. Wikipedia. “Spirit Children.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_children

Authors, Fiction’s Psychological Source, Rarely Explain 

Feel Normal: Write Fiction

In a recent post, I quoted a novelist known for magic realism as saying he had actually had those kinds of weird, magical experiences.

The public acceptance of those works might have helped him to feel normal. 

“The Famished Road” Booker Prize-winning novel by Ben Okri (2): Quote on cover calls it “Something approaching a masterpiece of magic realism”

The novel opens with remarks that are suggestive, not of magic realism, but of multiple personality:

“Sometimes I seemed to be living several lives at once…Often, by night or day, voices spoke to me. I came to realize that they were the voices of my spirit companions” (1, p. 7).

And I have reason to doubt that “magic realism,” the literary technique of using magical thinking in a realistic context (3), is a valid concept, because Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a writer who was supposedly a major exponent of magic realism, said it was merely the kind of subjective experience that he was prone to have. He insisted on…

“…the direct relation between his own novels and his own life: ‘There’s not a line in any of my books which I can’t connect to a real experience. There is always a reference to a concrete reality.’ This is why he has always asserted that far from being a ‘magical realist,’ he is just a ‘poor notary’ who copies down what is placed on his desk” (4, p. 153).

So I expect that Ben Okri’s The Famished Road will have what looks like a literary technique (magic realism). But will it be a literary technique that he is using, or an imaginative kind of thinking that he is prone to have? I will see.

1. Ben Okri. The Famished Road. New York, Anchor/Doubleday, 1992.

2. Wikipedia.“Ben Okri.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Okri

3.Wikipedia. “Magic Realism.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism

4. Gerald Martin. Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.

“Elective Affinities” (post 3) by Goethe: Title may mean characters had minds of their own

This novel’s meaning has never been clear: “From the time of its publication to today, Goethe's novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities, 1809), has aroused a storm of interpretive confusion” (Wikipedia) (1).

I suspect that Goethe chose the title, “Elective Affinities, when he found that his characters would do whatever they wanted or elected to do, consistent with the study of fiction writers and their characters by Marjorie Taylor (2).

1. Wikipedia. “Elective Affinities.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_Affinities

2. Marjorie Taylor, et al. https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/7/8783/files/2014/07/TaylorHodgesKohanyi-130mpe0.pdf

Alter Ego of World Champion: “When I’m fighting, I’m totally someone else”

“We all have our alter ego…I don’t like fights; I don’t like arguing,” she said. But when I’m in the gym, or when I’m training, when I’m fighting, I’m totally someone else.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/sports/amanda-serrano-erika-cruz-preview.html

Comment: There may not be any practical difference between that kind of "alter ego" and the alternate personality of multiple personality trait.

Added 10:15 a.m.: It would be interesting to know where her detailed memories of fights are stored: equally in the memory bank of her regular ego and of her alter ego, or mainly in the memory bank of her alter ego.

“Elective Affinities” (post 2) by Goethe: Two characters have identical handwriting, like alternate personalities who are merging in therapy

As I noted in post 1, the names of the four main characters are variations of each other, which is often seen in multiple personality among the alternate personalities. Further evidence of their being like alternate personalities is when the handwritings of two of them become identical.

“…how great was his [Eduard’s] astonishment when he ran his eyes over the final pages…‘That is my handwriting.’ He looked at Ottilie, and again at the pages. Especially the ending was exactly as if he had written it himself” (1, p. 81)…“the beginning in Ottolie’s childish and diffident hand…the ending…looked so much like his own” (1, p. 85).

Comment: Goethe uses Ottilie’s ability to mimic Eduard’s handwriting as evidence for the love between them. But in real life, the handwritings of lovers don’t become identical.

However, in therapy for multiple personality, if an attempt is made to merge two alternate personalities, their handwritings may become identical, to the extent that the merger is becoming successful.

1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Elective Affinities [1809]. Trans. David Constantine. Oxford, Oxford University Press, UK, 1994/2008. 

“Two-Headed” Writers: Louisa May Alcott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Roald Dahl

Because Roald Dahl became famous for both his very-adult short stories and his books for children, some critics thought of him as a “two-headed creature” (1, p.1), which would be the simplest form of multiple personality (but they didn’t use that term).

The reference to Dahl as “two-headed” reminds me of two other famous writers who were also self-divided. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known today as creator of the prototypically down-to-earth Sherlock Holmes, but during his lifetime Doyle also wrote “Gothic Tales” (search it) and was a public advocate for belief in spiritualism (fairies, etc.).

Louisa May Alcott is best known today as the author of Little Women, but she also wrote what she called her “blood and thunder” stories. Search “Alcott.”

And those are not the only writers who have had their heads in multiple genres, which entails multiple consciousness, also known as multiple personality.

1. Mark I. West. Roald Dahl. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1992.

“Elective Affinities” by Goethe: Opens with multiple personality-style naming of characters and talk of “unconscious memories” before Freud was born

The four main characters “have versions of the same name: the Captain is called Otto, Eduard was christened Otto but changed his name, and Charlotte and Ottilie share the syllable 'ott-'; and the name OTTO, composed of only two different letters, suggests a formula for the deep structure of human relationships” (1, p. 18).

Comment: It is not uncommon in multiple personality for the names of a person’s alternate personalities to be variations of one person’s name.

In the first chapter, Eduard and Charlotte discuss the advisability of having the Captain as a guest. Eduard tends to favor it. 'I am not superstitious,’ Charlotte replied, ‘and attach no importance to these vague promptings—if they were only that. But they are most often unconscious memories of fortunate and unfortunate consequences…(2, p. 8).

Comment: This novel was published fifty years before Freud was born, which underlines the fact that Freud did not discover “the unconscious” (search “Freud” and “the unconscious” for past posts).

1. Ritchie Robertson. Goethe: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, Oxford University Press, UK, 2016.

2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Elective Affinities [1809]. Trans. David Constantine. Oxford, Oxford University Press, UK, 1994/2008. 

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” a 1797 poem by Goethe about spirits with independent agency, could have been about fiction writers’ characters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer's_Apprentice

http://socialcognitionlab.uoregon.edu/files/2013/03/Taylor-Hodges-Kohanyi_2003-2b6wdel.pdf

Multiple Personality is usually not Multiple Personality Disorder 

Roald Dahl concludes “Matilda” with an allusion to the famous Multiple Personality novel, "Trilby"

“As soon as it became clear that Miss Trunchbull [Dahl’s villain] had completely disappeared from the scene, the excellent Mr Trilby was appointed Head Teacher in her place” (1, p. 228).

If you are not familiar with the multiple personality novel that introduced the famous villain, Svengali, search “Trilby” in this blog.

1. Roald Dahl. Matilda. New York, Viking, 1988. 

“Matilda” by Roald Dahl: Matilda converses with “the voice”

Matilda, a small, but extremely precocious girl, is having a private, in-person conversation with her elementary school teacher, Miss Honey.

“You are so much wiser than your years, my dear,’ Miss Honey went on, ‘that it quite staggers me. Although you look like a child, you are not really a child at all because your mind and your powers of reasoning seem to be fully grown-up…

“Up to now,’Miss Honey went on, ‘I have found it impossible to talk to anyone about my problems…Any courage I had was knocked out of me when I was young. But now, all of a sudden I have a sort of desperate wish to tell everything to somebody…

“Matilda became very alert. The voice she was hearing was surely crying out for help. It must be. It had to be.

“Then the voice spoke again. “Have some more tea, it said. ‘I think there is still a drop left.’

"Matilda nodded…(1, pp. 195-196) [Miss Honey proceeds to tell her life story…]

Comment: It would have been more natural to say Miss Honey was surely crying out for help…Then Miss Honey spoke again, “Have some more tea, she said.

The redundant use of “the voice” makes me think that someone (the author, in his creative process) was hearing voices, which, in nonpsychotic persons, would very likely be voices of alternate personalities. Assuming that Dahl was not trying to portray Matilda as having multiple personality, then he may have had multiple personality trait.

1. Roald Dahl. Matilda. New York, Viking, 1988. 

Roald Dahl on Fiction Writing

“The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his work room in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction drinks more whiskey than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I’m sure, is why he does it" (1, pp. 171-172).

1. Roald Dahl. Boy (Tales of Childhood) [1984] and Going Solo [1986]. New York, Puffin Books/Penguin, 2010.  

Roald Dahl’s famous short story, “The Way Up to Heaven” (1, 2)

The reader is encouraged to believe that rich, 70-year-old Mr. Foster continually frightens his faithful wife by keeping her waiting, when he knows that she gets panic attacks if she arrives at places late.

But Mr. Foster’s guilt in this regard is explicitly stated to be in doubt: “Assuming (though one cannot be sure) that the husband was guilty…” (2, p. 131). 

And if the author created this character, why wouldn’t he be absolutely sure of his guilt?

The alleged villain dies in a stuck elevator of their large Manhattan building while his allegedly saintly wife—before she left, she probably heard his cries for help—was in Paris, visiting her grandchildren. He was supposedly not found while she was away, because their servants had time-off. But a large, luxury building in Manhattan would have been continuously staffed and monitored. And a rich, 70-year-old man would have been searched for when he did not contact his friends or show up at his club. Thus, the story’s scenario is implausible.

However, even if the readers suspended disbelief and overlooked the story’s implausibilities, why didn’t the author see the story’s problems? Why couldn’t Dahl read the character’s mind and be sure that he was guilty? Because, in a psychologically significant sense, the author didn’t create this story and these characters, which probably came from his storytelling, alternate personalities.

1. Wikipedia. “The Way Up to Heaven.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Up_to_Heaven

2. Roald Dahl. The Best of Roald Dahl. New York, Vintage Books, 1990.

Comment added next day: If she had knowingly left him to die, then she was the true villain, and her husband had known it, in Dahl's opinion.

Eugene O’Neill: Nobel Prize-winner’s Masterpiece is being filmed

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/movies/long-days-journey-into-night-eugene-oneill-jessica-lange-ed-harris.html

Please search “O’Neill” for past posts on the multiple personality, not only in his masterpiece, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” but even more blatantly in plays prior to his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Novelist Matt Haig publicizes his psychiatric issues

“Shortly after the publication of The Midnight Library, at the age of 46, he was diagnosed with A.D.H.D. and autism. In his nonfiction, Haig has been candid about his mental health; his memoir, Reasons to Stay Alive, grew out of depression so deep, it almost spurred him to walk off a cliff”(1). One symptom he had was that “my reflection showed another person” (2, p. 46), a symptom that may be associated with multiple personality (3, p. 62).

1. Elizabeth Egan. “Inside the List.” New York Times, 01-15-2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/05/books/review/matt-haig-the-midnight-library.html

2. Matt Haig. Reasons to Stay Alive. Edinburgh, Canongate, 2015.

3. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

“Taste” a short story by Roald Dahl: This story’s very peculiar opening, in which wine is personified, suggests Dahl had multiple personality trait

“Richard Pratt was a famous gourmet. He was president of a small society known as the Epicures…He organized dinners where sumptuous dishes and rare wines were served…and when discussing a wine, he had a curious, rather droll habit of referring to it as though it were a living being. ‘A prudent wine,’ he would say, ‘rather diffident and evasive, but quite prudent.’ Or, ‘a good-humored wine, benevolent and cheerful—slightly obscene, perhaps, but nonetheless good-humored” (1, p. 53).

1.Roald Dahl. The Best of Roald Dahl. New York, Vintage Books, 1990.

For a story synopsis, go to Wikipedia and search “Taste (short story).”

Comment: Since fiction writers often say they speak with their characters, this short story’s very peculiar opening, in which wine is personified, might be what Roald Dahl was told by his character, Pratt, near the beginning of the writing process. This would suggest that Dahl, like most great fiction writers, had multiple personality trait.

Multiple Personality means having Alternate Identities

“A year before George Santos first ran for Congress, he appeared at an L. G. B. T. Q. event using one of his alternate identities.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/nyregion/santos-trans-therapy-devolder.html

Patrick Modiano: Nobel Prize winner jokes about multiple personality in New York Times Book Review Interview

“You’re organizing a literary dinner party.  Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

I don’t know if one could organize a literary “party” inviting 20 writers as one would organize a meeting of club members. I’m afraid these writers, unless they are already friends, wouldn’t have much to say to one another. James Joyce and Marcel Proust met once when they were invited to a party in Paris. This was reportedly their only exchange:

“It’s raining.”

“Do you have an umbrella?”

“No.”

“Me neither” (1).

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/books/review/patrick-modiano-books.html

Comment: The joke is based on the fact that a fiction writer’s regular, “host personality” is probably not the personality who wrote his books.