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, October 24, 2013

Who Wrote Toni Morrison’s Jazz?

In a previous post, I quoted Toni Morrison as saying that her characters are autonomous, but she keeps them under control, since, ultimately, it is her novel, not theirs. In terms of multiple personality, the narrator is Toni Morrison, and the characters are her autonomous, alternate personalities.

However, according to Toni Morrison, she was not the narrator of her novel, Jazz. In other words, both the characters and the narrator were autonomous, alternate personalities. To quote Toni Morrison:

“So, when I was thinking of who was going to tell this story…I was looking for a voice…

“So, then the voice realizes, after hearing other voices, that the narrative is not going to be at all what it predicted. The more it learns about the characters (and they are not what the voice thought), it has to go on…I’ve done this in other places but not as radically as here. The thing is, I could not think of the voice as a person; I know everybody refers to “I” as a woman (because I’m a woman, I guess), but for me, it was very important that the “I”…never sits down, it never walks, because it’s a book. The voice is the voice of a talking book…It’s a book talking, but few people read it like that…

“…so no one’s in control.”

So, who wrote Jazz? According to Toni Morrison, it was, subjectively, psychologically, not Toni Morrison. It was, call it what you will—a voice, a book, an alternate personality—a psychological entity other than the one who goes by the name of Toni Morrison.

I am writing this blog, because when writers say things like that, most people don’t hear and respect what they say. But I do. And I hope you will, too.
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1. “Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison Speaks about Her Novel Jazz,” an interview by Angels Carabi, 1993. Reprinted in Toni Morrison: Conversations, edited by Carolyn C. Denard, University Press of Mississippi, 2008, pp. 91-97.
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2 comments:

  1. Susan K. PerryOctober 31, 2013 at 6:56 PM

    I haven't read much of Toni Morrison, but that shouldn't matter, as I've interviewed about 100 writers. If someone is spiritually inclined, their perception of how they create is probably going to be different from that of a hard-headed realist/atheist. It's not that I don't believe or respect Morrison's claims. I see things differently.

    My own experience is that, as I worked on revising my first novel so I could finally find a publisher (which took a decade altogether), my main character, Kylie, continued to live "out there" somewhere. She still does. Of course, I wrote her as a version of myself, living a somewhat different life, having a vastly different experience (child death rather than my own ordinary empty nest sadness). I didn't know how the story was going to end, but as I got close, it all came together in my mind. I am aware that I made choices (not necessarily the best ones for a mass audience who likes NOT to be left sad).

    What I and others describe as a flow state seems to be what you're calling multiple personality, so that writers with the kind of personality that is easily hypnotized, has looser boundaries, and so on, may very well slip into flow and seem actually to inhabit a different personality for the length of the writing session. There are deeper and longer states of flow, and yet some of us never achieve that and have to settle for light and short dips into that lovely trance-like state. For me and many others, this has nothing to do with actual other personalities. Which could be a linguistic issue (or, to me, that's what it is).

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    Replies
    1. Kenneth A. Nakdimen, M.D.October 31, 2013 at 7:58 PM

      I would distinguish between a flow state (a self-hypnotic or in-the-zone altered state of consciousness) and multiple personality (in which characters or alternate narrators have minds of their own). You appear to experience only the former, while Toni Morrison appears to experience both. For readers interested in the flow state of writers, I recommend Susan K. Perry's excellent book.

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