WHO AM I THIS TIME? Uncovering the Fictive Personality

by Jay Martin ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 1988

A literary-man-turned-psychoanalyst takes a fresh, provocative look at the various ways--sometimes useful and sometimes destructive--human beings are influenced by myth and fantasy. We are all affected by the myths, fantasies, and fairy tales that surround us--the novels we read, the movies we watch, the tales we hear at our grandmother's knee--but, as Martin shows with great clarity and insight, sometimes our identification with these fictions can get us into trouble. Comparing the influence of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye on Mark David Chapman (who murdered John Lennon) with the influence, in Cervantes' famous novel, of chivalric romances on Don Quixote, Martin argues that ""each self has a secret theater--rather like the magic theater in Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf--in which archaic assumptions, antique perspectives, cliched emotions, like used furniture and leftover bric-a-brac, clutter the stage and, still connected to past roles, determine the actions of the present."" Himself the author of four literary biographies, including Always Merry and Bright: The Life of Henry Miller; Nathanael West: The Art of His Life; and Conrad Aiken: A Life of His Art, Martin is a clear, serviceable writer with an irrepressible genius for discovering hidden similarities in seemingly diverse material. Thus William Faulkner, Patty Hearst, Sigmund Freud, the movie Taxi Driver, and some of his own patients come under an identical, intense scrutiny as Martin wends his way towards his conclusion that ""it is neither possible nor desirable to dispense with fictions. But to possess only fictions means to be possessed by them."" Enjoyable, perceptive, broad-ranging.

Pub Date: March 7, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION