Me and my Alter Ego

Every writer who has ever written anything, in one way or another has created or chosen an alter ego. Proust's narrator and Nick Adams of Hemingway are excellent examples. The reason writers do this, I think, is to create a means of narrating personal experience without the narration being a direct autobiography. In addition, it allows the writer to add or subtract from the narrated experience those parts that do not add anything to the drama or emotion of the narration. And also, to protect the innocent, as they say. We all have things that we prefer to keep secret.

The problem with alter egos is that sometimes they take over the narrative, literally take it away from the writer and start dictating the course of the writing.

I was once asked how I could write dialogues that seem so natural. And I replied, without exaggeration, that I do not write the dialogue, that I transcribe it.

"What do you mean, you transcribe it?" asked my friend

"Yes. I only listen to what the characters say and that's what I write," I replied.

I should also have added that it is not me who "listens" to the characters, it is my alter ego.

I think most writers are like that. Some of us will admit it, others will not, but I think that in order for the characters in our stories or novels to appear so vivid, so alive, it is necessary that the things they do and say are like a film whose action and dialogs are eventually transcribed onto paper or screen of a computer, and who makes this transcription is the alter ego of the writer.

Well, this is the character that the writer observes with the most interest because the alter ego is always there, either as a character or as a narrator. One only has to read the first pages of the first volume of "In search of lost time" by Proust, to see an alter ego in action. This is the narrator, a young boy, who laments that the visitor to his parents' house has prevented his mother from coming upstairs to give him the customary good night kiss. That is something one does not need to invent. Those are feelings that only an alter ego can express because at that moment the alter ego and the author are one and the same.

But, memories like those reach the alter ego only after he or she takes over the narrative. They are too personal, too emotional to be an invention. Those are memories that come at night or when the alter ego, and therefore the author, are in a contemplative mood.

This is why writers need the peace and quiet of a studio or a place where they cannot be disturbed, so that they can listen to their characters and so that they can "follow" their alter ego and see what it is he or she is doing.

All of this is to say that this self-imposed isolation is just what is needed for the task of writing and observing an alter ego. As my favorite saying goes: something good comes out of something bad and vise versa.

In my case, my alter ego is a guy named Rafael Artebuz. Do not ask me about the name because it is a long story that I will tell at another time. The point is that for years Rafael has been writing stories, anecdotes, observations, emails, and notes about his own life and the lives of those around him. And he feels that it is time to put all this material in book form. He is not sure if this will result in a novel or what they now call an autobiofiction, which is a mixture of autobiography and fiction. He says he has excellent models to choose from in this post-modern era: Julian Barnes' "Falubert's Parrot" and most of Patrick Modiano's novels, especially the Rue des Boutiques Obscures (published in Spanish as La Calle de Tiendas Oscuras and in English as Missing Person).

I asked my alter ego if he would allow me to publish some excerpts from his writings. He has agreed to allow it. I will post them in future blog posts. It must be interesting what he writes because Rafael has been around the world and has had many adventures, or at least that's what he told me.

In any case, he is a good companion in this moment of strict and prolonged isolation. We'll see.