Dear Reader,
I would like to compile a list of books/stories about doubles, and I would love your help with that list. As incentive, I would like to give away two copies of Adam McOmber’s novel, The White Forest, which is, yes, about doubles (well, partly, anyway). I have an extra copy of the hardcover and an extra copy of the paperback galley, and I’d like to send them each to a randomly chosen commenter, someone who will help me with my list.
Here’s what I have so far (and yes, I realize I’m leaving many things off; I want you to win, you see):
“William Wilson,” Poe.
The Devil’s Elixirs and “The Doubles,” ETA Hoffmann
“The Double,” Dostoyevsky
“Love and Mr. Lewisham,” H. G. Wells
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde.
“At the End of the Passage,” Kipling.
“The Horla” and “Peter and John” Guy de Maupassant.
So, again, just comment below, adding to the list, and I’ll pick two winners in a week or so, when the list has grown a bit.
Many thanks,
Gabriel
Despair, Nabokov
“Goodbye, My Brother,” by John Cheever
Would Murakami’s “Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” work?
These come immediately to mind:
Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities
Conrad’s The Secret Sharer
Ellison’s Invisible Man
I’ve never read “The Secret Sharer” (I don’t think I’ve read any of Conrad’s short fiction, to be honest). I will now. Thanks, John!
– Borges and I
– Tom McCarthy’s Remainder
– several Dennis Cooper novels (Marbled Swarm and Period jump to mind, but they’re all chock-full)
– Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – P K Dick (I’m sure PKD uses doubling in more places than here)
– Delillo’s Body Artist (strange man appearing as a doppelganger for the artists dead husband)
– Distant Star, Bolaño (the mystery narrative that ends the novel)
– Shatterday, Harlan Ellison (a favorite from when I was in high school)
– Erasers, Robbe-Grillet
– Solaris, Stanislaw Lem (the novel, though there are so many great examples from film! Żuławski’s Possession and Gozu!)
Great list, Scott. Thanks! (And, yes, PKD’s interest in identity means that there are a number of doubles in his work; Palmer Eldritch also immediately comes to mind.)
Film can’t seem to help being about doubles, huh? I’ve only seen a (pretty ugly) VHS rip of Possession, but my wife made me a present of the Korean DVD, and I look forward to seeing it again. How is it that it hasn’t been officially released here yet?
You’re right, there’s not a US release of it I can find anywhere. I now wonder how the hell I ever watched a DVD version of it…
If you haven’t seen it, Tom McCarthy co-wrote a film called Double Take, drawn party from Borges and I, that’s fantastic, and all about doubling.
Oh and, blah, Auster’s New York Trilogy, big one, I think the middle story is the double-detective one? Ghosts?
– Borges and I
– Tom McCarthy’s Remainder
– several Dennis Cooper novels (Marbled Swarm and Period jump to mind, but they’re all chock-full)
– Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – P K Dick (I’m sure PKD uses doubling in more places than here)
– Delillo’s Body Artist (strange man appearing as a doppelganger for the artists dead husband)
– Distant Star, Bolaño (the mystery narrative that ends the novel)
– Shatterday, Harlan Ellison (a favorite from when I was in high school)
– Erasers, Robbe-Grillet
– Solaris, Stanislaw Lem (the novel, though there are so many great examples from film! Żuławski’s Possession and Gozu!)
The Double by José Saramago
Thanks, everyone! Keep em coming.
Upstaged, by Jacques Jouet
(An Oulipo author, and I’d imagine that you could plumb the depths of Oulipians to find several more examples of doubling).
Oh! and also “The Invention of Morel,” by Adolfo Bioy Casares
and (a failed attempt at doubling),
“The Literary Conference,” by Cesar Aira
Marie Redonnet’s Nevermore has tons of doubling.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman.
Sshhhh! by Jason
Synechdoche, New York
Marie Redonnet’s Nevermore has tons of doubling.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman.
Sshhhh! by Jason
Synechdoche, New York
Also, Lutz Bassman’s We Monks & Soldiers.
If your find quadrupling permissible (divisible by two), Martone’s Four for a Quarter.
Thanks, Nick! I am really interested in We Monks and Soldiers and Bassmann/Volodine in general. I’m sure you saw the review we had in The Collagist this month: http://www.dzancbooks.org/the-collagist/2013/1/13/we-monks-and-soldiers-by-lutz-bassmann.html.
Darin Strauss’ Chang and Eng
Are you building a syllabus, Gabe?
Not a syllabus, just a reading/rewriting list. Thanks, Michael!
Here’s a poem as well–Lucie Brock-Broido’s “Elective Mutes”:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40241870?uid=3739832&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101714801277
Clarence Major – My Amputations
R.L. Stevenson – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Blake Butler – There Is No Year
Also, Gordon Slethaug wrote a critical examination of the double in works of experimental literature called The Play of the Double.
Also, Dimitris Vardoulakis wrote a critical study called The Doppelgänger: Literature’s Philosophy.
In Twin Peaks, the Black Lodge houses the doubles.
In How I Met Your Mother, each of the main characters have a double.
Many of the characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation have doubles, including Riker and Data, who tend to be evil-twins.
Harold Ramis’s Multiplicity.
Obviously, Vertigo.
Single White Female.
Wow, there’s a lot of doubles out there, the more I think about it.
Just ordered The Doppelgänger: Literature’s Philosophy. The list bears (yet more) fruit! Thanks, Chris.
The Other, by Borges
Pale Fire, by Nabokov (not a for-sure double, but could be interpreted that way)
The Castle, by Kafka (I always assume the two assistants are identical twins.)
Orlando, by Woolf (does a man who becomes a woman count as a story of a double?)
Doubling is a major theme in the work of Christopher Priest, especially in:
The Affirmation
The Extremes
The Prestige
I read The Affirmation, The Inverted World, and The Glamour in rapid succession last year. I’m looking forward to getting back into Priest. Soon, I think. Thanks, Paul!
Might be stretching it, Gabe, but in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu is a sort of double of the hero.
Robert Aickman – Niemandswasser
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff – The Jew’s Beech
Michel Tournier – Gemini
Jean Paul – Flegeljahre (The Awkward Age)
Tayeb Salih – Season of Migration to the North
Charles Williams – Descent into Hell
Agota Kristof – The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels
Patrick White – The Solid Mandala
Tom Tryon – The Other
James Hogg – The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
And our winners: Nick Francis Potter and Scott Carver, as chosen by RANDOM.ORG. Congratulations, gents! Sincere thanks to everyone who commented for helping with the list.
No one’s mentioned Shirley Jackson’s “The Beautiful Stranger” yet, but doppelgangers are definitely implied.
Also if we’re counting movies/TV there’s Fringe. Doubles from the other universe cross over and impersonate/interact with their others.