Book box | Doppelgänger and dissonance: When Neil Gaiman and Alice Munro disappoint

On the morning of the news, I walk along Juhu Beach. The Arabian Sea is dark grey, the waves high in this monsoon season, and the wind rushes past me as I listen to Neil Gaiman on the BBC. Lonely island Podcast. The author tells touching stories about the books he wrote for his children, describes a popular Gilbert and Sullivan opera song, and talks about his wife, musician Amanda. Later that same day, I heard him speak on Masterclass about how to write a story. I feel like I know this amazing, warm, brilliant man. And then this shocking news.

It takes me back to my teenage years, to my faded, yellowed copy of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. During the day, Dr. Jekyll leads a righteous life in London, caring for his patients. At night, he turns into Mr. Hyde, frequenting dens of depravity and committing the worst crimes. This was a strange story for me as a teenager. Today, it seems surprisingly accurate.

I think about doppelganger by Naomi Klein, a book that has been on my mind for weeks. Doppelgänger is the German word for “double,” although the word means more than this literal translation. Your doppelgänger could be a completely different person who looks like you, or it could also have the sinister connotation of a doppelgänger with an evil spirit.

In a brilliant book that won this year’s Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, author Naomi Klein uses these multiple meanings of the term doppelgänger to provide insights into our fragmented lives.

The book begins when Naomi is haunted by her doppelgänger, who is a real person. Wherever Naomi Klein goes, she is mistaken for another Naomi – Naomi Wolf. Both Naomis are activist writers.

So far, so good. But what makes this experience disturbing is that the other Naomi is a darker version – her academic research turns out to be wrong and she is denied her PhD. She goes berserk and becomes a conspiracy theorist. And this is the double that Naomi Klein is mistaken for both online and offline.

Klein uses this as a starting point to explore dual identities. People have always had different versions of themselves. At the business school where I teach, I am a professor in a sari. At home, I am a shabbily dressed mother of three. With friends, I am somewhere in between.

In the digital world, it’s a very different story, says Klein. The divide between different versions of ourselves can become dangerously deep as we create digital identities. I open my phone and look at my Instagram account. Pictures of me posing with other writers and readers are everywhere. It’s neat and nice and filtered to highlight Sonya the writer and reader—and to block out all the messy parts of my life. I know everyone does it, but Klein warns me. Is this differentiation normal, or is it a step on the slippery slope to creating a dazzling self that highlights everything that gets social admiration while my “real” self morphs into a shadow version? Feeling disoriented, I do something drastic—I delete the Instagram app from my phone.

I remember reading the sexual abuse allegations against science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke years ago. They were horrific, but they seemed to belong to a distant universe. However, these revelations have thrown my carefully constructed world of writerly heroes into disarray compared to the others. Perhaps the answer lies not in individual extreme cases, but in the bigger picture.

I turn to the science fiction novel The city and the citywhere this Jekyll and Hyde, this doppelgänger duality, becomes larger than life. The way it inflates reality to expose our absurdities is one of the many reasons I love science fiction. I quickly find myself drawn into the story of two cities in the same geographical location – some “crossed” streets even have sections that belong to one and then the other. One city is old and shabby, the second more glitzy. The citizens of the two cities have been trained to ignore each other, to “not see” each other. But then there’s a murder, and things get complicated. The murder investigation moves slowly, and normally that would make me impatient, but this time I’m enjoying the slow burn and soaking up the world-building.

Like the two cities in this book, our fractured selves only manifest together when a crime is committed. Suddenly we are confronted with the terrible dissonance we have learned to ignore for so long.

And what about you, dear reader? Do you think you can separate the two selves – like you can separate art from an artist? Have you ever had a doppelgänger, someone who looks and feels like you, someone who reminds you in some uncanny way? Or a second you that you create and maintain online that may be significantly different from the “real” you?

See you next week and happy reading.

Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Every week she brings you specially curated books that give you a comprehensive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at [email protected]

The views expressed are personal

Books mentioned in this issue of Book Box

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by RL Stevenson

Doppelgänger of Naomi Klein

The Town and the City of China Mievelle