TWO CAN BE AS BAD AS ONE; IT’S THE LONELIEST NUMBER SINCE THE NUMBER ONE…: So a friend is working on a paper about Faulkner.

Yeah, I’m sorry too.

But she asked me some questions about doppelgangers, and why they’re such a fixture of literature, and I thought maybe you guys could help out. So: Why are doubles so freaky?!

My tentative answers:

1. doubles can feel like they’re a way of revoking irrevocable acts–they’re the path not taken, what we could be. …

2. representation of an already-divided consciousness, driving home how divided our souls are anyway–Jekyll and Hyde is obvious example. Lois Duncan (kids’ horror writer) has a novel called STRANGER WITH MY FACE, and I think that’s the horror–to realize that I myself am the “stranger with my face.” (Cf Lancelot etc etc etc.)

3. you are just another human. …You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake. You are, in fact, kind of detritus, and not noteworthy. I think this is some of what Poe is tapping into in “W.W.”, though I don’t remember that story very well.

4. specific to doubling/incest stories: someone else knows you, inside and out, fully knows you, overcomes the barriers to knowing another person, and loves you (or at least wants to boff you!) anyway. The Symposium thing about the round people obviously plays into this too.

5. maybe the number two feels kind of unfinished?? Three is a very finished number: all things come in threes; father, mother and child; Trinity; etc. One is alone (either self-sufficient, or seeking/questing); three is the end of the quest, the building of a home; but two is in-between. You shouldn’t stop at two. It’s perverse to be satisfied with eros-without-children–??

thoughts??