ECHO 31/3/06

Is it possible that writers ‘share’ characters? Is there a kind of fictional gene pool which we tap into and end up dragging up the same people – archetypes even - whom we subtly alter each time? Some would argue yes; some would say mere coincidence. Or else they will put forward that old adage that ‘there is nothing new under heaven’. Either way, I am aware of it. I wrote a draft of a short story over the past ten days or so in which a character called ‘Jennifer’ appears. She was not based on anyone I know, merely a sketch accrued in passing during a walk through London town. She figured there in the drama and grew. Then I open a new novel to read, close on a week later, and the main protagonist’s wife is called Jennifer. I would put this down to mere coincidence; it is just a name after all. Sure it conjures a social class perhaps, or a look of the person in the mind’s eye, but it is a common enough name. However, to me it feels as if I have been cheated, that my decisions could be interpreted as being influenced. Or that I even knew it would be this way and that I would have to go further to find my originality. Take another step. Re-formulate what was written. Whether I will r not remains to be seen, but I get the sense I am walking into a Borges-ian labyrinth. A reflective library, teasing me into pretending I may have had an original thought, when in reality someone else was thinking it at the precise moment. Then, does it become a race, a duel even, with an unseen unknown competitor?