“Be Yourself” (Strange Stories, October 1940)

Bloch, Robert. “Be Yourself.” Strange Stories, October 1940, pp. 52-66.
archive.org/details/strange-stories-v-04-n-02-1940-10/page/52/mode/2up

Eddie Thompson is a writer of fantastic stories, and he develops an alter-ego to match his flamboyant tales: F. Thatcher Van Archer is a debonair swashbuckler, one who affects a sophisticated accent and who wears outlandish, aristocratic clothing. One day, while Van Archer was trying to write, he began to feel more like Eddie the regular guy than Van Archer, the fantasy-author genius. In his room during a day of creative frustration, Eddie is confronted by Van Archer who sems to have attained a physical reality completely separate from Eddie. Van Archer is his usual arrogant self, telling Eddie that he is the talented one, that he is the one who is the writer who has won fame and wealth. Eddie is flummoxed and even more so when his wife enters the room and treats Van Archer as her husband while Eddie is standing right there. Van Archer “introduces” Eddie as his little brother who is there for a surprise visit, and Maizie believes it. Van Archer tells Eddie that it is time for Eddie to disappear, to go away and to leave Van Archer and Maizie to continue their lives together. Eddie knows he has to fight back, but he is hard-pressed to find a way. When he gets Maize along, he is able to draw her out, and she relates how she is tired of Van Archer’s pretense, that she wishes he were more like his old self, the simpler man she fell in love with. Eddie kisses her, and she is moved. 

When Van Archer tells Eddie that he needs help in negotiating a book contract, Eddie agrees. Eddie is privy to conversations outside of Van Archer’s hearing. People don’t like Van Archer; they do not take him seriously. Where Van Archer fails to close the book contract, Eddie uses honesty and assertiveness to win the negotiation. Even after this, Van Archer treats Eddie with disdain. He threatens to have him committed to an asylum for telling the truth about the strange split in personalities. Eddie confronts Van Archer angrily, telling him the truth about how people—even Maizie—see him. Van Archer attacks Eddie and they both tumble to the floor. They tussle murderously until Maizie enters. She demands to know what’s I happening, From her perspective, Van Archer is alone, his purple robe disheveled on the floor, his beard shaved and his face unlined by age. Eddie thinks fast. he says it is a celebration about the new contract and a desire to drop the persona and to become just Eddie Thompson again. Maizie is thrilled when Eddie suggests they go to the amusement park—a destination Van Archer disdained.

Petronius Grovel has to be my favorite name so far in Bloch’s work. He is a book editor who seems to dislike books or at least to not understand them to the point of never reading any of them. He does respond well to Eddie’s tough love approach in negotiations and seems to be somebody Eddie could work with moving forward. That name, though, is worth the price of the whole magazine (an amazing ten cents!). This is another story about the life of an author and how a writer of fantastic fiction navigates the mundane. Bloch isn’t quite to the point of working for Leo Marx in the advertising agency, but it is coming soon in 1941. He must have had this kind of thing on his mind, however. How does one spend a lot of time in other worlds, other dimensions, writing about horrific stuff, and then do things like be married and go to the bank and negotiate book contracts and other day-to-day tasks? Speaking of being married, 1940 was the year Bloch married Marion Holcombe, and so Maizie’s experience in her marriage to both Eddie and Van Archer might have bene something Bloch and Marion were living in their own lives. Finally, the idea that one’s identity could be split into two pieces is a theme that we’ve seen before now and will continue to see, of course, as we move forward toward Bloch’s blossoming into the leader of psychological horror.