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  • On Having Three Names
  • Bruce B. Suttle

This morning, as I ate breakfast, I started David Foster Wallace's short story "Good People."1 I began. … Wait a minute! Damn it! Why not Wallace's, or David Wallace's short story? I've never seen nor heard his name other than as a trio; the same is so with others, such as Louisa May Alcott, William Carlos Williams, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Louis Stevenson, Katherine Anne Porter, et al. One finds it even in operas—for example, in Giacomo Puccini's Turandot we have Ping, Pang, and Pong, who rarely solo or sing duets. And consider the Christian or Hindu trinities as being clearly acknowledged as further instances of the power of three names, as well as the three ancient Greek gods of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades; the cardinal colors of red, yellow and blue; and humans' threefold nature of mind, body, and spirit.

However, despite my best effort and intentions, when I submit my thoughts to an academic journal, quite frequently, while the piece is accepted for publication, my middle initial is pruned. This was also the case when I was contracted to index an anthology edited by three scholars—all with three names—and despite the double index of names and cross-referenced subjects totaling twelve pages, my name—minus my middle initial—was lost in a paragraph of some ten names that were equally acknowledged. Apparently, I am not sufficiently famous to warrant reference to me by my full name. I am tempted to console myself with the thought that I am famous; it's just that not very many people know it.

Being important and having three names has a varied and colorful history, as T. S. Eliot illustrates in his poem on how "a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES."2 Then there is the Declaration of Independence that posits a trio of inalienable rights, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"; the horse racing categories of win, place, [End Page 496] and show, et cetera. Furthermore, there is the story of a young graduate student encountering John Kenneth Galbraith at a social event just prior to the semester beginning. The upstart, without preamble, asked Galbraith whether people called him John or Ken. Pausing, the towering figure replied, "You may call me Professor Galbraith; you need not know how my friends address me."

Anyway, back to Wallace's short story. I was just getting into it when I read, "Lane Dean, Jr. felt sun on one arm as he pictured in his mind an image of himself on a train …" ("GP," p. 67). I stopped reading. I reread it twice. Had one of my students said, "He pictured in his mind an image of himself …" I would have interjected (perhaps rudely) something like "Better in your mind than your groin or elbow?" in an effort to shock the student into the awareness that images, ideas, pictures, beliefs, thoughts are all mental, so one need not locate them. We commonly hear phrases such as "I saw it with my own eyes," but never have I heard "I walked there with my own feet" or "I ate it with my own mouth." I recall a no-account movie in which one character responds to another, who had just described "an unexpected surprise," with "What other kind of surprises are there?" And there is the common advertising gimmick of offering a "free gift"—as distinct from … ?

As for Wallace's phrase, I cannot conceive why an accomplished writer would prefer "He pictured in his mind an image of himself on a train" to "He imagined himself on a train." Then, reading on, I came upon "Looking at the torn-up hole in the ground there where the tree had gone over." And "A big stupid-looking tiptoe, like in a cartoon" ("GP," p. 67). Mind you, I'm only halfway through the first page of the story. Now for years I have been reading students' incomplete sentences and listening to my English composition colleagues complain about their students along the same lines. So what am I to make of the fact that certain major publications find acceptable...

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