Identity(ies) in Brian McCabe’s The Other McCoy

Abstract

[Abstract] The Scottish writer Brian McCabe investigates the notion of identity through the topos of the Double in his novel The Other McCoy (1990). This interest in the Self/Other is closely related to the questions of language(s), the search for, and the making of the Self. McCoy, the novel’s protagonist, an unemployed comedian, is a multi-facetted character who often speaks with different voices taken from other people. McCabe uses the motif of the Double, or, rather, its Scottish version the “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” topos, as a starting point for the exploration of identity construction, combining it with the idea of performance and the compulsion to role playing. In this sense it could be stated that The Other McCoy follows the haunting Scottish tradition of the literature of the double, which presents a culture engaged in the dialogue with the other, a conversation in different dialects.