They say that actors are actors. Obviously.

They say that animators are shy actors, if you ask Disney why they like to hire theater majors.

Rarely do they say anything about writers being actors, but that’s also true. A writer can slip into a character the same way an actor can—only difference is that they’re making up the script as they go along.

For this reason, the audiobook of Underground Airlines is impossible to read/listen to. I tried the first few chapters, but just as actors can give body and facial cues, so too can text impart clues about the different roles characters take on, through italics and parentheticals. I used to think any book could be make into an audiobook, easy peasy, especially after reading and later listening to Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Where Selznick breaks into pages of ink illustrations to convey dramatic plot points and then picks up the narrative after the fact, his audiobook uses cinematic sound effects to simulate the effect.

But after a few minutes of listening to Underground Airlines, I had to set it aside, just as Victor sets aside each identity when an interaction ends. Victor indicates how his reactions contrast/match the characters he picks up, and as I read (in print), I found myself wondering if Winters had any theatrical experience. Sure enough, he’s written plays before. Victor is as much an actor as he is a bounty hunter, and I also wondered what shaped him to be so without formal training. This thought process coincided with a medical drama episode about a patient with dissociative identity disorder stemming from a tragic experience. Far be it to diagnose Victor, but his experiences in the slaughterhouse were fairly gruesome, and I wondered if between his own imagination and castle’s he might have latched onto the idea of two hims and trained himself in the art of becoming something else.