"I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less."
27 December 2005"I wrote this," he saidHerewith, a bit of instruction by Stephen Koch: it's from his The Modern Library Writer's Workshop.
As for the claim that the reader can’t follow multiple or shifting points of view, it is simply false on its face. The whole history of the novel is testimony to the contrary, from Jane Austen to Thomas Pynchon. In masterpiece after masterpiece, the narrative point of view readily changes from page to page, or even from sentence to sentence and only delights as it does so. In fact, one of prose fiction’s grandest strengths, which it exercises for once in effortless superiority over all other narrative media, including the movies, is its ability to dart in and out of any character’s mind at will. To forgo this splendid artistic advantage in the name of some pallid academic theory is really madness.
Chapter to chapter, of course, is no big deal; page to page can be followed if you're paying attention, and certainly you should be; but sentence to sentence? Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I should have to keep a scorecard along the edge of my bookmark. Then again, my own talent for writing fiction is extremely limited, and perhaps this limitation somehow creeps into my reading capacity — though I must admit that I seldom have trouble following Charlie Kaufman movies, which are about as linear as a Klein bottle. (Via Deeanne Gist at Romancing the Blog.) This writer would say that the modern rules concerning viewpoint discipline are a technological advance over the previous complete lack of rules, just as electric light is a technological advance over kerosene lanterns, and for much the same reasons. One of the things a writer must learn early on is to establish his viewpoint selection quickly and unmistakably, at the beginning of each scene. That way, regardless of whether his "overall" viewpoint management scheme is third person multiple, third person singular, first person, omniscient, or camera-eye, the reader will know at once whose train of perception and thought is directing the story -- and in subsequent encounters with that character, the information will assist the reader in coloring and understanding him. All else is folly. |