No, not the TV show. Though the term does call up from a 1940s/50s childhood the memory of RCA’s then-logo with the little dog, head cocked, listening to a Victrola. Its title, “his master’s voice,” did not bother me at all back then. I took it for granted that the dog was male, the owner was male, and for all I knew, the record player probably was too. To borrow from James Brown, it was a man’s, man’s, man’s world. Some would say it’s still . . . but wait, I digress. The voice I’m referring to here is the author’s voice. There are writers, Scheherazades among us if you will, whose name on a book or a magazine piece is enough to compel me to read on. I’ll bet you have your own list too. The likelihood that I would eagerly read, minus John McPhee’s name as author, thousands and thousands of words on geology, fly fishing, a canoe trip, or the great plains, for example, is vanishingly tiny. Susan Orlean is another I’ll happily follow down any rabbit hole that interests her: an orchid thief with no front teeth? I’m in! There’s also Stephen King, but only his non-fiction or short stories. The Johns, Updike and Cheever. The Janes, Austen and Smiley. Thomas McGuane, Rick Bass, Adam Gopnik, Alice Munro. And Ann Patchett and Lorrie Moore, who were mentioned in an earlier post - I’ll read their stories anytime. Sometimes it’s just a single title that works its magic, often, not always, a short story collection. Those I will read over and over. I’ve just about worn out Last Days of the Dog Men by Brad Watson, The Member Guest by Clint McCown, and Margaret Laurence’s Rachel, Rachel. I could go on (and on and on) but I will spare you, gentle reader, stopping here, except to say there are no wrong lists, no bad choices of beloveds. The heart wants what it wants, and in this case at least, gets to have it.
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a #8 What’s the point . . .of view?
I truly admire a writer who chooses first person for her novels, not so much because of the difficulty of the constraints it imposes on the writer, but because it means she must invent a character in whose company her reader will want to spend a couple of hundred pages without once closing the book and tossing it across the room. It’s also interesting to me how some of the most memorable of these novels are narrated by children, by Huck and Holden and Scout, for instance. Second person is the least popular choice possibly because of its tendency to make the reader feel like someone has grabbed them by the lapels (remember when lapels weren’t only metaphorical?) and is subjecting them to a lecture, a sermon, or a scolding, instead of the gripping story they were hoping to hear. Lorrie Moore is one notable exception. Read her stories in Self-Help, “How to Be the Other Woman,” “How to Become a Writer,” “How to Talk to Your Mother.” Also try My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys by Pam Houston. See how it should be done while trying not to hurt yourself laughing. You’ll thank me. Close third person was what I chose for my novel. Or rather it chose me. Characters kept showing up telling me their stories, complaining, explaining bad choices, telling tales (often lies) about other characters. It was pretty straightforward; I just wrote down what they said. Some, a few, showed up and wouldn’t talk to me at all, though their actions were important to the story. I never figured out what motivated some to share their thoughts and others to give me the fishy eye and turn their backs. That last group, by the way, did not include the dogs. Although they did not talk, they nevertheless were easily able to make clear to me their opinions, proclivities and motives. (I do love that about dogs – real and fictional.) One problem that deviled me as I wrote was how to indicate the switch from one character’s consciousness to another’s. First, I used spacing but that was not very helpful. Then I tried three dots to indicate a change in POV. If I found this ploy annoying, and I did, I could only imagine how much it would eventually piss off my reader. Then I read Elsa Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. (Full disclosure: I am the only reader I know who did not love this book, something I can only ascribe to serious character defect). She used numerals within her chapters. You’d think this would be distracting but it isn’t. And it solved the problem of how to break up a couple very long chapters – I don’t know about you, but if I see a hundred solid pages of chapter ahead of me, I don’t care how stellar the writing, I groan, often aloud.) So, though more about POV here than you might have wanted to read, please don’t close your laptop and throw it across the room. |
We tend to write about what we know. I am a writer, thus this blog: Why write? What, when, where to write? Stay tuned. Archives
April 2024
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