(no subject)

[skygiants]

I read Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian in a day. It's an amazing book, for three main reasons:

1.) Possibly most importantly, it depicts the complexity and awfulness of the reservation situation without giving any answers, because there aren't any answers to give. Arnold/Junior is a hero for braving the white, middle-class school at the same time that he is a traitor for leaving the reservation and his people behind. It's constantly a both, not an either-or.

2. Like Larklight - yes, I know, this is an odd choice of comparison, but hear me out! - it hugely benefits from illustrations to capture the tone and feel of the story. Junior's comics add as much to his characterization as the text.

3. Again like Larklight, the tone of the first-person voice pretty much makes the book. I know a lot of people have problems with first-person narration, and when it's badly done it can be awful, but I actually find myself more and more appreciative of well-done first-person novels these days. Having a fallible, flawed, unique voice tell me the story gets me immediately involved in the character and in what's happening, and I love when there's a balance between what the character believes or chooses to tell you and what you can infer around the edges. (I also, predictably, love snarky narration.) It works especially well for me in YA books, because using a voice is a great way to do complex themes and keep it YA in feel - The Homeward Bounders and Bloody Jack are a few more examples of books where this really works for me.

Anyway, I am curious now about what you guys think about the first person in books and stories now - both as readers and as writers, as many many of you are. So: bookpoll!

[Poll #1277800]

Comments

[newredshoes]

It's funny, I can't actually remember the last time I wrote first person. Second person, sure, but first person is hard -- especially because I usually have trouble suspending my disbelief that people think or narrate themselves in a literary way. I just read An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, which had a first person narrator who was not terribly intelligent, but the memoir format made that okay, and the way the "literary" moments happened didn't feel forced or contrived (except where they were clearly a parody, which... was most of the book, really). The Forrest Gump books are also like this, and the modern sections of Everything is Illuminated. Interesting, that the first person narrators I like are the ones who have trouble with language.

[skygiants]

I think that's actually the same way for me too - or, at least, if not trouble with language, then very specific speech quirks/education levels that make their voices distinct. I think maybe because that means the authors usually do take extra pains to avoid the self-consciously 'literary' moments that make some first-person books difficult?

(How was An Arsonist's Guide elsewise, by the way? I keep eyeing it in bookstores and wondering.)

[newredshoes]

(Not bad! It took me a while to get into it, but once I was comfortable with the fact that it's a parody, there are some pretty wonderful moments in there. Actually, I still have the Chrestomanci book you lent me at Millicon. *sheepish* Want me to send along my copy? I'm more than happy to!)

[skygiants]

(- I had COMPLETELY forgotten about that. *giggles* Sure, why not! We can set up a Book Exchange! :D)

[newredshoes]

Victory arms! Email me your school address? fangirlitis@gmail

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

I have no prejudice against/preference for any person ... my relationship with the English is too, shall we say, loosey-goosey for this.

[skygiants]

You are extremely equal-opportunity!

(Not even for the rogue second person? Such a dark horse contender I did not even include it in the poll!)

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Hmmm! As to reading, still no, but as to writing, I latch onto it instinctively when being lazy.

YOU HAVE DISCOVERED A PREFERENCE

[skygiants]

AHA! *holds it up triumphantly for the scrutiny of THE WORLD*

(I also tend to latch onto second person in writing when being lazy . . . actually I think it is my non-humorous writing default, which could be problematic. :O)

[slutbamwalla.livejournal.com]

Okay, how can you fall back on second person when you're lazy? That's even harder to pull off than first or third and seems like it would require even more concentration.

"You, the reader, yes you sitting there holding this book, are now walking down a hallway toward a bright light."

o_O? How is that easy?

[skygiants]

Um. I think for me it helps with emotional investedness, sort of? Or I tend to use it that way - to force an identification with characters that the reader would not ordinarily identify with. It's laziness because it's easier to create identification that way, I think, than with third-person, and you don't have to have the voice down as well as you would with first . . .

I guess my only example of this currently is the Heroes fic I wrote in second-person Haitian perspective, but the fic I am writing now is also in second person, and I do not write that much serious fic! Or fic at all. So that is a significant statistical proportion.

[slutbamwalla.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in seeing that, because I have only ever seen one piece of writing in second person before, so I'm curious.

[skygiants]

This is the last one I wrote - it took me a little while to find because I am terrible about tagging/bookmarking. *sheepish*

Which was . . . almost a year ago, wow. So maybe I am not as addicted to it as I thought!

[genarti]

Yes, but it worked marvelously well for the Haitian for very character-specific reasons.

I feel like second person -- as I've seen it used in fanfic; I'm not talking about novels here* -- works best when it's with a character who's relatively opaque and/or restrained; someone who's disinclined to self-narrate, and (deliberately or not) fairly opaque to outside observers. Or else someone who doesn't have a particularly clear self-image. (Self-esteem is a side note here; I mean certainty of identity/self-awareness.) Because it creates that identification while keeping it one step back from having the person thinking "I do this," "I go here," when that's not how they see the world? If that makes sense.

*Because the only second-person novel I can think of is Bright Lights, Big City which I read in high school, and "one book I read eight years ago" is not a useful sample size.

[skygiants]

You know, I don't think I have ever read a second-person novel? Maybe it works better for short stories - I think it's hard to sustain that level of identification.

And that makes absolute sense, and I think is why first-person works sometimes and others not so much, for me - because I think it always works best for me with semi-boisterous characters who really do love to self-narrate and self-create.

[genarti]

Well, "doesn't have a fairly clear self-image" is true of the protagonist (narrator?) of Bright Lights, Big City, as I recall. But he kind of annoyed me. *wry* Intentionally, I believe; he's meant to be annoying and flailing directionlessly, and unlike a lot of high school English class assignments I didn't hate the book. But I don't recall all that much of it in analytic detail. It's kind of an amorphous mass of second-person Me Generation rich-but-unhappy-businessman doing drugs and wrecking his life and stuff. Er. It's an upper! (Actually, I don't remember the ending. I guess it could be.)

Yes, anyway, to the first person thing. I very much agree! I think it also works with the less boisterous sort who self-narrate in an introspective way, but that one's harder to keep interesting with a distinct voice, I think. It's doable! But sometimes one falls into the trap of Clever Writing Tricks or else no distinct voice because the narrator sounds so much like the author.

[skygiants]

. . . at least he doesn't go after people with a chainsaw as well? *wry*

Yeah - and you're right, there are great first-person narrators who are not boisterous at all. But they often still have a very strong sense of self that they want to convey with the story, and you're 100% correct that second-person works best for people who don't have that, I think.

[genarti]

Truth! As I recall, he mostly does cocaine.

Yes! ...Actually, come to think of it, that's true of The King's Name and The King's Peace, aka the quasi-Arthurian books I was babbling at you about a while back. The narrator is very much non-boisterous, but she has a distinctive voice all the same, and it works very well with first-person.

(Although there are a couple of authorial forewords that play upon the narrative conceit in ways that don't work for me. But for the main story.)

[skygiants]

It is slightly less murderous, at least?

For the record, those books are currently waiting for me at the library! \o/ Or, well, the first one is, at least. And the second one should be soon.

[genarti]

:D!

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Solution: no non-humorous writing!

[skygiants]

That will not help me grow as a writer, Ji! :O

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

:O

In that case, you could impose a second person moratorium on your non-humorous writing for a time?

[skygiants]

I could and should and shall! After I finish this fic I am working on, because the idea of going back and de-second-personing it is extremely daunting. :(

(Of course, 'a time' is probably about how long it will take between now and the next time I write a non-humorous writings, but . . .)

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

The moratorium doesn't count/work if you don't actually write non-humorously in not the second person! >:(

[skygiants]

SHHHHH TECHNICALITY

[ceitfianna]

The Percy Jackson books do first person incredibly well as does Hexwood.

I tend to not read it too much but every once in a while I'll pick up something with first person.

[skygiants]

Shockingly, I think Diana Wynne Jones does first person very well in general . . . . I KNOW, IT IS SO WEIRD THAT I WOULD THINK THAT. <.

[ceitfianna]

Discussion in comments below reminded me that actually the Harry Dresden books get noir and first person down wonderfully. Jim Butcher and Simon R. Green both seem really good at knowing how to manage it.

I've read some really eh first person stuff in some mysteries, a new series I found set in a winery. They're all first person and they're alright.

Also I just remembered, a while ago I read a book by Emma Bull called Finder set in Bordertown. I liked it but what was strange was that it was first person and the character was supposed to be a man yet I just kept having to check when mention of maleness happened. She's a good author but her male first person just didn't really work so I kept being confused.

Have you ever had that mistaken identity in a series? Where you're told what the narrator is supposed to be but it just doesn't work.

[skygiants]

Yes. I totally have had that, and now I am trying to remember when - well, of course, there's always those times when the narrator continually tells you that they're AWESOME and you can't believe them (see: Frankenstein, grrr) but that is sort of a different problem . . .

Also, I am thinking back to the first-person narrator of The Crystal Cave, and although the book was decent in its own right, I couldn't seem to get any personality out of the narrative voice. I didn't feel it was contradictory really, just . . . not individual.

[oneechan19.livejournal.com]

Although I did mark "Keep it away!" I will admit, there have been a few first person narratives that I have liked. A few. Otherwise, they make my head hurt.

[skygiants]

Now I'm curious as to which ones made the cut!

[oneechan19.livejournal.com]

It actually wasn't a book, it was a fanfic. I had tried to read some that were first person before, but I quickly had to stop reading them. But there was this one that I could get into, written in a noir style, that i really liked.

[skygiants]

Oh man, noir is one of those things that a good first-person narration just nails. I wish I could write noir! But I do not think I am rainy enough in my soul. *sad*

[genarti]

*pours buckets over your head, helpfully*

[skygiants]

I WALK THE STREETS, FEELING THE PAVEMENTS THROUGH MY OLD BOOTS. THIS CITY. THIS CITY IS LIKE A FRUIT WITH A ROTTEN UNDERBELLY SQUIGGLING WITH WORMS. THE STREETS ARE DARK AND DANK AND I SEE WILLY THE SNITCH IN THE BAR SERVING UP ALCOHOL. BUT I ONLY SEE THE LIGHT THROUGH THE WINDOW. BECAUSE I'VE BEEN KICKED DOWN AND BROUGHT LOW AND WILL PROBABLY ALSO BE BETRAYED BY MY LOVE INTEREST IN ABOUT TWENTY PAGES.


*dries out*


- well, that was an interesting change.

[genarti]

*cracking up*

Clearly what we need is to have somebody stand over you with a watering can while you're writing! THERE IS NO WAY THIS PLAN CAN GO BADLY.

[skygiants]

Of course not! Who needs an un-drowned laptop . . .

[genarti]

Only wimps, that's who!

[obopolsk.livejournal.com]

I loved The Absolutely True Diary. I also love the first person. But as a writer, I tend to default to second-person, and the only short stories I've ever managed to sell have been second-person POV.

[skygiants]

It was a great book! My second Sherman Alexie, and I liked the last one (Reservation Blues), but I liked this one more . . . probably because of the first person.

Second person is awesome and I think more people should use it (although I also think that I personally should use it less, because I am a lazy writer with it). It creates such a neat effect, like crossing the fourth wall just by existing.