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A Novelist's Basic Concerns 11/14/2014 3:24:55 PM
A Novelist's Basic Concerns -- Part One
There are many kinds of novels and the form allows for a wider variety than a survey of the current crop would lead us to believe. Novels can be short, a 60,000 word minimum say, or very long like "Remembrance of Things Past" or "A Dance to the Music of Time", both of which are several volumes long.
Novels are written in plain or ornate language, close to poetry or the plain style of a newspaper column. A novel may focus on one character or several, a family or a community, it can stick to one time period or geographical area or switch among several. We can find militant novels and ones as politically indifferent as it's possible for human beings to be.
Whatever the case, certain questions come up -- you can find books written about them -- that every novelist needs to answer for her or himself. Some say that the most important decision a novelist makes has to do with point of view. Here's a basic summary of a fascinating subject:
•First person point of view -- "I" -- a narrator tells his or her own story or acts as a witness to someone else's story. Sometimes we're supposed to believe everything the narrator says, sometimes not.
•Second person point of view -- "you" -- the person or people addressed become characters in the story or at least involved with it,
•Third person -- "she or he or they did..." -- the narration can focus on one character or a whole community. It can tell events from the outside as an observer or delve into the characters' mind and feelings.
Most novels nowadays seem to follow one character, whether from first or third person point of view, and stick to exploring and developing one consciousness. This has not always been the case. Dickens frequently shifts points of view as do other 19th Century novelists we still read today, not to mention Henry James, Faulkner, and James Joyce. This practice imparts richness and complexity -- one sign of a capacious imagination.
What's more, a novel with multiple points of view, reflects the diffuseness that characterizes life for many of us -- we belong to different groups of people, we move from place to place, contradictory ideas come our way, one person's mind contains many different people.
A novel with a single point of view can bring us an opposite benefit, however. As a result of reading two very good recent stories, I realized that a novel with a single point of view -- focusing on one mind, one life, one set of experiences, all adhering to a shapely narrative curve -- can bring us temporary protection from the fractured nature of everyday life. A feeling that we ourselves are centered, with a strong sturdy anchor that reaches to the bottom of the sea. Of course, all that goes away, except for our recollection of it, as soon as we put the book down,
