I did enjoy this - thanks, Toby! I think there's an important distinction - important for the writer, that is - to be made between the truly omniscient narrator, which feels weird to us C20 and C21 creatures aware of the limits of any human's knowledge and wisdom, and what A S Byatt calls a 'knowledgeable' narrator. The latter feels much more natural to me: a narrator who does see into more heads than one, and knows more than any single character can know, but not necessarily a god-like everything and everywhere. I find the best analogy in the swipe-card that big companies and universities issue: the writer choses what access the narrator has, and what it doesn't, and codes their swipecard accordingly - then has a series of decisions, through about where the narrator is at any one point.
My fondest reading experience with third person narration is in Gravity’s Rainbow, most memorably in part one in an episode that moves from Jessica to Roger to Pointsman and back again in reverse. The narration feels unmoored, not omniscient, like it’s hallucinating the thoughts and feelings of the current character it isn’t so much observing as it is being possessed by. The narrator looks outward from within the psyche of the current host, not inward from a deified aloofness. The narrator is something like the novel’s Pirate Prentice character, then, caught up in someone else’s fantasies. It contributes to the difficulty of the novel. A seasickness can creep in after so many and so frequent shifts of perspective, but I like the challenge, the hard cuts. Moviegoers must have felt this challenge when multiple perspective camerawork became a thing.
Thanks for this post. I’ve never written in this pov. Avoided it even. The question always arises for me when attempting it- who is this narrator? How do they know all of this. I like your approach- dive in and to hell with what why who and where, just fly!
I’m trying to imagine if this could feel truly contemporary, rather than a pastiche of a 19th C novel. I might have to give it a go- although I’m much happier in close 3rd person and have written a lot of second person stories and dabbled in what some call 4th person collective voice (rather like a Greek chorus).
Yes, it's very much a pastiche, I think. And one of the reasons I stopped reading the novels, because it was becoming a little affected. I should go back to them, though.
I did enjoy this - thanks, Toby! I think there's an important distinction - important for the writer, that is - to be made between the truly omniscient narrator, which feels weird to us C20 and C21 creatures aware of the limits of any human's knowledge and wisdom, and what A S Byatt calls a 'knowledgeable' narrator. The latter feels much more natural to me: a narrator who does see into more heads than one, and knows more than any single character can know, but not necessarily a god-like everything and everywhere. I find the best analogy in the swipe-card that big companies and universities issue: the writer choses what access the narrator has, and what it doesn't, and codes their swipecard accordingly - then has a series of decisions, through about where the narrator is at any one point.
I like this security card analogy. Especially as it opens up the delicious possibility of invisible cleaners being narrative gods.
My fondest reading experience with third person narration is in Gravity’s Rainbow, most memorably in part one in an episode that moves from Jessica to Roger to Pointsman and back again in reverse. The narration feels unmoored, not omniscient, like it’s hallucinating the thoughts and feelings of the current character it isn’t so much observing as it is being possessed by. The narrator looks outward from within the psyche of the current host, not inward from a deified aloofness. The narrator is something like the novel’s Pirate Prentice character, then, caught up in someone else’s fantasies. It contributes to the difficulty of the novel. A seasickness can creep in after so many and so frequent shifts of perspective, but I like the challenge, the hard cuts. Moviegoers must have felt this challenge when multiple perspective camerawork became a thing.
Thanks for this post. I’ve never written in this pov. Avoided it even. The question always arises for me when attempting it- who is this narrator? How do they know all of this. I like your approach- dive in and to hell with what why who and where, just fly!
I’m trying to imagine if this could feel truly contemporary, rather than a pastiche of a 19th C novel. I might have to give it a go- although I’m much happier in close 3rd person and have written a lot of second person stories and dabbled in what some call 4th person collective voice (rather like a Greek chorus).
Mick Herron does this POV at the start and end of his Slough House novels. I assume he's doing a Dickensian pastiche.
Yes, it's very much a pastiche, I think. And one of the reasons I stopped reading the novels, because it was becoming a little affected. I should go back to them, though.
Interesting and helpful.