A very interesting essay, particularly to other writers such as myself.
Not only did it conflict with the way I wanted to write, which is largely from an impersonal if not omniscient position, it also condemned the vast majority of the literature of mankind. Most cultures and most of our own history have assumed that a story should be told from an impersonal point of view. Indeed, it condemns whole genres such as epic and theatre to utter impotence.
Mmmm. Well, I see what you're getting at, but I think you're condemning the standards of POV with too broad a brush. There's a place for all types of POV, including, as you point out, the omniscient narrator of epics, theatre, and fairy tales or myth.
There is also a place for the more intimate and closed use of POV, particularly (at least in my writing) for the purpose of getting the story itself, the experience, inside the reader's head and heart. I can imagine writing some of my orignial fiction from a mostly-omniscient POV (I don't think I'd want to, as I am far more interested in the experience of truth and love and life than the bare-bones explanations of them)...but most of my fic needs a tight POV to help define the story.
Actually, when I'm not tightening the POV to define the reader's experience, I'm usually using it as a structural basis. One of my writerly tools.
It demands an extra layer of attention from writer and reader all the time, and that for no good reason.
I object to this. Tight POV is closer to human experience (not always, but sometimes), and done well pulls the reader along. I think most people today have a harder time with omniscient narration, because it requires a stronger use of imagination to reach the suspension of disbelief. True mythological stories have the power to command such attention, but that kind of power is rare, and I myself (to my knowledge) have not been able to unearth it.
And "for no good reason"? See my comments above for the uses of a more focused POV.
In other words, I claim to be omniscient enough to be twenty, forty, a hundred narrators. The truth, of course, is that I never once cease to be myself.
Hopefully, any writer worth their metaphorial salt has reached some similiar conclusion. But if we follow your conclusion here to its end, surely we only reach a condemnation of experiential POV as devestating as the condemnation you perceive of omniscient?
Of course we truly write only as ourselves. But by turning to different portions of ourselves, we can create different voices. Just as a man need not write the same story every time, and it need not reflect his real life in any detail. (Have you, by chance, read CS Lewis' novel Till We Have Faces? That's an interesting exercise in tight POV, if you like.)
Not only did it conflict with the way I wanted to write, which is largely from an impersonal if not omniscient position, it also condemned the vast majority of the literature of mankind. Most cultures and most of our own history have assumed that a story should be told from an impersonal point of view. Indeed, it condemns whole genres such as epic and theatre to utter impotence.
Mmmm. Well, I see what you're getting at, but I think you're condemning the standards of POV with too broad a brush. There's a place for all types of POV, including, as you point out, the omniscient narrator of epics, theatre, and fairy tales or myth.
There is also a place for the more intimate and closed use of POV, particularly (at least in my writing) for the purpose of getting the story itself, the experience, inside the reader's head and heart. I can imagine writing some of my orignial fiction from a mostly-omniscient POV (I don't think I'd want to, as I am far more interested in the experience of truth and love and life than the bare-bones explanations of them)...but most of my fic needs a tight POV to help define the story.
Actually, when I'm not tightening the POV to define the reader's experience, I'm usually using it as a structural basis. One of my writerly tools.
It demands an extra layer of attention from writer and reader all the time, and that for no good reason.
I object to this. Tight POV is closer to human experience (not always, but sometimes), and done well pulls the reader along. I think most people today have a harder time with omniscient narration, because it requires a stronger use of imagination to reach the suspension of disbelief. True mythological stories have the power to command such attention, but that kind of power is rare, and I myself (to my knowledge) have not been able to unearth it.
And "for no good reason"? See my comments above for the uses of a more focused POV.
In other words, I claim to be omniscient enough to be twenty, forty, a hundred narrators. The truth, of course, is that I never once cease to be myself.
Hopefully, any writer worth their metaphorial salt has reached some similiar conclusion. But if we follow your conclusion here to its end, surely we only reach a condemnation of experiential POV as devestating as the condemnation you perceive of omniscient?
Of course we truly write only as ourselves. But by turning to different portions of ourselves, we can create different voices. Just as a man need not write the same story every time, and it need not reflect his real life in any detail. (Have you, by chance, read CS Lewis' novel Till We Have Faces? That's an interesting exercise in tight POV, if you like.)
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