POV Part IVa: One Last Note on First-Person

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Sorry to be away so long. Things--or rather, I--have been crazy.

In previous posts, I mentioned the fact that Moby Dick and Tristram Shandy didn't really fall into the realm of true first person narratives; certain passages deviate wildly from the first-person POV.

Before I leave the topic entirely, I'd like to mention one other book--this time a modern one--that stretches the limits of first-person until the basic rules are nowhere to be found: The Human Stain, by Philip Roth.

The Human Stain is narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, a recurring Roth character who shares a great many charateristics with Roth himself (including being a famous novelist). In some books Zuckerman is a third-person character; in others, he is a first-person narrator.

Although the story is told by Zuckerman, and there are some scenes where Zuckerman is present and involved, the bulk of the book details the lives of other characters, especially the protagonist Coleman Silk. In these passages, Zuckerman disappears entirely into what seems to be third-person narration. Stretches of what feels like third-person run so long that it can be a bit jarring when the narrator refers to "I" once more.

Occasionally Zuckerman explains how he came to know certain things about Silk's life, but he could never have gathered the level of detail or vividness by research or conversations. And in some scenes from the POV of other characters, it would be manifestly imposible for Zuckerman to know what he relates, since he tells not only their thoughts, but also shares events that the characters have kept secret from everyone.

This is not, mind you, a mixed first-and-third novel; it is resolutely a first-person narrative, but one that takes immense liberties with the form. Zuckerman never explains that he is reconstructing what people must have thought or must have done. He dramatizes many scenes as though he is omniscient, and doesn't bother to excuse them.

Of course, one of the reasons this works is because the narrator character himself is a novelist, and therefore we are willing to let him slip from a purported recounting into what is really a retelling or reimagining. The book has a foot planted in two worlds--it keeps up the pretense that the narrator is telling us a true story, but it also admits in a coy fashion that it is a novel. The dramatizations of what Zuckerman cannot truly know make the book more intense and gripping--in spite of the fog of ambiguity that comes with all of the third-person narration by the first-person narrator.

If you haven't read The Human Stain, you might want to take a look. Simply from theperspective of craft, it's a fascinating exercise.

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