The Deep Eye: On the Embedded First Person
by Michael Byers
Michael Byers on how to succeed – and fail – in the first person.
Michael Byers on how to succeed – and fail – in the first person.
We writers gravitate towards a few particular points of view: we love the first person singular, the ultra-personal “I”; we adore the third-person limited and its inside-outside-blurring stance; we even use the omniscient and look down on our characters as if we were gods. Now and then, we’ll try the second person to switch it up—we’ve all read Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help and thought about it, haven’t we? But what about the first person plural? Why haven’t we, as writers, embraced this viewpoint and its potential? A few of us—Jeffrey Eugenides, Steven Millhauser—have tackled it, but most of us just shrug […]
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