A book grumble: first-person narratives

[redbird]

Disclaimer: first-person is a reasonable way to tell some stories. This is a grumble about it being used poorly.

Specifically, I'm getting more annoyed at stories told in the first person, for which the existence of an audience from the viewpoint of the narrator is somewhere between unlikely and impossible.

A minor example is Robert Parker's Spenser novels, in some of which Spenser cheerfully describes himself, Hawk, or both breaking the law in ways that would make telling anyone about the events risky at best. (Enough is said about the main characters to make clear that the manuscript/narrative isn't addressed to any of them, nor is it a diary.) By contrast, while the framing "respectfully submitted" of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone books can seem a bit unlikely, in most of them Kinsey doesn't admit to anything that could get her or a friend into legal trouble. [To be fair, it's been a while since I read either author.]

What provoked this grumble was re-reading Greg Egan's Quarantine and then reading Steve Cash's The Meq. . Egan does a good job of what papersky calls incluing: he fills in the background of the science-fictional universe and of the viewpoint character's life, and then tells a fast-moving story. The problem is two-fold: first, there's a bit of "as you know, Bob"--the changes he's describing are large enough that everyone already knows about them. To some extent, Egan gets around that by describing the effects on the character and his family, including the amusing idea that "the End of the World was too important to be happening anywhere but overseas." The real problem is that, by the end of the book, the character has concluded that there is no longer anything even resembling consensus reality, and that he has, in desperation, built a pocket universe to hide in. Okay, fine, but then who are you addressing this to?

The problem with the Egan didn't strike me the first time I read it, and probably wouldn't have this time if not for the juxtaposition with the Cash. The Meq is a fantasy novel about a group of people, called Meq, who look human but aren't quite: they're extremely long-lived, choose when to go through puberty and are almost immune to disease and injury until then, and have some other odd powers. They live in secret, for the most part, though they have some human allies who are aware of their existence. And the narrator proceeds to fill in information that no Meq could need to be told, and that they wouldn't want to share with anyone outside, even their human allies.

The book has other flaws--ranging from an unreasonable reliance on coincidence to drive the plot [having characters repeatedly note that "these sorts of things happen" doesn't help] to an implausible-to-me set-up in which every Meq has a destined beloved, and is aware of her/his identity the first time they set eyes on each other. It also, to my mind, ends in the wrong place: a puzzle has been set up, but doesn't come close to being answered, nor is much else resolved.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I've always been willing to accept making a tape for a time machine, or just telling the story to make it clear in the narrator's own min, if the book is otherwise interesting enough.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Perhaps because I talk to myself a lot, it's never particularly worried me who a first-person narrator is talking to: I tend to notice when the framing device is clunky.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Having read only the non-spoilery bits above, I think I'm glad I didn't pay for The Meq -- they were giving away galleys at Comicon. Then again, had it not been free, I'd've not likely bought it. (I've note read it yet, have more interesting things demanding my attention, like The Devil in the White City, and Lost in Transmission, and The Summer of the Great-Grandmother.)

[fuzzygabby.livejournal.com]

It's been a few years since I read them, but I remember being annoyed by the way V.I. Warshawski always talked about Chicago in the past tense. Chicago was this way, this neighborhood was that way, there was a park, etc, etc. I'd find myself trying to believe she was writing 50 years after the fact, but mostly I felt she was writing right after each adventure. I liked the books, but that just drove me nuts. Beyond that, I'm not sure if I ever gave it any thought whether she was writing to the public or in her own private diary.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

What you seem to have a problem with is what I call "first reflective", someone telling a story after the fact, which absolutely requires an implicit audience.

Quarantine is weird -- there are bits of it in first from incompatible self-versions. I think if it's telling the story, it's telling to potential otherselves, or to hold on to his self-history.

There are also other forms of first, like what I call "first headlong" where someone is writing a diary as events happen -- I Capture the Castle is a very good example, and so is Podkayne of Mars -- and "first SoC" which is in present tense and essentially the stream of consciousness inside someone's head. First headlong tends to go at breakneck pace through a story without knowing where it's going, only the last section needs any justification or implicit audience. First SoC doesn't need anything either, you are just inside their head. I haven't read your mystery examples, but if they're like that, then it doesn't matter.

I've written in all three of these, incidentally, and from the point of view of doing it, I'd say they're as different as first and third or third and omni, the only thing they have in common is the filter. First SoC is much closer to very tight third than it is to other firsts.