{"id":582,"date":"2019-07-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=582"},"modified":"2025-02-18T17:50:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T17:50:20","slug":"point-of-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridgewriters.org\/?p=582","title":{"rendered":"Point of View"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Point of View is the latest topic tackled in ‘Bones of Contention: An Occasional Series’ – Blog posts from our member, Les Brookes<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this the biggest bugbear of the lot? Are you irritated, like me, by readers who raise an eyebrow at any change of viewpoint? By those who say, \u201cI was just getting interested in Kate when Hugh poked his nose in\u201d? Or worse: \u201cThe whole thing should be told from Harry\u2019s viewpoint\u201d? Perhaps you feel like retorting, as Ian McEwan did to Philip Roth in another context, \u201cBut that\u2019s the novel you would write; it\u2019s not the novel I want to write.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Issues with Point of View<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Which is not to say there are no issues here. Point of view is a daunting topic to which reams of literary theory have been devoted, and blame for this is often laid at the feet of Henry James, the author credited with promulgating the idea of the \u201ccommanding centre\u201d or \u201ccontrolling intelligence\u201d. But James, it seems, is misrepresented; he was not interested in issuing \u201claws\u201d of fiction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real culprit, it\u2019s said, is Percy Lubbock, a Jamesian critic who took it upon himself to interpret the Master\u2019s ideas in a prescriptive way. Lubbock\u2019s axioms particularly annoyed Forster who, in \u201cAspects of the Novel\u201d, argues that everything depends on the writer\u2019s ability, in his famous phrase, to \u201cbounce\u201d the reader into acceptance. And Forster\u2019s rebellion is now general; few writers now subscribe to the \u201cold rules\u201d, a shift attributed to many factors: to the influence of cinema, of literary modernism, to the theory of relativity, to the world as revealed by twentieth-century physics and quantum theory. Like Blake, the modern writer seems to deplore \u201csingle vision\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anything Goes?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But is that the end of the matter? Do we now believe that \u201canything goes\u201d? Some critics say, with regret, that we do; that in our rush to abandon the old rules we have slung out the baby with the bath water. They argue that it\u2019s acceptable to change viewpoint if there are good reasons to do so, but not if the change is wanton, careless or in violation of the logic of narrative. Multiple viewpoints, they claim, particularly when they occur within a scene, or worse, within a paragraph, confuse the reader through loss of focus. James himself, without laying down rules, writes that he can see \u201cno breaking up of the register \u2026 that doesn\u2019t rather scatter and weaken\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about visual media or established writers who switch view point?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

And yet, and yet, and yet \u2026 do we underestimate the reader? Think of what we cope with on television or in the cinema, where long stretches of narrative pass without a hint as to who or what we\u2019re watching. And think of the loss if writers abandoned multiple viewpoint. How would Stephen King write at all? Or David Hewson, who claims that he wrote his first three books, all bestselling crime novels, without being aware that an issue called \u201cpoint of view\u201d even existed? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think, too, of Clarissa Dalloway\u2019s party, where the viewpoint passes from guest to guest in a brilliant panorama that would be sadly reduced, would shrink to tunnel vision, if the viewpoint were confined to the hostess. Something similar happens at the Ramsay\u2019s dinner party on Skye. James was after a particular aesthetic effect, but fiction is surely a broad church, and Woolf\u2019s use of multiple viewpoint does not, in my view, scatter and weaken. Rather, it opens up and enhances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I apologise for the length of this. I\u2019m going to take a break now, but I\u2019ll be back when the bug bites; this is an \u201coccasional\u201d series, after all. Meanwhile, please share your own thoughts, on this or any other topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Point of View is the latest topic tackled in ‘Bones of Contention: An Occasional Series’ – Blog posts from our member, Les Brookes. Is this the biggest bugbear of the lot? Are you irritated, like me, by readers who raise an eyebrow at any change of viewpoint? By those who say, \u201cI was just getting… Read More »Point of View<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":1864,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"[\"title\",\"thumbnail\",\"content\",\"tags\",\"comments\"]","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-blog-les-brookes"],"yoast_head":"\nPoint of View - Cambridge Writers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Point of View - Is this the biggest bugbear of the lot? 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