What They See is What You Get: Notes on POV (Part 1)
A Note on The Text: Due to the nature of the discussion at hand, I felt it was necessary to give a little more care and organization to this post. This is a little less philosophy and a little more nuts and bolts. Also, this, as the title implies, is a large subject that needed two posts to capture its true complexity. Stay tuned, and expect the second half next Sunday.
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This week’s craft talk is about point of view, which is probably one of the most abused and misunderstood elements of the craft. Some people define it rigidly; others are so careless with it that it seems like it abides by the laws of quantum physics–if it follows any laws at all. While I lean to towards a more rigid definition, those favored by the editors and college literature professors, I think that binaries, in most cases, leave out the necessary naunce that is reality.
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First and foremost, point of view, for the most part, is, like most elements of storytelling, determined by character. It is part of what helps writers create empathy and an essential part of our reading experience: It is the person whose eyes we looking out of. Typically, there are three major categories of point of view:
- First Person
- Second Person
- Third Person
However, I would also argue we often forget that tense too informs the point of view. And there, of course, three major categories of tense as well:
- Past Tense
- Present Tense
- Future Tense
Let’s start with past tense.
Past Tense
Strangely, this tends to be the neutral default for most writers, and I’m not sure why. Now don’t get me wrong here: I’m not saying that past tense is no good. But it, like every story, every character, every paragraph, every sentence, and every word, should be a conscious choice. Too often are writers afraid to challenge the orthodoxy of fiction, the rules and conventions that we arbitraily follow.
Consider Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric: “It is the ability to observe the available means of persuasion.” It is a very fine definition, but there is one change I recommend: “It is the ability to observe the [best] available means of persuasion.” The choice of past tense should inform the text and theme. The writer should decide on it because there are no better options, not because that’s what everyone else is doing.
So why use past tense?
Let’s take a look at the opening from Carver’s “Neighbors” to find out.
“Bill and Arlene Miller were a happy couple. But now and then they felt they alone among their circle had been passsed by somehow, leaving Bill to attend to his bookkeeping duties and Arlene occupied with secreterial chores. They talked about it sometimes, mostly in comparison with the lives of their neighbors, Harriet and Jim Stone. It seemed to the Millers that the Stones lived a fuller and brighter life.”
Here, Carver uses past tense because it immediately creates doubt in the reader’s mind. When we read that Bill and Arlene “were a happy couple,” it has an entirely different meaning than if Bill and Arlene are a happy couple. Were suggests that they used to be happy, that there now is a problem. In someways, we don’t even need to look at the following sentence to understand that the couple is in crisis. By choosing past tense over all others, Carver can articulate a longing for the past, that great intangible happiness of memory.
Past tense should be decided on because it arouses our sense of nostalgia, of what has been. Readers may not be able to articulate this effect explictly, but they feel it. It is invisibly implicit.
Present Tense
Present tense often gets a bad wrap. People lay down edicts like “Novels should never be written in present tense.” Frankly, I’m not fond of hard and fast rules–especially those proposed without a shred of evidence as to why. I will say present tense can be more difficult to pull off, but just like past tense, if the writer is aware of his or her choice, its rhetorical effect can be alarmingly haunting.
In Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, he writes almost exclusively in first person, present tense. And though many are quick to label the novel mysogyist and empty, Julian Murphet, the author of the novel’s reader’s guide, gives a compelling analysis of the Ellis’s style that I would be remiss not to mention.
“…American Psycho is a perversely unified text, and the rest of the book…is a carefully considered foil to the violence. Some of the emptiest dialogue ever committed to print; ghastly, endless descriptions of home electronics and men’s grooming products…characters so undefined and interchangable that even they habitually confuse each others’ identities; and a central narrating voice which seems unable and unwilling to raise itself above the literary distinction of an in-flight magazine…. If Ellis wants to bore us, he must have a reason.”
And I am inclined to agree. One of the most obvious effects of the present tense is an otherworldly sense of boredom that it instills in the reader. Just look at these lines from the novel:
“Back at my place I stand over Bethany’s body, sipping a drink contemplatively, studying its condition. Both eyelids are open halfway and her lower teeth look as if they’re jutting out since her lips have been torn–actually bitten–off. Earlier in the day I had sawed off her left arm, which is what finally killed her, and right now I pick it up, holding it by the bone that protudes from where her hand used to be (I have no idea where it is now: the freezer? the closet?), clenching it in my fist like a pipe….”
That might be the coldest description of a murdered woman I have ever read. Add in the lack of figurative language and no voice of reason, and it’s easy to see how people can confuse the novel for one that celebrates the very violence it is actually trying to condemn. Bateman, the narrator and protagonist, does not seem the least bit bothered by this horror. At most, he is thoughtfully voyeuristic; at worst, he is heartlessly removed. The latter seems especially appropriate as his mind drifts to where Bethany’s hand may be. But this wouldn’t be so easily achieved had Ellis used another tense.
Past tense would make it slightly wistful, a serial murderer longing for his glory days (and a form of empathy that I would argue is much more disturbing), but with present tense, it makes the reader question the narrator’s detachment as well as their own. Why should we be so unaffected by such gruesome details? As Murphet puts it, “Bateman’s monologue can…be seen as a ‘corrective’ to literary escapism.” We are given a reality that exists, a reality where brands and pop culture and money are more important and more interesting than the victims that the powerful prey on.
Some people say present tense gives immediacy to the writing, but as we can see above, that isn’t always the case. Often times, people think that the present has a greater sense of now. Yet the truth is it only does the opposite. Just think of how many bad novels begin with prologues told in present tense, while the rest of the book is written in past tense. We mistake in the moment with in media res, but all we end up doing is putting the reader to sleep.
Future Tense
Future tense is the most ignored and undervalued of all our options. It is the conditional, the possible, the imagined, and wished for. It creates an effect that can only be achieved through itself. However, its examples in literature are few and far between, because, most likely, writers are either ignorant of its power or afraid of it. One of the tense’s rare masters was Carlos Fuetnes.
In his novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz, Fuentes uses all the tenses and persons to capture the entirety of the human condition. In the following passage, notice how Fuentes uses future tense to soothe reader and convey an atmosphere of endless possibilities:
“You will close your eyes aware that the lids are not opaque, that though they are folded down, light still reaches your retinas, light of the sun that will remain framed in the open window at the height of your closed eyes that, being closed, blur all details of vision, altering shadow and color without eliminating vision itself; the same light of the brass penny that will spend itself toward the west. You will close your eyes and you will see again, but you will see only what your brain wants you to see: more than the world, yet less: you will close your eyes and the real world will no longer compete with the world of your imagination.”
Notice that Fuentes uses repetition and winding, lengthy sentences to enhance that effect. We delight, as the protagonist delights, in the what may be: a discovery outside ourselves and inside ourselves.
Future tense may not be sustainable at great lengths, but when dealing with the possible, it should be a choice closely considered.
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And so concludes the first half of our discussion on point of view. Even though the tense we use may not seem important at first glance, it is nonetheless an important choice which decides the tenor of our fiction, something so invisible its power goes unnoticed. Next week, we will look at the potential points of view available to us and how and why we should use them. Until next time….