MDDM Ch. 70 Higher Assembly

[jbor]

on 19/8/02 9:56 AM, Terrance at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:

> To say that the story is narrated first or third person is to say very
> little unless we say something about what effects "person" has on the
> narrative. 
> 
> The same goes for time or tense--past or present or subjunctive ( we
> have various forms of what may be called the subjunctive in this novel,
> including the "IF" narratives. The "IF" narratives can be long, taking
> up half a chapter or more. Sometimes they are only brief asides or
> comments that inform us that the dialogue we are reading is what the
> characters would have said IF they had this conversation.
> 
> It's the effects that matter.

I think this is just semantics. I agree that, just as we can itemise
specific denotations and connotations of various words and references in the
texts, we can identify person, tense and so forth. But these grammatical
features don't operate in isolation from other textual elements, and are
often indeterminate themselves, as the narrative vantage sometimes seems to
shift in the space of a sentence or even a phrase or single word. I think
saying that the author intended this or that "effect", or that the text has
this or that "effect" on the reader, are still ways of trying to lay claim
to an all-encompassing interpretation of the text.

By the way. I also thought that Doug's argument was that "Wicks is telling
the story", and that we should "give Wicks the honors and honor the author's
conceit". But, and as I think you noted, there's no rule against changing
one's mind.

best