TMoP, Chap 1, Page 1, Paragraph 1

David Mugmon dmugmon at gmail.com
Thu Sep 18 21:27:15 CDT 2008


For what it's worth, I'll be reading and mostly lurking.  I may manage a
pithy comment or two if we're lucky.

I've read some Dostoyevsky, alas, not Demons.  This will be my first Coetzee
and I'm
looking forward to it.

Some nice, albeit modern, photos of St. Petersburg...

http://www.iht.com/slideshows/2007/01/01/travel/web.0102trstpeteslide.php?index=3

David M.


On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 4:37 PM, Lawrence Bryan <lebryan at speakeasy.net>wrote:

>
> Yes, although for me I thought of a film script. It does give a certain
> strange uneasiness to the reader.
> I guess there's no easy way to find out how many of us are reading.
>
> Lawrence
>
> On Sep 18, 2008, at 7:50 AM, Joe Allonby wrote:
>
> Reads like stage directions.
>
> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 6:33 AM, Richard Ryan <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>> "October, 1869.  A droshky passes slowly down a street in the Haymarket
>> district of St Petersburg.  Before a tall tenement building the driver reins
>> in his horse."
>>
>> One of the first things that might strike a reader inclined to notice and
>> ponder such aspects of "The Master of Petersburg" is that the novel begins
>> in the third person present, or more precisely, the third person limited
>> present.  Without being literally a stream of conscious novel, the effect of
>> this viewpoint is to give the novel a certain psychological immediacy, an
>> internalized quality.  At the same time, the authorial voice maintains at
>> least the vestiges of realism and objectivity traditionally associated with
>> the third person viewpoint.
>>
>> The third person present is a rare enough point of view that Wikipedia's
>> list of novels by viewpoint doesn't include any told in this person and
>> tense (a deficiency which can now be corrected....)
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_novels_by_point_of_view
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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