TMoP, Chap 1, Page 1, Paragraph 1

[Mark Kohut]

Wikipedia is very weak on narrator/point-of-view, etc. (I tried to add to POV and kept being erased by the originator.)

This is a you-are-there camera eye POV....yes, objectivity and immediacy.

I KNOW there are lots of others told this way, but damned if I can think of one now.




--- On Thu, 9/18/08, Richard Ryan <richardryannyc at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Richard Ryan <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>
> Subject: TMoP, Chap 1, Page 1, Paragraph 1
> To: "Pynchon-L" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Thursday, September 18, 2008, 7:33 AM
> "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