GR sighting, (and baseball and a good book)

[Bekah]

The 3rd-person intimate pov is rare.   In Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantell)  the character of Thomas Cromwell is always referred to in the third person (he, him, his)  but the narration is so deeply involved in Cromwell's thinking (and only his thinking)  it might just as well be first person - there doesn't seem to be an outside narrator really.   

A normal third person pov usually has a rather detached narrator telling a story.  I think that 1st-person narrators are more intimately involved with their story - it is their story after all  - told from the insides and sometimes this 1st- person is not even reliable.   But 3rd- person intimate is when the supposedly detached narrator has become so involved within a character that it can be hard to tell who is doing the telling or thinking.   

There are only a couple places like that in The Art of Fielding - not enough to label it.  Mostly the book is just plain old third person omniscient ( and into the heads of many characters - sometimes more than one in a paragraph!)  to the point of being "close" to 1st-person intimate with the mental processes of a character.  Or perhaps it's  just the narrator doing some of his own stream of consciousness on top of that of the 3rd person story.   

Bekah 
"Looking at the clock she figured she really ought to sign off now before it was too late."   (3rd person intimate)   


On Mar 30, 2012, at 10:15 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> Bekah  wrote:
>> I said the book used the voice of a 3rd person omniscient and intimate narrator"  - wrong -  not intimate - just a 3rd person omniscient,  but interesting.
>> 
> 
> 3rd person omniscient and intimate - is that a thing?  sounds like it
> might be...suits Pynchon to a degree...(moreso than others who talk
> about contracts with readers as friend...imho)