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mc_easton 's review for:
The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story
by Christopher Castellani
A helpful tour of perspective as a literary technique, Castellani’s slender volume argues that there is no perfect point-of-view choice in a literary work. Rather, it’s always a question of the writer’s goal—to locate the individual within the societal, or to immerse the reader within the individual—and whether their narrator(s) support this overarching “narrative strategy.” Ranging from E. M. Forster to Grace Paley, from Lorrie Moore to Faulkner, Castellani reflects on his own struggles as a gay writer to settle on narrators, perspective, and narrative strategy—and examines the political power and responsibility of these choices.
Although he revisits and analyzes some of my favorite authors in rewarding ways, I never quite caught onto his own organizational strategy or figured out why, exactly, these particular works were thrown together in this particular order. A pleasant stroll through works where the narration excels, it ended before it really started getting somewhere.
Although he revisits and analyzes some of my favorite authors in rewarding ways, I never quite caught onto his own organizational strategy or figured out why, exactly, these particular works were thrown together in this particular order. A pleasant stroll through works where the narration excels, it ended before it really started getting somewhere.