It’ll never be known how this has to be told, in the first person or in the second, using the third person plural or continually inventing modes that will serve for nothing. If one might say: I will see the moon rose, or: we hurt me at the back of my eyes, and especially: you the blond woman was the clouds that race before my your his our yours their faces. What the hell.
—Julio Cortázar, Blow-up (translated from the Spanish by Paul Blackburn in Bestiary)
As introductory paragraphs go, explicit indecision about point of view comes high on my list of attention-grabbing gimmicks. Especially when stated so honestly. The last thing a narrator wants to do from the onset is state their own ineptitude.
Unless.
Unless the clumsiness, the cluelessness, the fracturing of character is a game of deception relevant to the message. And boy do I want to hear that message! It’s likely to be bold, deep, and disruptive—otherwise it wouldn’t survive the bruising journey through opaque linguistic waters.
It screams metafiction.
But before you get all outraged about this ludicrous pronoun game, consider the dilemma all writers face occasionally.
But before we get all outraged about this ludicrous pronoun game, let us consider the dilemma all writers face occasionally.
But before one gets all outraged about this ludicrous pronoun game, one should consider the dilemma all writers face occasionally.
The pronoun game is real even for the puny blogger.
Each version slants the statement differently: you addresses you, dear reader; we puts me, the author, and you, the reader, on the same side; one tries for neutral and formal.
If blogs have the freedom of choice, other specialised areas have accepted norms. For example, scientific texts mostly eschew I, as too personal and biasing, and often resort to we, which can mean we, the author(s) of the text, or we, as in me, the author, and you, the reader.
Of course, an ocean or two separate Cortázar’s we hurt me at the back of my eyes and the convenient swapping of you-we-one-I every few paragraphs, but it’s worth remembering that even prosaic texts have to resolve this issue (and often do so unsatisfactorily).
Before moving on, I’d like to sort out a possible confusion in terminology: point of view, shortened to POV, and viewpoint (character) are not the same thing to a writer.
(Sloppiness, or editing for elegance and word count, often equates the terms. I’m as guilty as the next person.)
It’s easiest to demonstrate the difference.
Situation: a mother is buying her young son a treat at an ice cream stall.
You can write in first person (a point of view) from at least four different viewpoints:
- Mother: I think he’s been a good boy, he deserves an ice cream.
- Son: I’ve been a good boy, I deserve an ice cream.
- Vendor: I’m glad the strawberry ice cream is selling so well, the new recipe is definitely an improvement.
- Ice cream: Why was I so lovingly made, only to be torn to scoops repeatedly? Oh, Food Gods spare me!
A Quiver Of Quotes 