Publisher: Farrar, Straus, Giroux

Copyright Date: 2016

Edition Date: 2016 Release Date: 01/05/16

Pages: 140 pages

ISBN: 1-555-97726-X

ISBN 13: 978-1-555-97726-9

Dewey: 808.3

LCCN: 2015952174

Dimensions: 18 cm.

Subject Heading:
Point of view (Literature).
Fiction. Technique.
First person narrative.
Persona (Literature).
Characters and characteristics in literature.

Language: English

Bibliography Index/Note: Includes bibliographical references (pages 139-140).

Reading Level: 8.0

Interest Level: 9+

A writer may have a story to tell, a sense of plot, and strong characters, but for all of these to come together some key questions must be answered. What form should the narrator take? An omniscient, invisible force, or one--or more--of the characters? But in what voice, and from what vantage point? How to decide? Avoiding prescriptive instructions or arbitrary rules, Christopher Castellani brilliantly examines the various ways writers have solved the crucial point-of-view problem. By unpacking the narrative strategies at play in the work of writers as different as E. M. Forster, Grace Paley, and Tayeb Salih, among many others, he illustrates how the author's careful manipulation of distance between narrator and character drives the story. An insightful work by an award-winning novelist and the artistic director of GrubStreet, The Art of Perspective is a fascinating discussion on a subject of perpetual interest to any writer.