Examples of literary microphenomenology or deep-point-of-view?
September 30, 2015 8:40 AM Subscribe
I'm looking for examples of a particular kind of narrative writing style that might be (or overlap with) what I think is sometimes called deep-point-of-view.
I'd like to explore doing this in my own writing, and I'm looking for good examples, where the author writes like this for the entire book or in intermittent paragraphs.
I'm especially interested in different techniques to render this sort of "microphenomenology" (so I'm hoping to explore a bunch of authors that don't do quite the same thing in quite the same way). I'm hoping to better understand how to do this without it being noticeable or gimmicky
And, I'm also especially interested in how to transition into and out of this style with more "zoomed out" prose on either side, without it being jarring.
So, yeah, deep point of view, microphenomenology, second by second or even hundreds of milliseconds by hundreds of milliseconds--thought, sensation, sights, feelings, etc...
What authors or books do this really well?
I'd like to explore doing this in my own writing, and I'm looking for good examples, where the author writes like this for the entire book or in intermittent paragraphs.
I'm especially interested in different techniques to render this sort of "microphenomenology" (so I'm hoping to explore a bunch of authors that don't do quite the same thing in quite the same way). I'm hoping to better understand how to do this without it being noticeable or gimmicky
And, I'm also especially interested in how to transition into and out of this style with more "zoomed out" prose on either side, without it being jarring.
So, yeah, deep point of view, microphenomenology, second by second or even hundreds of milliseconds by hundreds of milliseconds--thought, sensation, sights, feelings, etc...
What authors or books do this really well?
Best answer: I immediately thought of Tobias Wolff's story Bullet in the Brain. Lydia Davis is the best: "...She is the shorter Proust among us. She has the sensitivity to track the stuff that is so evanescent it flies right by the rest of us..." Georges Perec's incomparable Life a User's Manual is 500 pages describing an apartment block in Paris "...presented frozen in time, on June 23, 1975, just before 8 pm..."
posted by generalist at 9:31 AM on September 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by generalist at 9:31 AM on September 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: This is a fascinating kind of writing to think about! Most of my examples are on the second-by-second side, which I hope is helpful nonetheless.
One interesting distinction is that some writers who work in this mode like to follow the movement of thoughts in a very brief period (as opposed to pure sense-impressions). Baker, in my reading, is very much an example of this mode -- The Mezzanine and Room Temperature are both extremely rich accounts of very brief periods, but they're structured around mental associations and observations and memories, so being aware of shoelaces or the structure of a carton of milk will set off a long chain of mediations compressed into a few seconds.
Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano has a great string of temporal zoom-in / zoom-out effects, encompassing decades (a childhood, an entire marriage) quite briskly in the background as the book unfolds over a single day, with sustained descriptions of a few seconds of a turning point in a conversation or a hangover.
Clarice Lispector is very very good at this as well; sections of Near to the Wild Heart are built around "instants of seeing" and fleeting experiences. Annie Dillard tries this from time to time (though they may not be quite "micro" enough for what you're thinking of), especially in parts of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Likewise parts of Robert Musil's work (especially the short pieces, and some of the interludes in The Man Without Qualities) -- he was a student of the great Viennese phenomenologists, and wanted to develop what he called a "holiday language" of pure, immediate, second-by-second sense impressions applied to very brief spans of time (like the very end of playing a piano piece, or waiting for someone to finish getting ready for bed).
Virginia Woolf does this micro-effect very occasionally -- thinking in particular of The Waves -- but also in combination with examples of the opposite, like the sequence "Time Passes" in To The Lighthouse, where a decade goes by in a description that's mostly inanimate.
Several sections in Proust achieve this effect -- things like the description of Swann hearing the Vinteuil Sonata, or young Marcel trying to fall asleep, where what must be seconds of elapsed time expand dramatically into landscapes.
Lastly, kind of an oddball note that might still be useful ... Peter Handke's Once Again for Thucydides is a set of journal entries that attempt to pay the greatest possible attention to extremely brief, and often quite ordinary, moments -- "epics" of brief time.
posted by Stevia Agave at 9:36 AM on September 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
One interesting distinction is that some writers who work in this mode like to follow the movement of thoughts in a very brief period (as opposed to pure sense-impressions). Baker, in my reading, is very much an example of this mode -- The Mezzanine and Room Temperature are both extremely rich accounts of very brief periods, but they're structured around mental associations and observations and memories, so being aware of shoelaces or the structure of a carton of milk will set off a long chain of mediations compressed into a few seconds.
Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano has a great string of temporal zoom-in / zoom-out effects, encompassing decades (a childhood, an entire marriage) quite briskly in the background as the book unfolds over a single day, with sustained descriptions of a few seconds of a turning point in a conversation or a hangover.
Clarice Lispector is very very good at this as well; sections of Near to the Wild Heart are built around "instants of seeing" and fleeting experiences. Annie Dillard tries this from time to time (though they may not be quite "micro" enough for what you're thinking of), especially in parts of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Likewise parts of Robert Musil's work (especially the short pieces, and some of the interludes in The Man Without Qualities) -- he was a student of the great Viennese phenomenologists, and wanted to develop what he called a "holiday language" of pure, immediate, second-by-second sense impressions applied to very brief spans of time (like the very end of playing a piano piece, or waiting for someone to finish getting ready for bed).
Virginia Woolf does this micro-effect very occasionally -- thinking in particular of The Waves -- but also in combination with examples of the opposite, like the sequence "Time Passes" in To The Lighthouse, where a decade goes by in a description that's mostly inanimate.
Several sections in Proust achieve this effect -- things like the description of Swann hearing the Vinteuil Sonata, or young Marcel trying to fall asleep, where what must be seconds of elapsed time expand dramatically into landscapes.
Lastly, kind of an oddball note that might still be useful ... Peter Handke's Once Again for Thucydides is a set of journal entries that attempt to pay the greatest possible attention to extremely brief, and often quite ordinary, moments -- "epics" of brief time.
posted by Stevia Agave at 9:36 AM on September 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Virginia Woolf! Orlando in particular is great because it features the same minute psychological observations of her takes-place-in-one-day books but unfolds over a three-century-long story full of adventures.
posted by theodolite at 9:42 AM on September 30, 2015
posted by theodolite at 9:42 AM on September 30, 2015
Best answer: Seconding Lowry and Woolf, and you owe it to yourself to check out Javier Marías, who's an absolute master at this (at least in the Your Face Tomorrow series; I haven't read his other stuff). He can take pages to describe the thoughts and sensations of a few seconds, and you love every bit of it. Start with Your Face Tomorrow Volume 1: Fever and Spear.
posted by languagehat at 12:06 PM on September 30, 2015
posted by languagehat at 12:06 PM on September 30, 2015
Best answer: Seconding languagehat: Javier Marías has a way of describing scenes that seem to run as though in slow motion, while the narration weaves in and out of them, taking them in from numerous different angles. As well as Your Face Tomorrow, his novels A Heart So White and Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me both offer fine examples of this.
posted by misteraitch at 1:38 PM on September 30, 2015
posted by misteraitch at 1:38 PM on September 30, 2015
Best answer: A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride is in this vein. The syntax is non-standard and stream-of-consciousness-like, but at the same time is describing very small changes in thought and feeling.
posted by MrBobinski at 7:11 PM on September 30, 2015
posted by MrBobinski at 7:11 PM on September 30, 2015
Best answer: Proust for sure, Ulysses to some extent as well? (Bloom's thoughts getting cut off mid-word as he notices something new, the whole Penelope episode, etc.)
posted by bugperson at 2:17 PM on October 2, 2015
posted by bugperson at 2:17 PM on October 2, 2015
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posted by Gorgik at 8:54 AM on September 30, 2015 [1 favorite]