RARA-AVIS: Re: RARA-AVIS voices

From: marianne.macdonald@lineone.net
Date: 24 May 2002


>I suspect that in general audio books would work better
>from the first-person viewpoint.
Not always. A couple of mine have gone into audiobook, with a woman reader of course. She's ok when she's Dido Hoare, but when she reads dialogue "she do voices". The real life role model for Ernie Weekes
(no, I don't usually do this, it's a family joke) has refused to allow his mother to listen to the tapes. As for Barnabas....

I too am very doubtful that there is anything specifically hard-boiled
(or not) about the point of view. First person maybe allows a more intimate insight into a character, but the truth it voices is obviously only objective about the character's own limited vision with any resulting errors. It expresses character, it doesn't form it. Third person can provide either an objective view of the personality of the protagonist, or a limited insight (hello, Dr Watson), or stick very intensely to the experience of the main character in a book or a section of a book: D Sayers and J Ellroy, for instance? (Now that coupling I just couldn't resist. I may be hysterical.)

MM

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 24 May 2002 EDT