Second Person (Points of View, Again)
Today, this particular question came to mind again (I had already wondered about it when I was reading “No Plot? No Problem!”, a few weeks ago): does anyone use the second-person point of view? I mean, for real? Or is this just a joke? Come to think of it, if I hadn’t remembered these well-known “choose your own adventure” books, I would indeed have be tempted to think no writer in his right mind would ever use that.However, this very morning, as I was broswing through old archives (not mine, fortunately), I realized that some people use, or has used it. In technical documents nonetheless. Oh, the horror.It’s not about addressing the reader, no: it’s clearly a second-person point of view, and the result is very awkward sentences sounding much like “you see a window in which you click…”. I’m not kidding, and it’s a good thing that I’m decent at writing English, else our current manuals would be really icky.Someone please tell me that it’s not the way technical writers are supposed to work in English…
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Jennifer
Ugh…2nd POV…leave that for your personal diary if you must write in it.Guess I made my thoughts clear 🙂
Elvira Black
I remember seeing the second person used in the (semi-autobiographical?) novel Bright Lights, Big City by Jay MacInerny (sp?). He kind of made a splash with it, and (this was ages ago) I did find it interesting and novel at the time. I can’t readily recall any other examples of it in fictional works.I guess I could also see it being used in some sort of scare tactic advertising: “You come home from another late night at the office. Exhausted, you tumble into bed. Suddenly a noise startles you. Someone is in your house. Terrified, you…blah blah blah…as you lie there, shot by the intruder, now bleeding to death, you wonder why you didn’t get the crime-stopper alarm system before it was too late…. “You wrote a comment on Yzabel’s blog. You looked at it. You thought it sounded stupid. You took a deep breath and hit the post button and sent it anyway….
Yzabel
Jennifer — I totally agree. Come to think of it, even in a personal diary, I’d need to be severly plastered to even consider it.
Yzabel
Elvira — I hadn’t heard of this book. Apart from being novel at the time, was it readable (as in, was the POV detracting from the story/reading pleasure, or was it an enhancement, on the contrary)?And that was a funny advertisement. I know, my sense of humor is skewed anyway.
Gone Away
There is a genre that uses second person POV exclusively – I forget what they call it but it’s where YOU are the hero and have to make choices throughout the book. Some routes lead to success and others to doom. These books were very popular amongst young teenagers in the eighties (in fact, I wrote a couple) and I still see a few hanging around in the bookshops. They were like a computer game translated to paper.
Elvira Black
Hmmm, let’s see….This novel came out in the 80s, followed by a film by the same name, so it’s been awhile. I was younger then and possibly more easily impressed by the novelty of it. I believe it was also a bestseller at the time, and got a lot of press. Does this alone mean it was good? Well, no….but it certainly did have an impact of some sort.As I recall, I did find it very compelling. Don’t ask me why, exactly. It’s hard to explain, but it was like you were actually experiencing the events yourself, I suppose. The distance between the narrator and the reader, to my mind, was thus blurred or removed–like a mind meld. Perhaps it was similar to being hypnotized (you are getting sleepy….lol), In a sense, you were the narrator.As I recall, the style was also very stark and simple–and thus readable and compelling. Much of the book did not emphasize inner reflection or any deep level of self-analysis, until the epiphany at the end. The reader never found out the deeper motivations of the character until later–and the sense was that reader and writer were discovering this together, in a sort of real time.This genre also seemed particularly apt since the 80s in the US were an extremely narcissistic, materialistic, and drug fueled time, when money and privilege ruled the day–esp for yuppies who liked to “work hard and play hard”. And indeed, there was a group of young American writers who were widely successful in this genre back then, including Bret Easton Ellis (Less than Zero) and Tama Janowitz (Slaves of New York)–though I don’t think they used the second person narrative technique. The demographic most heavily represented then (amonst writers and readers alike) was primarily young and privileged. So perhaps one might say these authors, and many of their readership, were kind of whining about the detritus of a very cushy and glamorous lifestyle. But that was the zietgiest of the times.So yes, to make a long story short, I must admit that I did like it!
Yzabel
Clive — I see which books, I used to read some too when I was in my early teens. They were fun enough for a while, and the school’s library was packed with them. However, they’re really the only example of second person POV that I’ve read; it fits the books, but I’m not sure how it could fit any other kind of story. Perhaps I can find out more, of course.
Yzabel
Elvira — Thanks for the description, I may try to get the book someday, if only to see how exactly it was all wrapped up. I’m afraid I was too young to pay attention to, and especially understand, such a book when it was published, but now is a very different situation.