Got Style?
We've read a few of Lorrie Moore's stories by now and know she approaches her stories slightly differently than other authors we've read this semester. Three of the four stories we've read so far have been in second-person narration ("How to be an Other Woman", "The Kid's Guide to Divorce", and "How"). But before we read those stories, I hadn't thought that much about the literary styles of other authors we've read.
Salinger was very dialogue heavy, and almost all of his stories were in third-person. Baldwin's were pretty equally first- or third-person and relied on diving deep into the narrator or protagonist's mind. With Moore, we get a whole new way of seeing a person's thoughts (are they even someone's thoughts?).
We talked about in class how second-person narration can make it seems both more and less vulnerable. Is there something guarded about the way Moore writes? Or does second-person make it feel like we're having a conversation with the narrator? I think it depends. In "How to be an Other Woman", I felt Charlene (our supposed protagonist) seemed very open about her experience being an "other woman". In "How", we get a less delineated storyline, which to me made it feel like the narrator/protagonist was almost embarrassed by what she did. "The Kid's Guide to Divorce" was somehow more confusing to me. The kid in the story gives us very little of her thoughts. From my reading of it, I thought the kid seemed happy with her mother and much more at home there than with her father. After our class discussion on the story, though, it became clear to me that not everyone was thinking that way. This second-person narration style seemed to be more similar to the "iceberg" style we talked about with Hemingway (though not that barren).
I guess I kind of thought that these second-person narration styles would be less variable than they have been, just because they're different. But I've been seeing that, just as with first- and third-person, they can vary a lot. I'm really looking forward to reading more Lorrie Moore stories and seeing where she might go with this style! (Though I recognize that "What is Seized" wasn't second-person, so maybe she'll mix it up some more.)
Lorrie Moore's second person narrative is quite different than any of the authors we've read. The different writing styles of all the authors really shows the versatility in how one can personalize their short story. I'm a big fan of Moore's narration style, because it puts me right in the moment of the characters.
ReplyDeleteI think that the second person style can both bring us closer to the narrator and further away at the same time. I agree that there were a couple of stories, like "The Kid's Guide to Divorce," that seemed a little more distant. In this story I thought you had to do a lot more interpretation and inference to understand the significance that was behind the character's actions. But at the same time, the second person puts you in the shoes of the main character. I feel like it was a lot easier to sympathize with and understand the motivations of these characters when their stories were portrayed in second person.
ReplyDeleteI definitely thought the second person narration sort of gave Moore the distance from her own life to make things more lighthearted. If 'how to be an other woman' had been narrated in the first person, it would have sounded much more like a rant--more vulnerable than the presentation I think she was going for. Admittedly, I found it hard to figure out how seriously I was supposed to take some of the stories...
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