More on Byatt
Mar. 31st, 2003 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handsliveAnd here's what you can get off the web about Byatt's Possession: an introduction.
Two interesting things. First, she did indeed write all the poetry herself. She says she's not a poet, but I don't care. :-) Second, apparently quite a few readers sent her letters complaining about the very few incidents when she felt obliged to provide 3rd person omniscient views of events outside the normal framework of the story. (If you've read the book, you know which scenes I mean.)
I'll admit that I shared this feeling at first, but the final scene changed my mind. I don't think we could have the final scene without having introduced this narrative extension into the story earlier. It wouldn't have made sense without the author gently nudging me away from the harsh restrictions of the main story earlier.
More than that, though, I felt that certain elements of irony or understanding would be missing in the later scenes without the injection of the additional information that the narrator has and the characters don't. But this wasn't how I felt initially when she used this device. I don't think that's a problem with her approach, but more a compliment to her construction of both the romance and the mystery. That I should buy into the device so completely that I don't want her to interrupt "the story" with these other bits is marvelous. And truly she does weave the injections in very well.
In the first, I felt she raised a level of initial ambiguity about who the characters were both in the interjected scene and in the subsequent scenes involving the main story line. In the second, she heightened my natural suspense about the story information, although the conclusion seemed foregone to me. In the final, I felt that she actually increased the poignancy of the resolution on the one hand while providing an ending satisfactory to all the parties (which a good romance should do, they are seldom tragedies after all).
Anyway, it's a fun little essay if you've already read the book. I'd strongly recommend temporarily overriding the colour settings on your browser, though, because the black text on red background was obnoxious.
Two interesting things. First, she did indeed write all the poetry herself. She says she's not a poet, but I don't care. :-) Second, apparently quite a few readers sent her letters complaining about the very few incidents when she felt obliged to provide 3rd person omniscient views of events outside the normal framework of the story. (If you've read the book, you know which scenes I mean.)
I'll admit that I shared this feeling at first, but the final scene changed my mind. I don't think we could have the final scene without having introduced this narrative extension into the story earlier. It wouldn't have made sense without the author gently nudging me away from the harsh restrictions of the main story earlier.
More than that, though, I felt that certain elements of irony or understanding would be missing in the later scenes without the injection of the additional information that the narrator has and the characters don't. But this wasn't how I felt initially when she used this device. I don't think that's a problem with her approach, but more a compliment to her construction of both the romance and the mystery. That I should buy into the device so completely that I don't want her to interrupt "the story" with these other bits is marvelous. And truly she does weave the injections in very well.
In the first, I felt she raised a level of initial ambiguity about who the characters were both in the interjected scene and in the subsequent scenes involving the main story line. In the second, she heightened my natural suspense about the story information, although the conclusion seemed foregone to me. In the final, I felt that she actually increased the poignancy of the resolution on the one hand while providing an ending satisfactory to all the parties (which a good romance should do, they are seldom tragedies after all).
Anyway, it's a fun little essay if you've already read the book. I'd strongly recommend temporarily overriding the colour settings on your browser, though, because the black text on red background was obnoxious.
