Fixation

I have been fixated lately by writing in three POV, being first person, second person, and third person omniscient. Well, to be perfectly honest this is not a new fixation as I've previously attempted this in a WIP novel that explores POV in first person (On Memory), second person (On Forgetting), and third person omniscient (On Truth). I am currently working sporadically on a short story following this same pattern again but now floating between three different characters to tell the same story for different perspectives. I'm probably being influenced to some degree by Tash Aw's "The Harmony Silk Factory," in which Aw uses three different characters to tell the story of one person through different eyes. I found that fascinating because no one perspective catches the essence of the main character, but rather interprets him through their own bias. It is this essence of "being" that I find fascinating as a subject of study. It folds nicely into this attempt to use POV shifts to examine the same event from different characters.

It's funny but I find second person POV to be nearly the most perfect perspective. There's something about the claustrophobic narrowness of the perspective that gives a work a hemmed-in feel. It makes one realize that a perspective is just that -- one point of view on a person or event. The best work I've seen so far in this light is Carlos Fuentes' "Aura." I thoroughly enjoyed what Fuentes managed to do with second person. Aura is highly readable. For an example of my experiments in second person POV, see "What if You Had Flown?" at Boston Literary in 2008 here: http://www.bostonliterarymagazine.com/fall08quick.html#fall08flown.html. A piece of flash fiction originally written as a postcard fiction piece.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!