Maybe it's my limitation as a reader, but as I read, I'm always looking for the scaffolding underneath the art. Perhaps because Ondaatje hails from others literary worlds, poetry and nonfiction, he's not so invested in the aesthetics of naturalism. I don't have a copy handy, but I recall Michael Ondaatje using this technique in some of his work (I'm thinking of In the Skin of a Lion and also The English Patient, neither of which I have on hand, so I'm sorry to say I can't quote, but I think he took a light hand with it) and I think he does so to great effect. When you're reading, what forces you out of the story and makes you remember that you're reading a book? But for the moment it's just an obstacle between me and full immersion in the book.Īll of which leads (via a maddeningly circuitous route) to my Gentle Reader Question of the Day: Certainly I felt that way about the narrator in The Life of Pi, who seemed to add nothing to the story-until I reached the final dazzling chapter and realized it couldn't have been written any other way. Perhaps the reason for this device will become clear later in the book perhaps I'll even come to believe the story required it. While not uncommon in Victorian novels, this "Gentle Reader" technique is rare in modern fiction. "We'll have a lot to say about melancholy later on."."Let us take advantage of this lull to whisper a few biographical details."."We should note straightaway that this soft, downy beauty of a coat would cause him shame and disquiet during the days he was to spend in Kars, while also furnishing a sense of security.".I haven't read enough yet to form an opinion of the novel, but in the opening chapter I've found myself jolted out of the story by a literary device not often used today: speaking directly to the reader. I'm reading Orhan Pamuk's Snow, the story of an exiled poet returning to Istanbul after a long absence.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |