The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story

by Christopher Castellani

Overview

A writer may have a story to tell, a sense of plot, and strong characters, but for all of these to come together some key questions must be answered. What form should the narrator take? An omniscient, invisible force, or one—or more—of the characters? But in what voice, and from what vantage point? How to decide? Avoiding prescriptive instructions or arbitrary rules, Christopher Castellani brilliantly examines the various ways writers have solved the crucial point-of-view problem. By unpacking the narrative strategies at play in the work of writers as different as E. M. Forster, Grace Paley, and Tayeb Salih, among many others, he illustrates how the author's careful manipulation of distance between narrator and character drives the story. An insightful work by an award-winning novelist and the artistic director of GrubStreet, The Art of Perspective is a fascinating discussion on a subject of perpetual interest to any writer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555977269
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	01/05/2016
Series:	Art of...
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	331,096
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Christopher Castellani is the author of three novels, including All This Talk of Love. He is the artistic director of GrubStreet and teaches in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College. He was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction.

Hometown:

Arlington, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

December 7, 1972

Place of Birth:

Wilmington, Delaware

Education:

B.A., Swarthmore College, 1994; M.A./A.B.D., Tufts University, 1998; M.A., Boston University, 1999

Editorial Reviews

“Remarkably perceptive and gracefully written. . . . Anyone with an interest in how good stories are constructed will find this book both enjoyable and useful.”—Shelf Awareness, starred review

“Great for diving deeply into a single aspect of writing that can be applied to any number of goals, including fiction and non-fiction writing. . . . A handy reference guide.”—Brooklyn Rail

“Reading this little book was a pleasure . . . funny, full of stories, and [Castellani’s] insights are profound.”—Caroline Leavittville

“The Art of Perspective is a wonderful book, full of good advice and smart close reading.”—Peter Turchi

From the Publisher

2015-09-15
A close look at writers' crucial choices. The latest contributor to The Art of series, novelist and Guggenheim Fellow Castellani (MFA Program/Warren Wilson Coll.; All This Talk of Love, 2013, etc.), offers an attentive reading of works by E.M. Forster, Lorrie Moore, Zoe Heller, Grace Paley, and Tayeb Salih, among others, to illuminate "the how and why" of narration. "There's no shortage of excellent writing advice," he observes; but rather than add to those instruction manuals, he investigates the writer's imagination and process of searching for the "shape and voice" of a story. "Narration," he writes, "is perspective in action," revealing "the unique stamp of the narrator's sensibility and his motley set of biases and agendas at the moment of telling." The narrator "occupies the most powerful position," claiming responsibility for a story and influencing "how the work will be read and enjoyed." Castellani explains and provides examples of many narrative strategies, including free indirect narration (preferred by Forster), where the narrator "fuses with various characters one at a time"; second person—the intimate "you"—deftly handled in Moore's early collection, Self-Help; and the currently trendy prismatic narration, where a story is told from the perspectives of several characters—a popular approach, Castellani believes, for writers uncomfortable with "the responsibility of exerting moral pressure, of formulating a broad social vision that might exclude entire swaths of readers." An author who perpetuates a single perspective or reinforces a stereotype risks closing down the possibilities and complexities of fiction. In his own stories, Castellani hopes to "shine a light into the dusty corners of human experience, to resist the most accessible images, to make the specific universal and the universal specific; in short, to honor the power that perspective grants us." A modest, gracefully written meditation on creativity and craft.

Kirkus Reviews