Bittercon: Risky Narrative Strategies

[kate_nepveu]

Bittercon panel number two. Yes, my personal biases are showing; what of it?

Risky Narrative Strategies

Sarah Monette's Mélusine sends one of its two first-person narrators into a tailspin on his third page and drives him crazy before the chapter's over. It certainly doesn't play safe, but it's also risky because it gives the reader very little baseline for the character—particularly since the POV is so tight and he doesn't cross paths with the other narrator for a while. What other narrative strategies are risky, and how? Is information flow the principal kind of risk? In what books do risky strategies work, and in what don't they—but in interesting ways?

Presume that there will be spoilers for Mélusine and The Virtu within; for any other works, ROT13 spoilers or put them between <span style="color: #999999; background-color: #999999"> </span>.

Comments

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

This didn't seem that strange to me -- people frequently genuflect to self-centered asses when those types get to the top of one social hierarchy or the other, and I read the court at Melusine as being the sort of place where nastily putting down other people is valued and viewed as laudatory, so long as one does it sufficiently well / has sufficient status to get away w/it. Plus, he's supposed to be good-looking. Really good-looking people don't always get away w/more (sometimes they get away w/less, esp in the case of women), but it's not that uncommon, either.

On the other hand -- that is one of the things I thought *brilliant* about Melusine. Felix is a *hateful* character at the beginning, but it's impossible (for me, at least, tho I gather not for most others) not to sympathize with him very soon thereafter . . . Also, one of the few cases where I thought someone being well and truly insane was done well (and one of the only two I can think of where it was done well from that character's p.o.v.; I think Snitter from the Plague Dogs is the only other example).

[kate_nepveu]

I sympathized with him, but it more abstract than heartfelt, because I didn't yet have a connection with him.

I do agree that the insanity was done well.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the power of powerful jerks, but I thought that Felix was supposed have great charisma even among the aristocracy, and I just didn't see it. More of him doing witty evil put-downs would have helped, actually.

His madness didn't work for me at all, though-- he seemed like a sane person hallucinating, if that makes sense. And the narrowness of his hallucinations-- people with animal heads-- made them unconvincing to me as either hallucinations or madness. They were just too orderly.

I did very much like Snitter as a mad POV. I can't think of many others I liked offhand in fiction, though I can think of a number of retrospective accounts of various types of mental illness (and delirium, and drug trips) that convey the experience brilliantly. Alfred Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit" is good.

[inkylj.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I agree that his madness didn't seem like real madness, but I didn't think it was intended to -- I mean, it was basically a curse on the guy, right? So it worked for me as something that was intended to keep him from being able to understand or communicate with* other people and nothing more. I did think the timing of his madness felt somewhat forced, but that's another issue.

*Or, at least, to communicate with them on a human level, since mastery of the subtle social cues is what Felix prides himself on.

[kate_nepveu]

I think so--the opinion of Vida is that Felix "didn't _go_ mad--he was _sent_ mad." The Celebrants who cure Felix talk about trauma, but they don't know how the Virtu was broken.

Question: is it possible to write "real madness" in first-person headlong (non-retrospective) without completely losing the reader?

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

This is a damned interesting question. And possibly why I wasn't able to get into "The Sound and the Fury". But I'm guessing "yes, if done well enough, as long as you're willing to lose quite a few readers" is my answer. *g*

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Ah, Felix's madness (both from his p.o.v. and Mildmay's dealing w/it) was what really made the book for me. Part of why it worked from my take is that the way he related to both people and the atmosphere around him is quite akin to how a certain cringing part of my brain works when I'm either deeply depressed or in the grip of a really bad migraine, sans hallucinations. Which could be an argument in your favor, I guess (I don't *think* I'm clinically insane), but I always thought that particular part of my thinking is usually a little off, and if that was the only part of my brain working in those episodes, I'd class myself as well and truly nuts.

This would be further backed by my experiences around people who occasionally do lose the more step-back-and-observe portion of their heads when the mood swings swamp them. I can't tell you how much I also identified w/Mildmay taking care of the crazy person and sort of angrily/humorously/desperately dealing w/keeping them from hurting themselves while waiting/hoping/praying for things to return to normal before it gets beyond workability . . .

The other, not-so-related-to-RL part of F's madness that I thought worked perfectly was how his crazy!perception was oftimes spot-on and more accurate in its assessment of people's character than our normal visuals would be, and the loosening of filters that let him see ghosts and atmospheric things that I assumed were really there, etc. Which I've always wondered about w/regards to some hallucinagenic experiences people have recounted -- how much is just distortion, and how much is seeing things in a completely valid way that normally isn't avaible. Heh, I could write an essay on this stuff and the book, so I'll stop myself now. (could possibly go on as well w/Snitter, tho it's been so many years since i've read that . . . in both cases, I really loved how well the author put us inside their heads and how well it worked for me, at least)