Writing lessons on BART

All good writers leave tips on writing. They discuss the act through their works and sometimes directly in the stories.

Point of View:

"Glued into the book--giving himself only the voice of the watcher, the listener, the 'he'." --The English Patient p 172

The third person voice creates distance and places the reader in the position of the listener. Ondaatje experiments with this movement with reader's distance. Occasionally putting us in the first person voice, occasionally throwing us off with the third. I found one section slightly jarring. It is a matter of personal taste, but I am not one for challenging my readers with such movements. The hand of the writer is too obvious. Perhaps this comes from Ondaatje's background as a poet? the effect, I feel, is akin to watching an experimental film. One can be in awe of technique, or one can be in awe of story. I don't think both can be achieved. I think of all the great experimental writers, story is not a strong hold in their works--it is the beauty of their language, their structure or other such technical things. From here, I would like to suggest that perhaps, there is a slight bias in the literary world. Experiment also seems to receive higher merit than story.

Technique: Framing shifting sections. Even with the constantly moving time and places and nararative points of views, there is still a solid frame to ground that movement. Before launching into this experimental shifting spot in the novel. Ondaatje has also set up a solid frame of the villa and the solid characters to surround the faceless English patient whose memory we would dip into. And he reminds us where we are constantly. So perhaps, we can say, that the more shifts, the greater the experiment, the more solid framing we need?

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