Underestimating an Audience

Earlier this week I attended an unusual book event at the Public Library of Brookline.

Author M. T. Anderson read the introduction of his new nonfiction book, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. He spoke about Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, composed well after the war but perhaps looking back on it. Then the Arneis Quartet performed that work. nd finally Anderson took questions.

The audience was big enough that the librarians had to bring in more chairs, which is always gratifying for event organizers. Always better to underestimate turnout by a little than to overestimate. As at most cultural offerings, the audience leaned toward the senior side rather than Anderson’s usual readership of teens and middle-graders.

There were some kids there with their parents. I assumed they were fans of Anderson’s Pals in Peril! series. I wondered what they were thinking about this much more serious presentation, with historical/musical analysis of a composition that even some classical music fans find puzzling.

During the question session, one of those kids eagerly raised his hand. He was sitting with a friend the same age and one of their fathers. He had a bowl haircut and a big hole in one of the knees of his trousers. I wondered, how far off the topic of this event was his question going to be?

“I read your book,” he told Anderson. “How long did it take to you find out all this stuff?”

Five years of research, Anderson explained. And we all learned something.

Shifts in Shifting Point of View

Not so long ago, authors were strongly advised to define their point-of-view character for each novel, or at least for each chapter or scene in a novel. While it was possible to describe events that character wasn’t privy to, the informal rules said, a good novel’s narration should show readers only one person’s thoughts or feelings at a time.

Shifting from inside one character’s head to inside another, the tastemakers warned, could confuse readers and/or remind them that they were reading fiction. If one had to make that shift, it was imperative to wait for a chapter break or other obvious signpost. And ideally such a book should be about different views of life; the shifts should not be driven merely by narrative convenience.

There were exceptions to this rule, of course. Many novels of the past had shifting points of view, and readers still enjoyed them—but new authors had to look at what was being published today. There were also some individual exceptions, such as Phillip Pullman.

Something changed over the last decade. Perhaps Pullman’s success undercut the rules. Perhaps the rebirth of the intrusive narrator via Lemony Snicket opened the door to other types of old-fashioned narration. However it happened, three of the last four novels I read had shifting points of view.

Catherine Stier’s The Terrible Secrets of the Tell-All Club works with very close point of view in part one, with each short chapter following one of four kids. The point-of-view character’s name even appears in each chapter title, and the story focuses on how different characters view and misinterpret the same events. That type of narrative complexity grew in popularity over the last couple of decades.

But when Tell-All Club’s action shifts to a school camp, Stier abandons those delineations. Part two is titled “All Together Now.” (The first part has no title.) The narration starts jumping from one protagonist’s head to another within the same chapter and scene. That speeds up the action, but I’m not sure it serves the story—in part because I thought the story sort of petered out into valuable lessons about life.

M. T. Anderson’s Agent Q, or The Smell of Danger!, like the previous titles in the Pals in Peril series, features an intrusive, metatextual narrator who shifts point of view like a silent-movie comedian wrestling a fire hose. But all three books introduce us first to the thoughts of Lily Gefelty, the most normal of their three protagonists. The first couple show us the least normal, Jasper Dash, mainly from the outside, with the third finally letting us into his highly trained brain.

As I recall, the Pals in Peril series was originally presented and re-presented as a trilogy, which harmonized with its three protagonists and the first volume’s tripartite structure. But commercial success and the lack of any narrative limits in this universe put Agent Q in the interesting position of this trilogy’s fourth book. No single protagonist’s point of view or genre dominates as much as in the previous volumes, which results in a lot more switching from one head to another.

Agent Q also brings on a couple of claimants to be fourth member of our heroic threesome. However, neither of those young men gets point-of-view time, nor cover space on this volume or the next to come. (All I can say is that someone else appears to have disliked the Alex Rider books.)

Finally, Diana Wynne Jones’s Enchanted Glass has two protagonists/point-of-view characters, middle-aged Andrew and adolescent Aidan. Indeed, it proceeds for quite a while from its opening with no child in sight, still an unusual feature in a novel for children. As in Pullman’s novels, the narration jumps from one main character’s thoughts to the other within chapters without any section breaks or other typographical signals. But at that point in her life, Jones was well able to break the rules.

Summer Reading—Or Not

And speaking of M. T. Anderson, last weekend I had the following exchange.

Me, tapping a copy of Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware on the kitchen table: “I think you’d like this book.”

Godson’s Brother, eyeing the volume warily: “Oh.”

And then he carefully stayed at least five feet away from it for the rest of the day.

I may have been at fault for bringing Godson and Godson’s Brother a copy of DC Comics’ Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told, which is heady competition on a sunny day. But I think the real factor is that the twins have reached an age where, even though they like reading, they’re determined to resist their very expensive school’s summer reading suggestions. And any other suggestions that involve prose.

The next day, however, Godson got into a Stare-Eyes contest with his cousin. So I really do think I have one holiday present picked out this year.

And to make sure Godson’s Brother won’t read this posting and find out, I’ll recommend that he do so.