This story is being told using a 1st person retrospective point of view (POV). Will is narrating his story from the vantage point of the future. That brings the intimacy of 1st person point of view with the opportunity of allowing that person to have learned things he or she didn't know at the time the action took place. It brings the reader into the story in a more intimate fashion while freeing the narrator from some of the most Draconian limitations of 1st person. It also provides for the use of dramatic irony.
My second most favorite POV is 3rd person limited. Knowledge of the world is limited to what the character has perceived or learned, but it's told from the 3rd person. This separation of the character's voice from the narrator's voice lends tension which makes the story telling much more interesting.
Anyway, Will's telling the story at a time much advanced from the time of the action. Is his memory correct? We all have memories. Yet, each time we bring up a given memory we massage it a bit, which alters it. We don't know if what we remember happened as we remember it yet we can't get outside of it to "what really happened." In the words of Joni Mitchell: "We're trapped on a carosel of time." Maybe nothing really happens, and our memories come from some other source. But if so, what would that be?
Will's vantage point differs from ours. Maybe he has access to perfect memory.
What do you think? I'd like to know. Post a comment.
Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Memory
Synopsis:
Ian Kearney, the director of the Kearney Music School, an elite musical training school in Philadelphia, dies after a fall from a balcony during a recital. World-famous cellist, Henry Harrier, recently forced from the faculty, returns to investigate Ian's death when his prized former student is arrested. Henry shows through his brilliant and single-minded pursuit of the truth that, as usual, they have it all wrong. This Sherlock Holmes-type mystery leads the reader through the world of classical music and lays bare the conflicts which dominate the lives of talented adolescents when placed under the pressure of studying for a demanding, stressful, and often elusive career as a classical music performer. Henry Harrier is part John Le Carre's George Smiley, part Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes, and part Orlando Cole the beloved teacher, renowned chamber musician, and until his own retirement, the premier cellist of the Curtis Institute.Author Profile:
Tim was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1946. In 1951 he moved with his family to Schenectady, New York, where he lived through high school. He attended Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio, from 1964 to 1968. He graduated in 1968 with a B.A. in history and philosophy. He received his Ph. D. in history in U.S. history in 1980 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after spending 2.5 years in the U. S. Army. Most of his army service was completed in Wuerzburg, Germany, from 1969-1971. In 1972 he returned to Madison to complete his doctoral study. His dissertation, Those Who Moved; Internal Migrants in American 1607-1840, combined the statistical analysis of genealogical and biographical data with the study of traditional literary diaries, letters, and journals.Tim was a market and survey research consultant from 1983 to 2000 and a smoking cessation researcher from 2000 to 2003. His consulting practice focused primarily on conducting community health needs assessment. He authored hundreds of market research reports and published a number of his assessments in Community Health Needs Assessment published by McGraw Hill in 1996 and in a revised volume published in 1999. In 2000 he joined the staff of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention of the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he conducted smoking cessation research. He published several articles in peer-reviewed journals and spoke at national smoking cessation conferences.
In 2003 he moved to Philadelphia and earned his real estate license. He now practices real estate, works on publishing his novels, and studies and teaches entrepreneurship.Tim has written a dozen novel-length stories, a volume of short stories, and about a 3-foot stack of pages poetry. He is currently working on earning his 4th million in real estate sales, publishing his novels, and working on an entrepreneurish handbook as a support for his students.
Tim is a trained violist and an experienced string quartet player. He is an avid listener to classical music and regularly attends classical music concerts. He has two grown children by his first wife and a stepdaughter with his second wife. He likes to cook, read, write, entertain, develop relationships, and help other people. Formerly Tim used to travel frequently. He doesn't so much anymore. Now he regards the combination of real estate practice, writing and publishing, and the teaching and studying of entrepreneurship as enough of a trip.
