How Fiction Works (1-49)

I just started reading How Fiction Works, which is one of those beautiful, irresistible little books with a smooth matte cover, an elegant typeface, a slim profile, and ragged, uncut pages. The book is a very approachable exploration of literary theory written in short anecdotes ranging from half a page to several pages. My favorite passage so far is an explanation of the importance of free indirect style:

Thanks to free indirect style, we see things through the character's eyes and language but also through the author's eyes and language. We inhabit omniscience and partiality at once. A gap opens between author and character, and the bridge -- which is free indirect style itself -- between them simultaneously closes the gap and draws attention to its distance.

This is merely another definition of dramatic irony: to see through a character's eyes while being encouraged to see more than the character can see [...] (11)

I have enjoyed the free indirect style in works such as Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and it always felt like something significant was happening, but I could never find the words to explain the phenomenon to myself until I began to read this book. This insight -- that blurring the line between authorial narration and a character's first person perspective is a stylistic manifestation of dramatic irony -- is typical of Wood's comfortable, confident explanations.

I have been toying with the idea that literature is intrinsically valuable because it teaches empathy. When we read, we "stand in other people's shoes," as Harper Lee's Atticus puts it, and this teaches us to consider how our actions will be perceived by other people. Now I can take this idea a step further: when an author lets us into a character's mind, and then retreats back into narration, this models a more subtle form of social interaction. We learn to act with dramatic irony -- to consider how others will perceive our actions, and then to consider a truth beyond their perceptions. We learn to balance empathy with our own sense of right and wrong. Applying this lesson to ourselves, we learn humility.

Wood, James. How Fiction Works. New York: Picador, 2009.