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/lit/ - Literature

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2645068 No.2645068[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Anyone else fucking despise First-Person Narration?

I know insulting Urban Fantasy is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I keep seeing it in a lot of other, more respected genres.

It can be written well, but it's just claustrophobic being stuck in someone's head for 300+ pages, especially when you have to figure out the motivations and characteristics of other characters by reading between the lines of the protagonist's unreliable narration.

Any thoughts? Examples of First-Person done well?

>> No.2645076

Hey, OP. Hate to post something tangential like this, but you reminded me. I like when urban fantasy is done well, but it's so rare...

>> No.2645096
File: 76 KB, 396x599, Dresden Files Ghost Story.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2645096

>>2645076
There's Dresden Files and Neil Gaiman

And that's all I can think of. I just hate how it crowds out the rest of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section like a cancerous tumor

>> No.2645224

Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy is pretty good and first person.

>> No.2645231
File: 352 KB, 488x688, wtfswan.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2645231

>>2645076

Example?

>> No.2645254

>>2645231
China Mieville
The Magicians
The Raw Shark Texts
Otherland (my memory is fuzzy on this one, admittedly, so the classification may be off)

>> No.2645258

I used to love it.
I can't stand it, now.
Unless it's done really well, and in a good book.
If it's just an average book in first-person, I hate it.

>> No.2645266
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2645266

>Examples of First-Person done well?

>> No.2645607

>>2645231
Person you're referring to. Yeah, Kraken is pretty damn good. Mieville's other work isn't bad, but I started with Kraken and am glad I did.

>> No.2645624

>>2645068
That is one fine leather clad ass.

>> No.2645627

>>2645076
>>2645096
My favorite genre. Too bad Dresden Files and American Gods are basically the only good ones. I mean, Urban Shaman and Greywalker are sort of... not terrible.

But my God, so many shitty vampire werewolf sex novels. So many dark broody half-demons and misunderstood sexy things.

But I do love magical detectives and hardboiled narration. Shit, that's what I want to write.

>> No.2645654

>>2645068
Yes. It makes the whole thing seem like a self insert.

>> No.2645671

The Night Watch - Sergei Lukyanenko is good urban fantasy, it even has a bit of depth to it which is good. Just don't confuse it with 'The Night Watch' the discworld book or 'The Night Watch' the book about lesbians in WW2 (though they're both pretty good too actually).

>> No.2645678

Jesus Christ, if you are going to avoid books just because they are first-person you deserve to miss all the great books you are going to. First person is useful for close examination of a single character because by letting a character express themselves you let the reader infer things about their personality and make their own judgments.

Let me put it bluntly: if you choose not to read a book solely on the fact it is in first or third person, you are an idiot and a plebeian. Expand your fucking horizons seriously.

>>2645654
Except no because that's stupid and wrong. Notes From Underground is first person, does that mean that the narrator is anything like Dostoevsky? Fuck no. Dostoevsky is satirizing that sort of person. Is Ian McEwan anything like Joe Rose from Enduring Love? Nope, McEwan lets Joe express himself in first person so that the reader can see how skewed his world view is (though I wouldn't really class Enduring Love as 'first person done well', but whatever).

>> No.2645682

the "unreliable narrator" is my favourite literary device, so I can't agree with this thread, sorry.

Examples of first-person done well? Um, "Moby-Dick"? "The Great Gatsby"? "Notes from the Underground"?

>> No.2645685

>>2645682
Could you share some good books with unreliable narrators?

>> No.2645695

>>2645685

Not him, but Lolita comes to mind.

>> No.2645808

You must read lots of hunger games, op.

The Catcher in the Rye. On the Road. Huckleberry Finn. Dostoevsky's Gambler, Notes from Underground, and Adolescent. Proust.

>> No.2645812

>>2645685
Pale Fire <- perhaps the best example. But I never trust narrators anymore so maybe I can't tell the difference any more.

American Psycho, Rules of Attraction, Glamorama, is also a solid trilogy of that shit. Glamorama in particular is the best there, but I feel like you need to read the other two to get that one fully?

Catcher in the rye, unreliable as fuck. Buddy -- W.G. Glass -- is as unreliable fuck when he's telling Seymour An Introduction, Raise High the Roofbeams, Franny & Zooey, and even "transcribing" (allegedly) Seymour's letter in Hapworth.

>> No.2645924

>>2645808
Was Hunger Games first person? I could have sworn it was third person limited with a mind reader narrator. Too lazy to get up and look.

>>2645812
Generally, in first person your narrator can't be relied on because their perceptions colour the world. Just thinking about Dresden Files, the things he says about himself are often contradicted by other characters, and he also uses metaphor and colourful language, so you can never really tell just how big Mister and Mouse are, and you can never really tell just how horrible a person he comes off as. Little things.

Better for unreliable narration would be House of Leaves, where at one point Johnny Truant goes on and on about something, and then after about four pages of footnotes that drown out the main story, he admits that he completely made the whole thing up, and he even changed some of the words in the passage of the manuscript he found. The whole book of course is unreliable, too.

>> No.2645930
File: 18 KB, 264x400, Notes-from-the-Underground.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2645930

Done very well.

>> No.2646056

>>2645682
>>2645695
>>2645808

None of those except Notes from the Underground is any good.

>> No.2646058

I can't stand first-person because it is fucking pretentious. Someone is literally talking about themselves and what they experience for an entire book. YOU ARE NOT THAT IMPORTANT. Fuck it makes me rage.

>> No.2646075

>>2646058
Wow you are dumb.

>> No.2646077
File: 202 KB, 900x745, chimp.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2646077

>>2646058
>that feel when a chimp tries to batter something intelligible out of his keyboard

(no offense to any chimpfags)

>> No.2646079

>shit readers itt

>> No.2646084
File: 13 KB, 177x278, 295[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2646084

>>2646058

>> No.2646089
File: 44 KB, 624x351, CHHCH.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2646089

>>2646077
>tfw actual chimps being on 4chan would explain a lot

>> No.2646096

It's appealing because the reader feels closer to the narrator and character. I don't know if Great Gatsby is an example of what I'm saying (I'm doubting myself because Nick Caraway isn't the real protagonist)

>Urban fantasy like shooting fish in a barrel.
>Implying the Dresden Files is bad.

>> No.2646098

>>2645254
>>2645254
>The Magicians
Aside from being a stupid parody of JK Rowling and CS Lewis, that book wasn't that great. The first time I read, I like it. But the second reading it just seemed dull and boring. And it doesn't help the Lev Grossman is a massive fucking asshole.
By the way, do you know if Magician's King is good?