This essay was originally published on August 21, 2015. It is being re-shared in support of LPR’s 10th Anniversary celebration.
Tyler Barton. Photo credit: Natalie Morgan Sharp.
The “Concerning Craft” series introduces Little Patuxent Review contributors, showcases their work and draws back the curtain to reveal a little of what went into producing it.
An excerpt from “Lease,” which appears in Little Patuxent Review’s Summer Issue:
What Miss Allens don’t realize is eleven is just two ones next together. Mean, she don’t know basic maths. One and one is two. Followed by a zero means twenty. So I walked right up through her yard, past the sign advertising the bike and slapped a Jefferson in her left hand. She spit into her bucket mean the way she does at strays, and she crumbles it up, tosses it at me. Starts shoutin.
- Holden
If you really want to hear about it,[1] I have this complex about third person narrators. Who the hell’s talking to me, and where the hell are they?
These are questions I started asking myself a few years ago, when I was first trying to write, feeling a need to justify my tendency toward the first person. There was something repulsive to me about reading a story or novel and picturing the words coming from a writer, narrating from her desk, or—god help me—his favorite coffee shop. I wanted the words to come from somewhere (that at least seemed) real-life. When a character is a narrator, I see them talking to me—something people do every day in my real life. They’re right there. It’s as if I just happened upon them.
NOTE: If you enjoyed this essay, please check out LPR’s Issue 18. https://littlepatuxentreview.org/issues/18-summer-2015/
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