{"id":1573,"date":"2026-04-05T10:05:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T17:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/?p=1573"},"modified":"2026-04-05T13:43:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T20:43:43","slug":"roving-pov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/?p=1573","title":{"rendered":"ROVING POV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Sometimes a great notion <\/i>(Kesey) combines the horror of a forest, the animosity between two step-brothers\u2014not quite Cain & Abel, but getting there\u2014 with a lethal love triangle and the destructive forces of capitalism. The third person narration is the glue that holds the story together. Not too many characters but the novel has enough meat and conflict to hold anyone\u2019s interest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One caveat: The two primary perspectives (POVs) are Hank\u2019s and Lee\u2019s, both told in first person and often jumping between them from paragraph to paragraph, and sometimes, in mid paragraph. The story also jumps backwards and forwards and does somersaults in time without warning, so if you\u2019re squeamish, it\u2019s not for you. Kesey uses the roving, shifting point of view jumping from head to head, moving between characters\u2019 inner thoughts within the same scene, often without dialogue tags. The writing does not require them.<\/p>\n

How?<\/p>\n

Lee (younger brother)\u2019s internal monitor screams at him in ALL CAPS and sounds slightly deranged, so when you encounter a phrase as though Trump wrote it on social media, you know whose inner voice it is. Viv\u2019s entire essence oozes with longing and restlessness. Hank, older brother, is self-righteous, charming and macho with the distinct pattern of speech that accompanies such personalities. Then, there are the little linguistic tics. When someone says: jest<\/i> speak. You know who it is. And there is the personification of the forest, (It\u2019s a story about loggers after all) so when you hear<\/em> the forest, it does not need tags, you can feel its anger (loggers, remember?<\/i>) and finally, Kesey uses italics magnificently\u2026<\/p>\n

So, four characters (there is also the father), an angry forest, a past and present that get mixed up all in the same paragraph, with no tags\u2014half stream-of-consciousness, one-forth interior dialogue, and one forth associative thinking (with echoes of the \u201ccollective unconscious\u201d of Jung), all in a lyrical, non-linear, post-modern prose only Kesey could pull off.<\/p>\n

May be a tough read if you\u2019re used to linear story-telling, but if you resist Kesey will break your heart (and every rule the MFA schools have thought of) and then he heals it, shows you what great writing means, rules be damned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes a Great Notion & The Roving POV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1574,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1573"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1576,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions\/1576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}