I've mixed feelings about 2nd person POV, too - the gist of it is that I can only enjoy it when I feel that there's a concrete aspect of the story that can be illustrated through that particular angle. I liked it in your "Half-life", Susan, because it added to the mood of Krycek being in a shock state and incapable of processing his grief consciously - that feeling of dissociation which the mind can seek refuge in, in order to get through extreme emotional stress. So in this instance, the 2nd person POV felt to me like a kind of narration processing of a survival mechanism in the character.
I had the same feeling first time I read Rah's "Next of Kin" which is a 2nd person POV dealing with Scully's experience of the aftermath of TINH - needing to dissociate herself from her grief while dealing with the harrowing, practical details around Mulder's death and funeral. There, too, I could see the POV as a manifestation of an escape/survival mechanism of the mind, and it definitely worked for me.
In Eo's "Oil" which was just posted to RATales, there's the variation of having the 2nd person POV related through a discreet, but visible 1st person narrator, which gave a rather different effect again - but very impactful for that piece, I thought, as it brought a gradual and teasing revelation of who the personal narrator of the story was and the nature of the narrator's relationship with the 2nd person character.
Where I have issues with this POV and often will just stop reading is, as others have said, if it seems purely like an affectation/writing exercise or just an unjustified complication of the reader's access to the story matter. And often that seems to be the case, but I do think there are instances where it can highlight the concerns of the story in a valuable way, and I'm willing as a reader to give a story a chance on that basis. I definitely feel that the 2nd person POV works best when it's used to contribute to a given effect for shorter, very focussed pieces, though, as it does draw attention to itself and it's harder to justify the need for it through all the varying moods and levels of intensity in a longer story.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2003-02-19 03:08 am (UTC)I had the same feeling first time I read Rah's "Next of Kin" which is a 2nd person POV dealing with Scully's experience of the aftermath of TINH - needing to dissociate herself from her grief while dealing with the harrowing, practical details around Mulder's death and funeral. There, too, I could see the POV as a manifestation of an escape/survival mechanism of the mind, and it definitely worked for me.
In Eo's "Oil" which was just posted to RATales, there's the variation of having the 2nd person POV related through a discreet, but visible 1st person narrator, which gave a rather different effect again - but very impactful for that piece, I thought, as it brought a gradual and teasing revelation of who the personal narrator of the story was and the nature of the narrator's relationship with the 2nd person character.
Where I have issues with this POV and often will just stop reading is, as others have said, if it seems purely like an affectation/writing exercise or just an unjustified complication of the reader's access to the story matter. And often that seems to be the case, but I do think there are instances where it can highlight the concerns of the story in a valuable way, and I'm willing as a reader to give a story a chance on that basis. I definitely feel that the 2nd person POV works best when it's used to contribute to a given effect for shorter, very focussed pieces, though, as it does draw attention to itself and it's harder to justify the need for it through all the varying moods and levels of intensity in a longer story.