It is not just an atmosphere, carried in the beautiful smoky brushwork or even a question of narrative.
Again, drawing on the biographies we have worked with so far in the course we will discuss the question of narrative voice in biography.
In other words, where the enigma of Tey's 18th-century model rests firmly on the issue of who in the case was telling the truth - Elizabeth Canning, or her alleged abductors - in The Franchise Affair the question of narrative uncertainty is opened only to be promptly closed down.
You don't have to be terribly interested in questions of narrative reliability to enjoy this aspect of the book.
Set in the picturesque Spanish city of Salamanca (otherwise known as Mexico City), this jigsaw puzzle exploits a repellent conceit — the shooting of an American president (William Hurt, effectively insincere) — in a vague attempt to explore questions of narrative and subjectivity (like "Rashomon") through the box-office-friendly form of a thriller (like the "Bourne" flicks).
Details accumulate sufficiently to explain character and plot, while throwing us so off-guard as to make questions of narrative moot... Wilson and Gyllenhaal are tasked with showing us how the slightest shift in emphasis can alter a line's meaning.
BUT once the Falks have finished their tale and returned to the obscurity from which they emerged, the author is faced with what Herter calls "the central question of all narrative" -- "And then?" At this point, Mulisch makes a series of choices that wreck his story.
"One of the problems with the conversation focusing around privilege is it does make it a conversation about individuals and a question of individual narrative, as opposed to about the structures and the longstanding practices of racial inequality," Perry said.
But Powers is, when he chooses to be, an engaging storyteller (though he would probably wince at the word), and even as he questions the conventions of narrative and character, "Generosity" gains in momentum and suspense.
It's not a question of plot or narrative tension, but rather intensity of purpose".
Consequently, of considerable interest is, for example, "the question of how the narrative aspect of thought experiments have implications for the process whereby one version of a thought experiment can spawn another" (Souder, 2003, pp. 208 209).
