"It's Not You, It's Me"

Our reading of this book comes at a particularly convenient time for me: I recently finished writing a short story in second person, present tense for a Creative Writing class. Having done so, I was able to compare my motives for writing my story in this style (and the effects I hoped it would have on readers) with Fuentes' possible motives (and the effects of his style on me as a reader).

I suppose I made my decision about my story driven by a subconscious desire to "collapse the distance" between my protagonist and the reader--namely by making protagonist the reader with the use of "you." A first-person "I" may be personal and close in an emotional sense, but the "I" is clearly another being, another consciousness whose perceptions the reader must trust. A third-person omniscient narrator may earn a reader's trust, but he/she remains emotionally distant. When the primary voice, the primary consciousness in a story is "you," we are driven by an overwhelming tendency to trust what appears to be our own perceptions. We gain no information before or after the protagonist, because we are living the narrative here, now, in the present. We must learn about this world in which we have been placed as though we are infants making first use of our senses. It's a fragile world--we might discover our senses have deceived us, and everything will come apart.

Now a note about tone: for me, the use of the second person imbues a story with an inexplicable creepiness. It's almost like being in a dream--where you can't seem to control what you're doing, but you sense yourself doing it anyway. Somewhat paradoxically, I don't feel in control when I read a second-person story, even though the writer has pretty much invited me into it. Maybe it's because I'm more comfortable as a spectator...