Sorry if it sounded as if I'm giving out some rules and passing laws, no intention on doing that. The difference between the narrator's and author's voice is just what it is: a very common, and very real thing. As for reference: there is so many good books on narratology that I'm not sure where to start from. You could start from any of Phelan's Theory and Interpretation of Narrative books. Take a good look on some of Harold Bloom's writing - great stuff. Or go back to Propp. Stuff I've read through schooling - I doubt that any of it can be found in English. No argue - how could one argue such a claim! - but: No attempt? Are you 100% positively completely utterly competently and definitively sure?
You didn't get my point - sorry for yelling NEVER I was speaking from the point of view of a reader/critique , not the writer. So, to rephrase it: We (readers) should never put an equals sign between the author and the narrator persona. If not more often, there is a very obvious distinction. A narrator can do what author wants him to do - maybe stand for what the author thinks, maybe show his political views, express the existential problems, etc. OF COURSE it does - the writer creates the narrator for the purpose of narrating the narration. (oh yeah baby!) No argue here - but we could start picking one after another, after another book, dissecting the narrator's voice in it, find passages that are clearly auctorial, find passages where narrator speaks to the reader, or those where the book explains itself as a book - and I think that would be a great subject for a workshop!
You know something, Burlbird? I like you. You make sense. I've read a little of Bloom (The Western Canon) and a couple of interviews with him. He's a pretty quirky guy, in some ways, but he's read a lot more books than I have. I won't argue with him - much! I'll leave it like this (so as not to further hijack this thread): I've read many books in which the author splashes himself all over the pages. I probably have a tendency to do that myself. Maybe you wouldn't publish me, but I'm hoping someone will!
