The shifting space between the trees / Espresso Lane

Abstract

The study of literature is often obsessed with the examination of voice in fiction; the free indirect discourse of Jane Austen, chorus of stream of consciousness narratives of William Faulkner, unreliable narration of Wilkie Collins, and first-person dialect of Mark Twain all gain their interest from the question of who is speaking, and how they are doing it. The work of developing one’s own voice, through some combination of originality, mimicry, and practice, is one of the most important tasks any inexperienced writer can, either consciously or unwittingly, take on. The two stories in this volume are an exploration of multivocality, the way in which the voices of author and characters blend, work together, and manage to stay distinct within a work of fiction. By working in both the third and first person, the two pieces paint a composite portrait of the difficulties and rewards of finding or forming an authorial voice in the short story.