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🦋 Layers of narrative
What we need is a memoir without a self. A memoir about somebody other than 'me.'
This weekend I started Zachary Lazar's new novel, I Pity the Poor Immigrant, set in New York and Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the beginning, middle and end of the 20th Century -- a nice broad span to cover in 250pp! I am enjoying it. The narrative structure of the book is a little different than any I have seen before -- the framing story is told in the first person by Hannah Groff, a journalist. The three framed stories (well there are more than that -- the three main ones) are a first-person narrative of Groff writing an article about the killing of David Bellen, an Israeli poet; a third-person narrative of events earlier in her life; and a third-person narrative of events in the life of Meyer Lansky. I'm finding the middle one of those especially interesting because the narrator is clearly Groff; but she refers to her younger self in the third person. It gives me a little frisson of weirdness every time she refers to "Hannah".
posted evening of Thursday, February 6th, 2014
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