paradigmatic first-person novels

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what are some good examples of novels written in the first person?

i'd like to get a good overview of the different possibilities for first-person writing. so i'm not looking for the use of first person in various genres, although it may well come to that.

examples:

the sorrows of young werther
the big sleep

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:22 (nineteen years ago)

Catcher in the Rye

― Why does my IQ changes? (noodle vague), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:25 (nineteen years ago)

another good example would be a first-person novel with an 'unreliable narrator', though i can't think of the best example right now.

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:30 (nineteen years ago)

Lolita.

― Why does my IQ changes? (noodle vague), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:33 (nineteen years ago)

and before this thread picks up steam let me emphasize that i'm wondering about novels that do some particular thing, possible in the first person, especially well - novels that exploit some special possibility of the first person. which is different from asking about good novels that happen to be written in the first person.

and as far as that goes: a la recherche du temps perdu.

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:40 (nineteen years ago)

I think both the books I suggested make important use of the first person. The unreliable narrator is essentially a first person technique (though I can imagine an unreliable third person narrative, maybe The Dice Man does this sometimes.) Lolita has to be told in first person to be the book it is.

I'm wondering if Gulliver in the fourth book of Gulliver's Travels is the first example of an unreliable narrator?

― Why does my IQ changes? (noodle vague), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:50 (nineteen years ago)

Tristram Shandy.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:50 (nineteen years ago)

A Million Little Pieces?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:51 (nineteen years ago)

Flowers For Algernon, surely.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:53 (nineteen years ago)

As I Lay Dying -- probably the most famous novel where the first-person narrator changes between chapters? Certainly it makes good use of the differences in how the various characters express themselves.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:54 (nineteen years ago)

Every Jim Thompson novel ever.

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:57 (nineteen years ago)

oh i think they do too noodle vague, i was just trying to pre-empt my thread's going awry since they seem to do that (probably, of course, because i keep trying to steer them). (and i hope you're referring to a biography of andrew dice clay, i really really hope.)

good examples all.

and i don't know about jim thompson - looking him up it seems like i would like to read a lot of those - but seeing a description of 'the killer inside me' makes me think of a particular feature of the first person that is in lazy thinking about the novel one of its characteristic features (though not, i think, generally and for all of them - thus, lazy thinking): more intense reader-narrator identification. it would seem from the description that 'killer' might exploit that a bit - is that right, ken?

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 20:22 (nineteen years ago)

there are of course various possibilities involving sort of more or less unimportant narrator-characters, editors, here's-a-story-i-heard retellers, and so on (and with all of those arrangements, various ways the narrator can contaminate or qualify or etc. the story), but i don't really know that many of them.

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 20:26 (nineteen years ago)

heart of darkness?

i thought for a second you were saying "lazy thinking about the novel" was one of the characteristics of first-person writing

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 20:52 (nineteen years ago)

Moby Dick
The Remains of the Day

tbh, not sure what you're asking...

― W i l l (common_person), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 22:21 (nineteen years ago)

that one where the narrator is an autistic boy writing about the death of his neighbor's dog, came out a few years ago

― W i l l (common_person), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 22:22 (nineteen years ago)

Giles Goat-Boy

― W i l l (common_person), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 22:23 (nineteen years ago)

The Great Gatsby

also: are the narrators of any of these, with the possible exception of The Big Sleep, not unreliable?

― W i l l (common_person), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 22:25 (nineteen years ago)

Wittgenstein's Mistress, perhaps.

Flatland!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 22:59 (nineteen years ago)

Go Now

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 14 September 2006 01:01 (nineteen years ago)

Pale Fire

― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 14 September 2006 01:14 (nineteen years ago)

that one where the narrator is an autistic boy writing about the death of his neighbor's dog, came out a few years ago

Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is what I think you're thinking of.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Thursday, 14 September 2006 03:11 (nineteen years ago)

This is a much easier topic than your last one, Josh.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 14 September 2006 04:11 (nineteen years ago)

xpost - yez, that's it

The Joke
Portnoy's Complaint
The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell To Arms
White Noise

― W i l l (common_person), Thursday, 14 September 2006 07:57 (nineteen years ago)

L'Etranger by Albert Camus

― vingt regards (vignt_regards), Thursday, 14 September 2006 14:50 (nineteen years ago)

Gene Wolfe's _Book Of The New Sun_ has been quite influential on Fantasy & SF (and comics by way of Neil Gaiman)

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Friday, 15 September 2006 02:22 (nineteen years ago)

Gene Wolfe's _Book Of The Short Sun_ has a bizarre and innovative first-person schematic. Basically, the narrator has some type of amnesia/confused identity, and he thinks he's Horn, despite the fact that everyone he comes across says "you're not Horn." The question: who is he? dogs you over the course of three volumes, and when it's finally revealed, about 3 pages before the end, the answer SHOULD have been obvious but it's not, it's totally surprising and casts the ENTIRE book in a different light.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Friday, 15 September 2006 02:26 (nineteen years ago)

he's not you is he because i hear that's been done (maybe by this dude)

― Josh (Josh), Friday, 15 September 2006 03:04 (nineteen years ago)

I'm sure exactly what you were asking up thread, Josh, whether JT was exploiting some kind of cheap gimmick? Maybe, but it came very naturally to him and was extremely effective. The Killer Inside Me has the big rep with the quotes from Kubrick and King- I prefer the similar Pop. 1280.

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Friday, 15 September 2006 19:36 (nineteen years ago)

Jim Thompson: C/D S+D

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Friday, 15 September 2006 19:41 (nineteen years ago)

Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone and The Woman in White both have revolving first-person narrators. I thought it works very well considering the stories. Bram Stoker read Collins and used this for Dracula.

― Nick Smith (nms72), Friday, 15 September 2006 21:46 (nineteen years ago)

How about Frankenstein where there's several first-person narrators ... Walton writing to his sister; Frankenstein telling his story to Walton; the monster recounting his story to Frankenstein?

I also seem to recall that there's other first-person narrators within the story, though somewhat incidentally - doesn't Justine tell of her encounter to Frankenstein and ... Elizabeth?

And speaking of Shelley, I seem to recall a prof. getting all excited about the "layers" of narrative in "Ozymandias" -

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 15 September 2006 23:17 (nineteen years ago)

i wasn't saying it was cheap, ken! just a thing.

― Josh (Josh), Saturday, 16 September 2006 06:29 (nineteen years ago)

the murder of roger ackroyd, obviously. nearly got agatha kicked out of the detection club.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 17 September 2006 16:53 (nineteen years ago)

atonement is interesting along these lines too.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 17 September 2006 16:56 (nineteen years ago)

roger ackroyd? is that the one where (SPOILER)?

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 17 September 2006 17:28 (nineteen years ago)

... yes, it is. for some reason i remembered that happening in The ABC Murders.

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 17 September 2006 17:36 (nineteen years ago)

Oh yeah, that reminds me- Charles Willeford's Pick-Up.

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Sunday, 17 September 2006 19:08 (nineteen years ago)

Henry James
William Faulkner

― A Giant Mechanical Ant (The Giant Mechanical Ant), Wednesday, 20 September 2006 05:54 (nineteen years ago)

Brett Easton Ellis?

― justine paul (justine), Friday, 29 September 2006 22:41 (nineteen years ago)

and also Foe by J.M. Coetzee - kind of an epistolary novel but with a bizarre ending where the reader is no longer sure who is narrating. another one i just thought of is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. i read it quite awhile ago but if my memory serves me correctly, it had unusual first-person narrators.

― justine paul (justine), Saturday, 30 September 2006 08:48 (nineteen years ago)

Oooh! What about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd?

― franny (frannyglass), Saturday, 30 September 2006 12:08 (nineteen years ago)

the murder of roger ackroyd, obviously. nearly got agatha kicked out of the detection club.

-- gypsy mothra (meetm...), September 17th, 2006.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 30 September 2006 18:56 (nineteen years ago)

Ooooh! John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure - one of my favourite books.

An unreliable first person narrator, telling his story through a series of menus/recipes.

― Bob Six (bobbysix), Saturday, 30 September 2006 21:21 (nineteen years ago)

I forgot about Foe. Also, I don't think anyone has mentioned Beckett.

The Public Burning by Robert Coover is partially narrated by Richard Nixon.

― A Giant Mechanical Ant (The Giant Mechanical Ant), Tuesday, 3 October 2006 02:45 (nineteen years ago)

The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler

― badg (badg), Tuesday, 3 October 2006 02:53 (nineteen years ago)

Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler: Barney, suffering from alzheimer's, narrates.

― A Giant Mechanical Ant (The Giant Mechanical Ant), Wednesday, 4 October 2006 01:51 (nineteen years ago)

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