Narration

“You’re reading Pride and Prejudice again?”

I’ve heard this comment many times. There I’ll be, clutching my Dover Thrift edition, gluttoning Austen’s mischances and Mr. Collins-eses. The wizened and satirical tone of the book’s narrator paints my world a new color with each perusal of the pages. Every time I revel in her word choices, her attitudes, her opinions, I feel as though I’m on a coffee date with a very dear friend.

Sometimes I wonder whether everyone else is reading the same thing I read when I pick up this classic. Certainly some readers are Mr. Darcy’s mistresses. Others seek a scholarly understanding of the time period. Then there are the pimply-faced high schoolers who are simply trying to survive the language. A reader’s reception of a piece varies by degrees with each perspective they bring to the pages. No matter how honed an author makes a text, there will always be a margin of error. Just as there’s a margin of error in every author.

Narrators are invariably broken people. Writers grapple with this fact and are constantly unearthing new ways to manipulate these voices. (Consider Gatsby’s Nick Carraway or Lolita’s Humbert Humbert.) The task of the writer and/or the narrator is to stretch or break open the nuances in his or her voice. To exploit the strengths and weaknesses of the perspective. This intentional manipulation succeeds when one is self-reflective enough to recognize the negative-space in each of our experiences. We’re each different. An author must be fluent in his or her own psychology as well as the psychology of everyone else. Then an honest voice may develop, one that is coherent and engaging. Only then. It is an understandably difficult task.

Whether we write things down or not, we are all narrators. But what happens when we don’t know that our narration speaks from a bias. Each of us has encountered that uncomfortable moment when we realize that our approach to a situation is skewed, unbalanced, or simply broken. There’s a miscommunication, a fallacy in our statement. Sometimes we backtrack, discover our mistake, and correct. Sometimes we fall and are forced to climb out of the crater-like hole in our language. Other times, though, we simply continue onward, ignore the fact that we’re fumbling about in the air like Wiley Coyote, and maintain our brokenness. We count on everyone else to understand our approach and not once do we consider whether we are, in fact, the ones off track.

Communication is key. I’m realizing this more and more as I continue a relationship with Ed. Our most common fights stem from our differing perceptions. Some topic will catch our fancy and we’ll digest it sweetly until suddenly something is misunderstood and everything turns sour. Take, for example, a very simple argument that had me storming for hours: We’re cleaning up after a photography shoot and our friends tell us that they’ll meet us later at our next destination. I comment, “That sounds great. We’ll follow you.” My assumption—my perspective—used the term “follow” in its uncomplicated definition of “Use the same path after someone else.” Ed perceived me to mean “Proceed directly behind.” When he disagreed with me and cited my statement, I was completely at a loss as to where our miscommunication lay. Who wouldn’t use “follow” in the way I did? Obviously, Ed wouldn’t.

We all have our broken lenses, our idiosyncrasies that taint our perspective or warp our understanding. That’s allowed. But to enjoy that benefit we must also recognize its cost. There’s a responsibility in communication, a responsibility to understand the other’s terms before too many personal assumptions cloud our approach.

One of my professors in college always used to make me define my terms when we began a conversation. I laughed at his eccentricities (I mean, really, who would think they’d need to define “How-was-your-summer?”?), but I’m now grasping his wisdom. Certainly we can’t always go around and ask everyone else to define their terms. But recognizing that each of us approaches the world with our unique perspective (and vocabulary!) will help us respond to miscommunications in the future. Hopefully then we won’t find our narrations so incompatible after all.