Posted by John Richardson on September 01, 2000 at 15:58:55 from 62.253.128.4:
In Reply to: Re: Narrative flow posted by Mike Field on July 30, 2000 at 16:25:45:
I too am not bothered by the examples David mentions. The only real lapse of the type he mentions that has really bothered me is something about which I have posted to TarBoard before and occurs in Swallows & Amazons.
Ransome slips out of any of his normal narrative voices to use a jarring authorial 'I'. The interruption occurs IIRC, during one of the passages dealing with the Leading Lights. Paraphrasing & reconstructing context from memory:
"John steered Swallow carefully until the two lights appeared as dots directly above each other, like the colon symbol :, which I have just made there. Slowly Swallow inched into the harbour".
The exact phrases don't matter. What does is that that authorial first person occurs without warning slap bang in the middle of action reported by the normal, incorporal third person narrator. It's also a rather uncharacteristic schoolmasterly metaphor for Ransome. I think it is unique in the books, and I'm surprised his editors didn't raise objection to it (though perhaps they did!).
Anyway, it jars so badly for me I always leave it out when reading S&A aloud.