Article: 'All this talk and struggle': John McGahern's The Dark.(Critical Essay)

The most striking stylistic feature of John McGahern's second novel, The Dark is that the narrative voice constantly shifts between the first, second, and third person, until in the concluding chapter there seems to be no discernible narrative presence at all. We know that McGahern considers style as the most important expression of the sense of reality of any fiction. In a late essay he put it thus:

 
   If we think of style as the man, of style as the revelation of 
   personality in language and that the quality of the personality is 
   more important than the material out of which the pattern is shaped, 
   then the opposite can be argued: style itself must be the ...

Related newspaper, magazine, and journal articles:

 
 
Newsweek Harper's Magazine The Washington Post Chicago Tribune Crain's Chicago Business PRNewswire Pediatric News The Nation Advertising Age The Economist (US) A FREE trial gives you access to over 80 million articles! Access over 6,500 publications with a FREE trial!