Richard Sterne Planets Analysis

Unbeknownst to the casual reader, what authors choose to include or exclude in their writing, as well as their choice of words, can have monumental influence on the interpretation of their story. This interpretation, however, is subject to the readers own experiences, bias and ignorances. Like an astronaut arriving to a novel planet, each text brings readers to distant pre-constructed lands setting them free to explore not only their obvious landmarks, but their never-ending minutia. In rare instances, we are given an unobstructed view of the different ways authors create their own “planets”. Such sophisticated insights into the translation of ideas and thoughts are given in books that have been written as far back as the 16th Century, well before the advent of realism and modernism. Though separated by generations, these books are eerily similar in their awareness of the sometimes vague, and peculiar thought process of the human mind. By going to great lengths in creating their “world” these books dive deeper and deeper into how the mind operates and in doing so try to mimic its operation. Perhaps the earliest known …show more content…
As readers, we bear witness to Sterns thought process/conciseness perpetuated centuries later on the printed page. 228 years after Sterne’s last instalment of his memoir, Lydia Davis published her lone novel, The End of The Story. In it, an unmanned narrator reflects on her now lost relationship with a younger lover. Peppered across the book lie instances of frustration in conveying her story. Early on, her concern is with the naming of her two main characters. Worried that the name will carry a negative impact on the story she bobbles around calling “her Hannah, and then Mag, and then Anna again” (Davis 42). In the end, she chooses to keep them