When I first read about the moving paintings in Steven Millhauser’s “A Precursor of the Cinema,” I was reminded of the moving paintings in the Harry Potter series, the ones that talked and moved from frame to frame, interacting with both the students and the subjects of the other paintings. In Harry Potter, we know the paintings are enchanted because we are told that they are; in that world, magic is real. In “A Precursor of the Cinema,” however, the paintings function differently. We don’t know for certain if they are magic or science or something else entirely.
This is one of the interesting things about this story, especially in relation to the point-of-view. We don’t get these events as they are happening. The story isn’t told from Crane’s or Curtis’s perspective. Instead, we learn about these people and events long after they’ve occurred in the form of what could be a research paper. The point-of-view is distant, telling the events factually and referring to things like diary entries and other studies for evidence. If I remember correctly, the word “I” is only used once at the very end of the story. Like this unknown narrator and everyone else in this world, we are left to speculate about Harlan Crane and his paintings.
What’s interesting about this point-of-view is that it makes the fantastic seem believable; we take it as fact that this happened and that these paintings moved and that people were able to enter them. In our discussions recently about the coronavirus, many of us talked about how our reality would have seemed fantastic only a month ago. This story is almost the opposite of that; in the way it is told, it makes even the most unbelievable things seem like reality — just another thing that we learn about in a history class.
I also found it interesting that we never actually hear what the narrator is thinking or feeling about the events of the story. To me, it almost felt the narrator had some kind of emotional connection to Crane’s artwork but was trying to deny it by writing this essay/paper in the impersonal, detached way that he did.
I agree with your view on point of view! Now that I am thinking about point of view I think that it makes you really wonder about what is happening and what they are thinking during these situations. I think that it makes people wander what is happening in their paintings!
I love this observation: “In our discussions recently about the coronavirus, many of us talked about how our reality would have seemed fantastic only a month ago. This story is almost the opposite of that; in the way it is told, it makes even the most unbelievable things seem like reality — just another thing that we learn about in a history class.” Throughout this section of the book, Millhauser uses point of view — and often the academic anonymity of the narrator’s voice — to create a persuasive document. This is a device that is often used in the advertising word to persuade the consumer of the efficacy and value of a product.