In The Knockout Artist, Crews has abandoned his characteristic shifting point of view and multiple narrative lines to focus steadily on Eugene. As a result, Eugene is more fully developed than Crews's other protagonists, and his world is explored entirely in terms of its impact on him. The steady intensity of the focus confines the reader to Eugene's perspective, limiting alternative views, and giving prime importance to his values, conflicts, and choices.

Narrative structure supports the novel's shift in emphasis from the social to the individual. Inverting his customary pattern in support of his theme, Crews begins with the mass hysteria of a large party and concludes with the quietly private action of Eugene and Jacques leaving New Orleans.

The alternation of many public and private scenes remains the means of narrative development, but the direction is away from, rather than toward, public cataclysm.

As a result of...