Point of View

The most apparent point to note about the book’s various points of view has to do with its narrative voice – specifically, how it comes across as emerging from socio-cultural considerations, or explorations, taking place at some point in the future. In a stylistic choice clearly related to “Language and Meaning” (see below), there is the clear sense that the narrator is telling someone else about life in the relatively distant past that, for the reader, is as the title says: the “very recent” past. A related point is this: while there is a sense of story that threads its way through the book, albeit somewhat intangibly on occasion, a significant portion of the narration is spent exploring and commenting on various aspects of the context and circumstances in which the rather slight plot unfolds. Those explorations and commentaries are written from a point of...