What is the narrator point of view in the nonfiction book, Intoxicated by My Illness and Other Writings on Life and Death?

All of the six works collected in Intoxicated By My Illness are told from the point of view of the author Anatole Broyard. However, they were not all written at the same time and present different perspectives based on the period in which they were conceived. Parts One to Four were all written during Broyard's tragically brief battle with prostate cancer and, therefore, are told from the enlightened, pensive view point of a dying man. Here, Broyard reflects on his life, the nature of dying, and the raw beauty of illness. His point of view is that of a man faced with death, straining to see beyond the veil into oblivion.

Parts Five and Six differ from the first four in that they were written before Broyard fell sick. In "Part Five: The Literature of Death 1981-1982", Broyard takes on the keen-eyed, pointed view point of the literary critic, analyzing books on dying and culture with great enthusiasm and interest. This exercise is similar to "Part Two: Toward a Literature of Illness " in that it is essentially a bibliography of books on the subject of illness and dying. However, the viewpoint in the two works differs in that Part Five represents Broyard's attempts as an outside observer to understand death while Part Two is written from the perspective of someone who is actually dying. "Part Six: What the Cystoscope Said," written in 1954, is told from the perspective of Broyard as a young man. Here, the point of view is that of a boy entering manhood, and growing in strength as opposed to losing it as Broyard recounts in Parts One though Four.