Point of View

A Frolic of His Own includes almost no narrative. It is, ostensibly, an unedited transcript of conversations intermingled with legal documents and excerpts from a play script brought together by a completely neutral reactor. He reveals no knowledge of the participants' psyches, interests and histories, but merely assembles what they choose to discuss, face-to-face or over the phone (in which case only half of a conversation is heard). No explicit indications are given of who is addressing whom. It is up to the reader to determine this from occasional vocatives and subtle differences in speech patterns. The weighty legal documents and wooden script generally clarify matters and offer the characters material to discuss and debate. Usually the speeches are broken into paragraphs marked at the start by an "em" dash, but sometimes even this clue is denied the reader. If the author presents any point of...