More Thoughts on the Second Person / Harry Youtt

 First we’ll talk about basic second person communication – an effort at intimately communicating with you the reader, communication that is at the heart of fundamental narration.

 Here’s one of the miraculous aspects of written literature.  And you’ll probably be initially surprised to learn, in the literary equation (Writer + reader = literature), you officially do not exist at the moment I write this. You are only the figment of my imagination.  But then, as you read this, we’ve reached a point at which I no longer exist.  You are there, imagining me and what I intended to reveal by what I wrote.

 But in spite of the official absence of you in the equation, for me as I write this, you already do exist, and it almost doesn’t matter whether the particular you who is reading what I’ve written right now ever come  into being or not.  On the other side of the equation, as you are reading this, I suddenly exist for you, in your mind.

 A lot of narrative tells a story without referring to “you” at all, and yet here ‘I’ am and there ‘you’ are just the same, both of us implicit in the duality of writer and reader in the creation of writing.  This writing is created by me and intended that somewhere down the line, ‘you,’ whoever you might be, will be reading it – which you are.  Indeed, this me-you duality almost defines narration.

 But if in the telling, I do refer to you as ‘you,’ as I have just done several times here, then this is suddenly a step more intimate between us.  It is now confirmed within the text that this is something written just for ‘you.’  And even though if you shake yourself out of the reverie you never come to believe that I’m writing this just for ‘you,’ nevertheless you sort of like the idea we’re pretending it, so you stay with it.

 And if I go the step further of asking you a question, do you see how much more involved you become when you realize that I’ve singled you out and am truly interested in your reaction?  And even though you can’t possibly be expected to respond timely, because I’m writing the question right now, long before ‘you’ will ever read it, nonetheless in my creating mind, I have conjured you as capable of responding.  You live and thrive in my contemplation, and as I write, I listen for your answer, and because of it, my writing is more alive than it would have been without ‘you.’

 You can think of my references to ‘you’ in the narrative as a crude form of what has become a staple of DVD “Special Features” on a DVD movie disk – the “Directors Commentary.”  But since this is a linear piece of sequential writing, my directorial asides are contained within the textual flow of the narrative.

 I can even go a step or two or three further, by creating a contrapuntal channel that runs in a somewhat different direction from the narrative flow, by saying something like: What I don’t want you to think about is –
and right away there’s a second channel, should you decide to swim in it.

 And after I’ve created it, I can even create a third channel: Others of you who didn’t have to be reminded  will be wondering –
 
And even a fourth: . . . and for that one lone person who’s thinking all of this is nonsense, well --

and everyone else is now wondering which channel fits them.  But I have presented these alternatives and thereby ramped up the dynamic of what I’m saying, not only to my post-publication readers who can scramble to find the alternative they prefer, but to myself, because in the act of creating the channels, I am making myself aware, within the very act of creation, of all the possible narrative deviations.