POV & Edgar Allen Poe

THE WRITING GREEK apologizes for the ongoing technical difficulties ... and excuses … err, uh, general lack of May blogging. In truth, I’ve decided to cut back on blogging as it is rather addicting and time consuming. Fear not, blog friends, I still love you and will visit you – just not every moment of every day. It’s not that my writing dream has been derailed. In fact, in pursuit of more literary smarts, I’ve been tackling GRAPES OF WRATH and OVID and have even mixed in THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE while on blog hiatus the past couple of weeks.

On to business (correction – writing!) -- One of the books I’m currently reading is a 2008 book by Alicia Rasley titled, POINT OF VIEW. Ms. Rasley studied Edgar Allen Poe’s POV for her thesis and talks about him in the book’s opening. She asks the question, “How did he make a narrator’s voice sound both rational and insane? <…> When did the narrator start lying to the reader?”

Ms. Rasley goes on to say that few critics understand Poe’s POV approach and that these few were writers themselves. She includes Dostoyevsky in this bunch. There’s lots to glean from my last couple of sentences, but the main thrust is that: (1) above average POV authors spend time studying the best and (2) these folks don’t limit their character to their own experiences.
Anyone have any authors that they’d recommend studying for POV?