Dee and Emma, I didn't get the point in the first place!
I've read through and can't make any sense of this whasoever.

JC, you sound very much like someone I was corresponding with on my private home email - is that you George?

Kat

What a lot of bloody rubbish. 'Not a wind up'? Go, tell that to the birds!

The only 'fourth person' I have ever met was the time when I had too much wine. He appeared from the refrigerator, smiled and said 'I am a fourth person. I live on the Planet Evrbinad. Take me to your leader!'

Len

HA ha ha, Len! And did you?

Nik,

Nah... I just fell asleep.

Len

Hi JC,

When you've located the mythical fourth person/lost chord/Atlantis, will it help you to improve on the emotions/sympathies/insights/inspiration to be found in the antediluvian body of literature that relies only on the crude techniques of first, second or third person narration? The only way I could be convinced that there is something substantive behind all the theorising is if you uploaded a sample of your work. That way, I can judge whether it has the power to move, inspire and inform me. Forgive my scepticism, but work that is constructed to demonstrate the application of a particular literary theory just doesn't sound very sexy. Maybe the reality is a piece of living, breathing magnificence, so, please, show us...

smudger

lol, Len.

I'm still struggling to get my head round this 4th person thing. Is it not like having a semi-comma, or a quarter-colon? ie it doesn't exist.

Nik.

Nik,

It's more like being in a semi-COMA. I believe all this is a pure case of Limbulitus.

It affects the right leg, very rarely the left. Quite easy to diagnose... sit on a comfortable chair, straighten out the right leg and hold it up from the floor. Read what has been written on this topic and soon you will feel a slight sensation in the leg. This sensation will increase until it develops into a series of sharp tugs.... .. you are having your leg pulled (that is Limbulitus).

Len

Limbulitus

like it, Len! If I am, fair play. If not, what the ...?

Nik.

Personally, I have always been rather fond of the fifth or sixth person method of writing. It can be easily achived through drinking lots, or if you can afford it, home cloning.

When you're writing across the room from several smaller versions of yourself, who are also writing things from various perspectives based on your helix blueprint (taking into account the secondary rule of self-displacement and the law of diminishing returns) you really get to understand the parrallel workings of these unlikely techniques.

Now where did I put that gene pool?

JB

Are your clones equally witty and inventive, JB?

Frances

Sorry, could you rephrase that question in the fourth person? JB #3 cannot compute.

JB #1 (I think)

I think JC's left us now. Wouldn't be the first time (disgruntled agnostic speaking). Fourth person?? I've not been paying much attention to this thread as it seems a bit too theoretical for me, and I just like to read and write good stories. Calvino came out of that whole Derridean deconstruction thing, and is quite clever, but ultimately a shallow read. A far better example of metafiction in my mind is 'The Athenian Murders' by Jose Carlos Samosa, mainly because there's a more interesting plot. Calvino I think tries too hard in his book, whereas Samosa premises his novel on the idea of footnotes, of things that happen in the 'author's' life mirroring that of the MC, and the footnotes gradually taking over the novel. Quite creepy in places, with a chilling ending taking Barthes' 'Death of the Author' to its limit!

D.

I have always been rather fond of the fifth or sixth person method of writing. It can be easily achived through drinking lots, or if you can afford it, home cloning.

Or, if you're David Beckham, you just get six monkeys to write your autobiography.

Hell, it worked for Shakespeare!

JB

Hello again. I'm sorry that my replies have been irregular. I do not possess the internet myself so my postings are done whenever an odd chance for my voluntary hijacking of an acquaintance's computer does arise! So I'm still here, I'm afraid to say, and should continue to be for the next day or two at least.

I'm glad to see that there have been so many replies to my message. The thread has developed into a rather interesting creature in it's own right.

Firstly, Dee, in response to your message:

All these references to pages/author/reader seem to be saying the exact opposite of what JC wants us to believe about his work. It is pointing out repeatedly that this is a work, written by an author, being read by a reader. Is it me? Am I missing the point?

... Yes, I think that you are. If you remember, I originally offered this particular work by Calvino as an example of a 'pre-cursor' to what I was talking about and nothing more.

Fredegonde - certainly, I agree that Nabokov's 'Pale Fire' is relevant here. And a superb work, too!

Furthermore, Fredegonde, I like your term 'a chimeric confusion of narrators'. It explains part of what I'm poking at here, at least, it explains the method one utilises in order to reach a state of being in the 'fourth person'.

Which brings me onto my next thought. I think that perhaps (as I suspected) the term the 'fourth person' is kind of misguiding. It's the word 'person' that seems to be problematic. Rather, what I have been trying to reach is, as Elbowsnitch mentioned, a 'fourth dimension' (although this still, I think is not a satisfactory label).

Really, what I am trying to do is not just to identify the 'person' beyond the 'third' or to invent a magician whom conceals the author from the reader, rather I am trying to calculate the space between them, the mutual void that defines the relationship of writer and reader. I guess that's it's a case of trying to give 'character' to this space that binds them together - yet also provides the distance between them - merely to try and 'use' this space as another tool in the writers arsenal.

Thirdly, Sibelius, I like the John Cage reference, although why have a book full of blank pages? I mean, that'd just be half-hearted I think, considering that you could just take it that little bit further and have no pages at all, have an invisible book - then the reader can really draw his own letters!**

Traveller, thanks for the definition of 'crapes', I didn't know that!

And Old Friend (Len), I have taken your advice and told it all to the birds. They were surprisingly receptive. Some squarks were more constructive than others though.

Thanks again and kind regards to all,

J.R

*I hope that this makes sense (it probably doesn't - poor communication skills, you see).

** Take note, crummy sceptics that this particular paragraph IS a 'wind-up!' (The rest however, are not).