“Double perspective” is a term from Phillip Lopate, that I’ve found to be crucial in thinking about nonfiction. It’s about how every narrative has a double perspective because the now-narrator is always looking back at a prior self, whether that self was yesterday or twenty years ago. Or in other words, the now-narrator is always looking from an angle that is informed and shifted by time itself, and thus the narration — the perspective — of an event or memory changes as distance increases between our past selves and our current selves.
Beth Nguyen on navigating a double perspective.
September 20, 2023
https://link.lithub.com/view/602ea77d180f243d6532f731jihdu.g24/76588e76
