Which Perspective Do You Prefer, 1st Person or 3rd?

[Heteronym]

You this, you that, you blah-blah-blah...

So there's no love for the 2nd person here? The annoying 'you'? It can be fun sometimes.

 

[Wintergreen]

I prefer 3rd person in theory, but I also love books with really distinctive 1st person narrators (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and Vernon God Little come to mind). Last Orders by Graham Swift is my all-time favourite use of "person" (is there a better word for this as a concept?). It cuts between multiple first person narrators, so you get the feeling that you know all of the characters in depth and the story is revealed in a really clever way.

 

[-Carlos-]

The third person. Must I explain myself? No.

 

[Heteronym]

I prefer the 3rd person narrator. I can't stand the confessional tone of the 1st person narrative, it seems to easy. However, I do enjoy the unnamed omnipresent 1st person narrator who is acquainted with someone inside the story and slowly builds up a fractured story from rumors and a posteriori reasoning.

The novel I'm reading, Dostoevsky's Devils, is like that, and although the narrator presents himself as a citizen of the village the action is set in, sometimes he acts as a 3rd person narrator. I just like that.