“A Man Among Men” in Algerian Paris: Modeling Motivation and Movement in Jake Lamar’s Rendezvous Eighteenth Main Menu Rendezvous Eighteenth Header Splash Page Jake Lamar and Rendezvous Eighteenth An introduction to Jake Lamar French Impressionism and Rendezvous Eighteenth Thesis Thesis Statement Amine: Algerian Paris Keaton: Black American Paris Routes of Narration: Detective Fiction Routes of Narration: romance “A Man Among Men” in the Eighteenth "A Man Among Men": Valitsa "A Man Among Men": Fatima “Algerian Paris” Revisited "Algerian Paris" Revisited": Barbes "Algerian Paris" Revisited: Mairie of the Eighteenth "Algerian Paris" Revisited: La Goutte d'Or PDF

Guidebook: Toni Morrison

1508 Morrison: Point of View Theoretical Framework

In Toni Morrison’s “Site of Memory” she discusses how she creates point of view in her fiction through crafting the narrator as a guide and the reader as a participant in the story. She states:
As for the point of view, there should be the illusion that it’s the characters’ point of view, when in fact it isn’t; it’s really the narrator who is there but who doesn’t make herself (in my case) known in that role. I like the feeling of a told story where, you hear a voice but you can’t identify it, and you think it’s your own voice. It’s a comfortable voice, and it’s a guiding voice, and it’s alarmed by the same things that the reader is alarmed by, and it doesn’t know what’s going to happen next either. So you have this sort of guide. But that guide can’t have a personality; it can only have a sound and you have to feel comfortable with this voice, and then this voice can easily abandon itself and reveal the interior dialogue of a character. So it’s a combination of using the point of view of various characters but still retaining the power to slide in and out, provided that when I’m “out” the reader doesn’t see little fingers pointing to what’s in the text.

What I really want is that intimacy in which the reader is under the impression that he really isn't reading this; that he is participating in it as he goes along (100-1)

There are two aspects of point of view that I will highlight in this passage. The first is that the guide is a comfortable voice because of its familiarity to the reader, in fact, so familiar that the reader feels like he is participating in the story. The second aspect is that the guide is also distinctive in the text through revealing the perspectives of characters. In this respect, the point of view shifts—that is “slide[s] in and out”--from the familiar to the distinctive. 

Morrison's description of point of view is applicable to Lamar's third person narrator in Rendezvous Eighteenth. His novel is written in third person, and it also pulls in the distinctive voices of characters, especially Ricky Jenks. For instance, at the beginning of the novel, the narrator describes the city and includes Ricky's perspective:
April in Paris, 1999, had been typically dreary: leaden gray skies, a chill wind blowing spitty drizzle in your face. May tends to be the truly beautiful month in this town, the time when the sun reappears and the caf’es fling open their doors, round-top tables and rattan chairs taking over the sidewalks. 'This song should have been called 'May in Paris' Ricky Jenks often said before launching into his rendition of the famous standard at the creperie where he played the piano. (4)
This passage is a short example of the familiar and the distinctive. The narrator describes the city and pulls the reader into a participatory experience by saying the wind blows "spitty drizzle in your face." The narrator also reveals Ricky Jenks's perspective, which is a perspective that is shared with the narrator. To explain, the narrator begins by describing "April in Paris," addressing the misnomer that it is the "beautiful month" in Paris. He explains that it is actually May in Paris that the "chestnut blossoms," "sun" and "holiday tables" appear (4). The narrator exclaims that it is in May that "the sun reappears" and "round-top tables" take "over the sidewalks" (4). Immediately after exposing his perspective, the narrator quotes Ricky stating that the song "should have been called 'May in Paris,'" which affirms the narrator's perspective (4). The familiar is revealed in this passage through the narrator using the determiner "your" to bring the reader into the story. The distinctive is demonstrated through Ricky's perspective being intertwined with the narrator's. These few sentences written at the beginning of the novel suggest that the narrator does incorporate the familiar and distinct through his descriptions and characters. This device is one aspect of the guide function in the novel.

When we consider Jake Lamar's claim that "American Writers that are my friends don't know the Paris that I know. And that was very much on my mind in Rendezvous Eighteenth," he is suggesting that Rendezvous Eighteenth to some extent is written to guide readers in Paris. I am showing that Morrison's explanation of how she uses the third person narrator frames my analysis of how Lamar exposes Paris to "his friends." Moreover, the areas that Lamar depicts in the novel feature the familiar and distinctive elements. In other words, the third person narrator depicts Montmartre, la Goutte d'Or and Barbes in a way that is familiar and distinct. In this way, Lamar's story guides readers in a broader experience of Paris Noir.

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