Bifurcated Stories

Writers must make the decision to choose a perspective from which to present a story, picking a point of view and a narrative voice. Often in drafts they try one or another to find which feels right. But once the choice is made the story is essentially locked into that singular outlook.

An option, rarely used, is to include more than one in what might be called a bifurcated presentation. I can think of two examples, Joyce Carol Oates’ retelling of Henry James novella “The Turn of the Screw” and Rosalind Palermo Stevenson’s original telling of Benito Mussolini’s one-day and night visit to an Italian home in “The Guest.”

Both stories employ the typographical formatting of two columns side-by-side on a page, each offering a contrasting view of what is taking place in the other. Such a method becomes a challenge for the reader, literally asking where the eye should focus and asking the mind to cope with two sources of information at the same time. I suppose this can be a version of multitasking, juggling the simultaneity of a dual gathering of related but contrasting information.

If the reader read through one column completely and then did the same with the other, that would defeat the writer’s purpose of ongoing balancing of the two versions, pinging and ponging to make immediate comparisons while in a state of living in two fictional worlds at the same time.

Oates offers parallel points of view: the haunter's and the haunted's. This example, two passages that appear side-by-side, here one after the other as they were probably taken in by the reader—first the left and then the right:

A thicket for us. Giant bushes, Spongy ground. The pebbles fade. The girl backs away from me. Wide staring smile. Her face protruding plump. Something about her wet mouth that is fearful … but I cannot stop, it is too late, I cannot stop my hand from reaching out to here … There!

He approaches her, His back stiff. She draws away, teasing. Giant bushes will hide them from me. Panting, dizzy. I will be sick. He has taken hold of her now—yes, he has touched her—the two of them drawing back, back, back, almost out of sight—they will hide themselves from me—it is going to happen, it is going to happen—

Essentially, the reader gets the experience for the perspective of the actor—the man grasping the girl—and of the observer, who is vicariously participating in the act with similarly intense emotions. 

Stevenson, who was inspired by Oates, identifies the basic subject of “The Guest” as “the embrace of fascism and Mussolini by the Italian people.” In one column, we get the thoughts and actions of those in the hosting household told from different perspectives and in the other the thoughts of the visiting il Duce himself. For this story, I’ll choose another sensual comparison, the very young girl on the left and Mussolini on the right:

His hand brushes my cheek and I am a statue. I am the statue in the square—the lady with the smooth white face—with arms that fold across her chest. The guest brushes my cheek with his hand.

Her eyes are open and yet I think she is sleeping. Perhaps sleeping. Yes, perhaps she is just walking in her sleep. Her jaw is square like that of a boxer. Yet she is delicate. I think both delicate and wild. Her eyes are open and she stares as if with purpose. Intent perhaps on the purpose of her visit. Her visit. This child (for she is a child) has come to my room in the night. 

This comparison offers what the girl feels and, at the same time, what the observer believes he sees. The reader has access to both minds.

The bifurcated method is tempting because it allows the writer to tell two stories simultaneously. The fact that examples of this approach are so rare reveals the approach is so daunting few try and even fewer succeed. But why not have a go?