SOURCE: “The Meaning of Structure: Toward a New Reading of John Peale Bishop's Act of Darkness,” in The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. VII, No. 2, Spring, 1975, pp. 50-76.

In the following excerpt, Vauthier defends Bishop's use of shifting points of view in his novel Act of Darkness.

The critics of John Peale Bishop's Act of Darkness seem to have been compelled strangely to qualify their praise of the story by cavilling at its technique. Relying on the old dichotomy between form and content, Leslie Fiedler, for instance, confidently asserts: “Any teacher of composition could tick off its flaws; yet the tale it tells survives its technical ineptitude.”¹ The two major flaws to which even well-disposed critics take exception relate to the handling of the point of view and the structure. In fact, Bishop's manipulation of viewpoints appears quite justified when, instead of looking for possible psychological motivation one examines...