You wake up and discover your friend in your kitchen, boiling eggs and reading your copy of Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You. You debate. Is it autobiographical? A novel or a short-story collection? Does the book, like the protagonist, seem unhappy with whatever it is? Why does Escoffery use the second-person point of view so much?
Why, indeed? As I’m sure you can tell, the second person risks being contrived, distracting, presumptuous, scratchy, puerile and self-conscious. Just don’t do it, writing instructors warn. Unless you’re Escoffery, a young American in whose hands the second person is arresting, intimate, adventurous, attuned, sophisticated and, yes, still self-conscious.
