I am actually quite relieved to hear that the Atlantic story is stream of consciousness and not close third. That takes a lot of pressure of me:) Believe it or not, I was an English major in college once upon a time, and ought to know these things, but its been a long twenty years and I guess I've muddled some things along the way. I do have a tendency to be over subtle, which might be why I confused myself.
I forgot to mention that the short story author is George Saunders, whom I have never read elsewhere, and has apparently won numerous prizes like the Man Booker, so he certainly knows what he's doing. The Atlantic story is a good example, I think, of striving for a certain effect on the reader. It is actually less clear in order to catch the readers' interest. But its been known for decades that mainstream readers don't really go for that kind of thing.
I agree that readers probably won't care about POV much. I myself don't pay a lot of attention to POV while reading. I pay attention to it on the second or third read though, when I'm actively thinking about how the author made their book work and how I can steal that for my own.
PJ, I like your ice skating metaphor and will keep it in mind. It's funny though because I love first person past. But then I don't read a lot of books where I know the main character is likely to die, so, that might be why:)
You know on reflection, I think when I write close third I tend to get stuck there. I feel a need to chronicle everything my MC thinks and does it gets a bit dull. I have a hard time zooming out. So its probably all the other tools for speeding up pacing that I need to work on.
But I also really enjoy a distant narrator sometimes. I like hearing the narrator's wit, their personality, the turn of a clever phrase. Close third is so - I don't know - I guess transparent is a pretty good word for it. It doesn't have as much color. Probably the moral of this story is that if I decide to use distant third person I need a strong plot to go with it.
