Comment Re:Got you, Mrs. Sampson (Score 1) 80
My 8th grade English teacher told us that books were written in the third person, and sometimes the first person. I raised my hand and asked about books written in the second person. She told me there was no such thing. The next day, I came in with "The Mystery Of Chimney Rock" and got a frown from Mrs. Sampson. She had what I found in later life to be a common reaction from the literati when they encounter an inconvenient truth: she disparaged it as garbage literature and said it didn't count.
Mrs. Sampson, you really disappointed me. Here was a chance to learn something new, and you refused because it threatened your existing view of what literature is.
Unfortunately, many teachers become interested in "education" not because they want to learn and explore but because they want to "master" a field of knowledge. They want to swallow truth whole and digest it so that it will embiggen them. They often don't consider that the domains which constitute knowledge will grow and change as long as there are things that can be known.
More directly concerning the question of second-person Literature-with-a-capital-"L" Literature, Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City is written in the second-person and is well-regarded by many teachers of creative writing and professors of Literature.
