Karl Whitney: Can we trust the voices placed in our heads by the author?

Voice, in literary terms, is a hazy concept; it implies that the reader perceives a human presence behind the book, one that warms up the cold words on the page

Karl Whitney: 'I’ve been thinking about literary voice, particularly in the small corner of that larger field of literature that is narrative non-fiction writing.'

‘He speaks in your voice, American, and there’s a shine in his eye that’s halfway hopeful,’ begins Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld. 

Would you trust this speaker? Why not, since, he sounds like you, he’s optimistic like you, and maybe, just maybe, he is you: the reader? Could you be talking to yourself?