What's wrong with a "god's-eye-view"?

Working through Writing Fiction , I came upon a frank description of the history of the third person omniscient. Some of this history resonates with my very first blog post, "Anansi Boys and the English/American Divide" (March 14, 2006), in which I discussed how American spec fiction writers try to hide the voice of the author in order to aid their readers with suspension of disbelief, while their English counterparts are more willing to let the voice of the author creep in.

Valerie Vogrin begins her lesson on POV by telling us that she's going to offer us a buffet of POV options, so that we can make informed decisions about how we tell our stories, instead of letting patterns unconsciously absorbed by reading choose the POV for us.

Great, I could eat.

When we come to third person omniscient, Vogrin explains that traditional literature was written using this "god's-eye-view" POV, citing Dickens, Tolstoy, and Flaubert as influential authors who used third person omniscient.

Then Vogrin goes on to say,

"Soon thereafter a variety of social changes occurred related to the rise of democracy...,Freud, religious skepticism, feminism...which over time resulted in the (now seemingly paternal, heavy-handed...) omniscient point of view falling out of favor with contemporary writers."

I was shocked when I read this sentence, both because I felt Vogrin's conclusions were overly polarized and, at the same time, that her evaluation accurately describes the state of American literature today .

Now, later on, Vogrin tells us that some postmodern authors, Kundera, for example, were able to use the third person omniscient to good effect "without adopting a biblical tone or throwing thunderbolts."

Wow. Strong statements. Is that what Dickens, Tolstoy, and Flaubert were doing? Drawing on my personal experience reading the works of these authors, the answer is a resounding NO!

Vogrin finishes her instruction by touting the good points of third person omniscient: an ability to deepen conflict by seeing others' points of view; giving the reader an almost painful knowledge of a situation the protagonist cannot know (our engagement in the story grows as we see how the protagonist must act blindly, doing his best, unaware of the information we, the readers, have).

But, she warns, third person omniscient is rarely used today because "it calls attention to the writer- an undesirable thing for writers who want their readers to suspend disbelief willingly."

My purpose in this post is not to disparage Vogrin's lesson on POV. She gave sound, down-to-earth advice that is an accurate reflection of the state of modern American literature- speculative or otherwise.

But I question her assertion that a world after democracy, Freud, religious skepticism, and feminism, need necessarily find third person omniscient a hindrance to the reader's suspension of disbelief.

After all, citizens of the UK vote- women included. Similar relgious, political, philosophical, and psychological changes have occurred in parallel in America and abroad. So can we point to the reactionary-black/white-polarized nature of American culture as the root of this anti-paternal, anti-"god's-eye-view" attitude?