MDDM Comparing Wicks and Ishmael as narrators

[Otto]

What about the language?
Pynchon's narrative agency, "the one who narrates Wicks," uses 18th-language
too like Wicks.
So of course there is still a big difference between the real living author
and his narrator.

Is "Moby Dick" written in the same 19th-century English the author Melville
has spoken?

Otto

----- Original Message -----
From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>; <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 9:01 AM
Subject: Re: MDDM Comparing Wicks and Ishmael as narrators


>
> Anyway, I think that there is a separate narrator narrating Wicks in
_M&D_,
> but that this narrator isn't necessarily a stand-in for Pynchon, or the
> "implied author" in Booth's terms. In _Moby Dick_ I think that Ishmael is
> the narrator for the greater part of the text, and while I accept that
there
> are certain chapters which Ishmael could not have witnessed, my suspicion
is
> that Melville has *Ishmael* create the separate narrative voice or frame
> which relates these sections of the text. I don't think that Ishmael
stands
> in a 1:1 relationship to Melville, but the alignment there is also much
much
> closer than that between Wicks and Pynchon. There is substantially closer
> alignment between Pynchon and the intervening narrator/s - the one who
> narrates Wicks, and who at times takes over from Wicks within his
recounts -
> but the rift between Wicks and Pynchon is enormous, in my opinion.
>
> best
>