unreliable?

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 05:18, jbor wrote:
> >> This is a bit of cloth I've been worrying for awhile and I fear there's a
> >> big something in my mental blind spot. Question: are there unreliable
> >> narrators in Pynchon's work? (Is there unreliable narration?)
> 
> > Not sure if I completley get your meaning but a number of the characters in V.
> > are deeply unreliable
> > as narrators (The Guacho and Stencil being the examples that leap to mind most
> > immediately).
> 
> Dennis Flange? Fausto? Emory Bortz? Byron the Bulb? Eliza Fields? Not to
> mention those apocryphal events and details in _GR_ which are communicated
> via a purportedly "detached" narrative agency.
> 
> A more valid question might be whether there are any truly "reliable
> narrators" in Pynchon's work. It seems to me that, as with Nabokov, this
> whole notion of "reliable narration" is something which is deliberately
> undermined in and through the narratives.

What was that Tony Tanner business of not knowing whether one is in a
bombed out zone or a bombed out mind?

Maybe "naive narrator" is the word to be applied to Kinbote. At first
blush at least, he seems to be giving us considerable amounts of
reliable information that he withholds from himself. (this is exactly
the same as being naive but close)

Kinbote outright lies on occasion but not always, even when it might be
to his advantage. Complex personality. Complex novel.
P.