unreliable?

[Burns, Erik]

Foax:

jbor wrote:

>A more valid question might be whether there are any truly "reliable
>narrators" in Pynchon's work.

hmm. i was thinking of narration, not characters in re reliability. sure,
you can have unreliable storytellers within your narration -- Cherrycoke's a
good example. But that's not narration per se -- and not unreliable
narration in the Kinbotian sense, since PF is in the first person and
*everything* has to be questioned because the initial filter is wholly
unreliable (which is the fun of it).

this catches my eye though:

>Not to
>mention those apocryphal events and details in _GR_ which are communicated
>via a purportedly "detached" narrative agency.

Examples? I'm not challenging on the idea, am just wondering if any spring
to mind. Seems to me that the bedrock *narration* (and this is an arguable
concept to begin with ... what is it and where is it?) is "reliable."

I guess I would start by saying as long as the narrative voice is not first
person, the assumption is of reliability (any examples where this not true?)
Anytime there's first person narration, it at least raises the question of
the narrator's grip of the facts. Or actual mendacity (cf. Agatha Christie's
_The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_, for example) or mental disorder (Kinbote et.
al).

etb