unreliable? in Vineland

[Tim Strzechowski]

When I consider narration or narrators "reliable," I usually consider how
much said narrator is aware of what is really happening in his/her
circumstances vs. how much the reader is aware of.  Granted there's
typically a level of dramatic irony involved in work of fiction that enables
the reader to see or comprehend something that escapes the narrator, but
using Chief Broom, for example, as an unreliable narrator because he views
his situation in a very limit(ing)ed, specific way while we, as readers, can
navigate past those situations at his level and see events or circumstances
at a different level is perhaps the point I was trying to make.

In the _Vineland_ examples I've given, that point of view doesn't confuse,
doesn't mislead, doesn't adversely manipulate the reader's understanding of
the narratives reality, nor does it withhold information that the reader
knows to in fact be true (like in _Cuckoo's Nest_); instead, it seeks to
clarify narrative by illustrating Zoyd's lack of clarity and gradual
lucidity of the situation at hand.  As a result, I find that sort of
manipulation on the part of the pov something that sort of earns the
reader's trust.  True, maybe "reliable" is a poor term for it.  But it's
definitely *not* unreliable narration.

(Of course, I realize I'm talking about first-person and third-person
narrators, making this kind of an apples and, well, green apples
comparison.)


> However, the spanner in the works here
> is that the narrative voice makes no distinction at all between historical
> actualities, like the movie 'Return of the Jedi', the Vietnam War or
> Reaganomics, and absolute fantasy, like Thanatoids, "real" Godzilla
> footprints and supersonic alien aircraft. Setting itself up as a
"reliable"
> omniscient narrator narrating a more or less realistic plot, neither the
> tone nor the telling betrays the outlandishness of some of the events
being
> narrated, nor of these juxtapositions.

You're right, and that's one of the things I find so fascinating about the
pov of this novel, the fact that no such distinctions are made.  Why is that
important? -- for so it must be, because it is done consistently throughout
the novel, making it a conscious choice by the author.  One might argue that
it is a subtle reflection of the hallucinatory mindset that is part of the
satire and theme of this work.  I'm not entirely convinced of that, but the
group reading might clarify it for me. The term "magic realism" doesn't get
tossed around too often when discussing Pynchon, but the examples you give
certainly lay the groundwork for that argument, too.  I just don't know yet.

Tim