unreliable? in Vineland

[Terrance]

Booth's "reliable", "unreliable", "implied author"   have been in use
for over 40 years. His definitions have been enormously  useful to
critics of literature the world over. They are  no less useful or
appropriate in this instance.  

 
Narrative agency is a literary technique. The narrative would not exist
without a narrative agency. Of course P manipulates it. In doing so he
is only doing what Modern authors have been doing for at least 100 years
(Conrad, for example). That's one reason why definitions like "reliable"
and "unreliable" are so very useful to critics and readers of Modern
fiction. The narrator is an agent within the narration who establishes
communicative contact with an audience,  manages an exposition, decides
what is to be told, how it is to be told (especially, from what point of
view, and in what sequence), and what is to be left out. This is what we
have been discussing.  The narration would not exist without a narrative
agency  to narrate it--thus to focus on the text is to focus first of
all on the narrator that brings it into being. That's exactly what Tim's
examples are doing. However, there seems to be some confusion about the
terms "reliable and "unreliable" here. I'm applying Booth's definitions.
They are useful and appropriate and can certainly be so when reading VL.
They have been useful to critics of Pynchon's others novels, including
GR. 

VL is a Modern quest novel and so I agree that looking at how the
(dramatic?) irony works will be helpful. Perhaps we should try identify
the objective(s) or goal(s) of the quest(s) and questers.  We may not be
able to identify all of these. But our search will not be entirely
futile. The ironies in VL work against us almost as much as they do
against the characters, but not in the same way as they do in P's others
novels. In each novel the quest-irony is different.  

We can certainly speak of  "we as readers" by which is meant the
audience. 

We can't say that a narrator is unreliable because he narrates a tale
that includes the fantastic or gothic or surreal or stories or mixes
magical and real or supernatural and natural. 


Also, the rhetorical term  "prolepsis" is useful only if we can use it
to explain how the narrator uses it and to what effect. And a mixing of
third and first -person doesn't really describe the narrative. The
narrative agent assumes the language of Zoyd and his attitudes and
beliefs. 

Don't have the book handy, but an example of this is when the narrator
says something like, "the NBA sized violence enthusiast that might or
might not be fucking his daughter."