Woodstock - SPOILER ALERT

[Bekah]

I thought about the possibility of an unreliable narrator in IV  but  
it's third person and limited to Doc's pov - although, as Woods would  
say,  it's an intimate connection there - the narrator dipping into  
Doc's mind for some of the descriptive material.     I figured TRP for  
the narrator - rarely done these days but in this case a possibility.   
But all that said,  I see no problems with the narrator's reliability -

I have my own ideas about unreliable narrators and imo,  it's not a  
very valuable term if it's too broadly defined.   I think Kinbote in  
Pale Fire is a prime example of a bone fide unreliable narrator as is  
Mrs. Grose in James' Turn of the Screw.  A reasonable reader just  
can't believe their versions of the story.  (I suppose this is what  
you're saying, though.)

Bekah


http://web.mac.com/bekker2/

On Aug 17, 2009, at 4:49 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

> In his useful and easy to read _How to Read Novels Like a Professor_,
> Thomas C.  Foster (won't even mention James Wood's latest, _How
> Fiction Works_ . . . ooops ... or the master of unreliable narration,
> double scoooops ooops ... Henry James) says, "Never Trust a Narrator
> with a Speaking Part." This is the title of chapter four in which he
> discusses the "unreliable narrator" as that phrase or term is now
> used, loosely and without much meaning, to describe nearly every
> narrator, reflector, character with a speaking part in modern and
> postmodern fiction. Not a very rigorous approach. Perfect! This is the
> Pynchon List. No need to get all tied up in meta-double-talk and
> contradictions of our genius author when we have handy phrases like
> Both/And and "which do you want it to be." Right? Well, if we really
> do love our genius author perhaps we should ask, "what would Tom do?"
> And,  thank Tom, we have an answer. One that is not too convoluted too
> (oooops, I'm not supposed to end a sentence with too) and what have
> you. We can drop the big fat book of lies, that is, the novel or
> novels, and pick up the essays. That's how our genius author works out
> Orwell's meta-double think.
>
> Foster says that all first person narrators are unreliable. Not
> exactly. I can think of one right off the bat that belies his claim:
> Alice Walker's _The Color Purple_. But, be that as it may, Foster's
> point is a good one: the first person narrator can not be trusted.
>
> It's a funny thing that has happened to this lit crit term
> "Unreliable." It used to have a far more complex meaning and one that
> is way more useful to readers of Pynchon novel. Ironically, it is
> Wayne C. Booth who came up with it and the applied author and several
> other terms now no longer in use or not rigorously anyways.
>
> For Booth, who admits that these terms are all quite hopelessly
> inadequate, "unreliable" means that the narrator does NOT speak for or
> act in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say, the
> applied author's norms). Even reliable narrators, that is, those that
> do speak and act in accordance with the norms of the applied author
> are partly "unreliable" when they use irony. But incidental irony,
> while potentially deceptive, and often difficult to understand, does
> not render the narrator unreliable. Nor is unreliability a matter of
> lying. Unreliability, and again, Henry James certainly helps us here
> but oooops ....is usually  a matter of unconscience; the narrator is
> mistaken, or he believes himself to have qualities which the author
> denies him. Or, as may be the case with our Doc, the narrator claims
> to be stupid or stoned or wicked or burnt out, while the author, often
> with irony or subtle and quiet words, praises the narrator for his
> intelligence, his clear thinking,his virtue, his with-it-ness.
>
> All this has much to do with tone and distance and style. And irony.
>
> The Both / And reading simply conflates these elements of our genius
> author and reduces them to political preachings loud and clear enough
> to anyone who has the magic ear, provided, of course, that they are of
> the right or better Left of the Left mind  to hear the sermon. Of
> course, it's difficult for anyone here to hear themselves think as the
> noise of information overload. almost all of it pumped out to maintain
> a certain P-L culture, is deafening.
>
> Most unreliably Yours,
>
> Alice Well