Woodstock - SPOILER ALERT

Mon Aug 17 09:01:35 CDT 2009

I might add I mean unreliable in the broadest sense and not just the accepted lit crit one. Literally unreliable because he's so stoned, and in different ways at different times depending on what he's ingested. That strikes me as a very Pynchonian gag, rightly or wrongly.

As does the "instant nostalgia" of the music scene, where tunes just a few years old are "oldies", refracted through heavy rotation on FM [when did you get FM btw?]. The irony is that 40 years later they're still "oldies", and what were "newies" then are also "oldies" now. The queue lengthens. And the 60s have become another decade where they do things differently. Nothing Doc smoked or did or thought stopped any of what happened from happening, but a great ride was still a great ride, etc.

The lit crit notion of "unreliability" I have a problem with in novels where the narrator's is the only viewpoint from which the tale is told. "Unreliable" in relation to what, exactly? There's no objective account against which to judge the narrator, so reliable (trustworthy?) or not, his/hers is the only voice to go on, and the reader must draw his/her own conclusions. Although maybe this is not so far away from what TP is doing with Doc. If he can't remember being there, it must have been the 60s, etc. 

This is also connected to the Golden Fang ("Throw out your gold teeth" anyone?) and shadowy notions of conspiracy generally, where they might be out to get you even if you're not paranoid, but you might be a bit more paranoid than otherwise might be the case, if you've been smoking what Doc has.

Maybe the modern AC-ed office just induces rambling discourse........

> CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
> From: bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net
> To: alicewellintown at gmail.com
> Subject: Re: Woodstock - SPOILER ALERT
> Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:04:52 -0700
> 
> 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
> 

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