unreliable narrators

[Joseph Tracy]

So  I'd really like to hear what others think.
1) Is Pynchons narrative voice in IV or other books  unreliable? Does  
he sometime deceive us on purpose? One thing that came up on the list  
earlier was whether Slothrop had sex with the women before the  
strikes or if those incidences were fantasies.


On Dec 10, 2009, at 12:12 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> Nice stuff... I have not read Americana although it is on my list but
>
> I do know something about a few important touchstones of the  
> 'unreliable narrator' in fiction.
>
> it is often traced to F M Ford's The Good Soldier, a novel wherein  
> the narrator is not aware of much of his own desires and  
> motivations and WHAT LITERALLY is happening, which he distorts for  
> we readers. When we learn, it adds dimension.
>
>  It is not surprising that this whole concept started after "the  
> unconscious" was 'discovered" offically.  Many, many contemporary  
> writers speak of the influence of this novel on them. it's  
> reputation seems to grow steadily. it is fascinating.
>
> John Irving's 98-Pound Marriage is wilfully indebted, he has said.  
> The characters' self-deceptions  and lies are revealed by a self- 
> deceptive narrator---and ONLY the children are finally,  
> dramatically. neglected and hurt, is Irving's point.
>
> Remains of the Day is another contemporary leading example.....look  
> over the dates and reconstruct the events of each section. ONLY  
> THEN,--it took a reading club for me to learn of it---will you see  
> what the narrator refused to acknowledge even if you have noticed  
> he is real repressed in many ways.
>
> Unreliable narrator means: Gets the reality that the writer puts  
> down in the book----wrong. characters he reports on ...lie.....get  
> reality wrong.....And/or
>
> The author's thematic vision is larger than the narrator's:  
> Faulkner's meanings for Sound & The Fury are much more all- 
> encompassing than idiot Benjy's literal impressions, obviously.
>
> Only works because of a belief in an an 'objective reality' of  
> events, happenings, statements about.................
>
> For IV, the question is: what does DOC get right about the world,  
> his cases, his clients........how much is ironically intended if not.
Plenty of  authorial irony but that is not unreliability in my  
estimate. The question of what Doc gets right is the question Pynchon  
is handing us. If P is deceiving us about what Doc says or does then  
we have no questions to ponder because we have no life or events no  
projected world to partake of or consider.

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> --- On Thu, 12/10/09, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>> Subject: unreliable narrators
>> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Date: Thursday, December 10, 2009, 11:29 AM
>> "Unreliable narrator" is a term that
>> should be used carefully. All fiction is made up stories and
>> historically unreliable as to the fictional events
>> described. While several novels i have read worked more as
>> meditations on language, consciousness, myth etc than as
>> stories, very few legitimize the term "unreliable narrator".
>> The one that comes to my  mind most clearly is
>> Delillo's Americana in which the first person narrator is
>> clearly doing a fair amount of lying. The author intends you
>> to become aware that a narrator can lie and the effect is
>> jarring.
>>
>> I do not see the term "unreliable narrator" as being
>> meaningful apart from first person narration, history, or
>> journalism.  A person can lie but  a narrator can
>> only invent.   The contract is different. The
>> fictional narrator doesn't expect you to believe his stories
>> as factually true but as emotionally and
>> intellectually  meaningful and that requires that the
>> reader "suspends disbelief" , that the events of the story
>> become true within the context of the story.
>>
>> The Book of Daniel presents itself as prophecy covering
>> hundreds of years of history , claiming to be written
>> before those events occurred in  6th C Babylon. It was
>> really written in the 2nd century. It  is inaccurate
>> about Babylon and gets more accurate as it gets closer to
>> the 2nd Century. Because of the way it presents itself this
>> is closer to a journalist lying  than Delillo's book
>> but his book  warns us about narrative deception such
>> as we find in  Daniel or false histories.
>>
>> The issue of reliability  and truth telling in
>> works  of fiction is a question of artfulness, skill
>> and authorial integrity. Apart from first person narration,
>> to  label  the narrative voice as unreliable is to
>> say the author is intending to deceive the reader and not be
>> caught or questioned. Otherwise a work of fiction becomes
>> inscrutably meaningless. If the narrator says a stoned or
>> delusional Doc "sees" a building in the shape of a fang we
>> can doubt the reality in the story of that building, but if
>> the narrator says "there is " a building in the shape of a
>> fang , then that is what exists in the LA of the story and
>> is a necessary component of the reality of that story.
>>
>> A big part of what makes for great writing has to do with
>> the integrity of that contract, and the emotional,  the
>> intellectual and also the subconscious credibility of what
>> happens inside that contract.
>>
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