unreliable narrators

[alice wellintown]

As I noted in previous posts, when I use the term, I use it as it was
first used and defined by Booth.

In fiction (as implemented in literature, film, theatre, etc.) an
unreliable narrator (a term coined by Wayne C. Booth in his 1961 book
The Rhetoric of Fiction  is a narrator whose credibility has been
seriously compromised. The use of this type of narrator is called
unreliable narration and is a narrative mode that can be developed by
the author for a number of reasons, though usually to make a negative
statement about the narrator. This unreliability can be due to
psychological instability, a powerful bias, a lack of knowledge, or
even a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader or audience.
Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators, but
third-person narrators can also be unreliable.


All of Pynchon's novels have unreliable narrators.