unreliable narrators

[Tore Rye Andersen]

alice:

> All of Pynchon's novels have unreliable narrators.

To speak of GR's narrator in terms of reliability and unreliablity
seems pretty much besides the point. The whole universe of GR is
so complex, unstable and heterogenous, and the narrator moves in and
out of so many heads that it makes little sense to ask whether this 
narrator is unreliable w/r/t any real "reality" behind the surface 
of the text. Reality itself is unreliable in GR.
 
As for The Crying of Lot 49: How is the narrator of that book unreliable?
The narrator is pretty close to Oedipa - mostly we know what Oedipa knows -
but occasionally he ventures outside of her perceptions: "Though her next
move should have been to contact Randolph Driblette again, she decided
instead to drive up to Berkeley" (100), for instance. Oedipa's perceptions
are clearly unreliable, and the reader can deduct a lot of stuff that 
Oedipa can't. But in many ways it is the narrator who allows us to do
just that. So just how is Lot 49's narrator unreliable? He seems to present
a fairly loyal and straight account of what happens to Oedipa, and of Oedipa's
many delusions.  		 	   		  
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