unreliable narrators

[Mark Kohut]

Alice writes:
For a reader of Pynchon to deny that an unreliab;e narration is an
essential part of his works is just silly nonsense.

I am getting bored (with myself) concerning this question. The terrif GR examples, all insight granted,  are NOT what Booth is ever talking about. Never. 

Yes, the questioning of 'reality' is part of much of his work. Which is why Booth's definition of 'unreliable narrator" does not apply---the touchstone examples need a "reality" revealed by the text to set off the unreliability of the narrator. Booth's defintion exists because of what we call modernism (in literature). Postmodernism is very different.

Doc gets it largely right, Tore shows L49 properly, imho. Stencil is 'like' a detective in V., that lifelong modernist metaphor in TRP only the 'reality' is now in doubt---but he too gets somewhere. I could go on
but this rocking horse winner--alluysion-- will yield no more answers and entropy is settling in. 

IV is, to me, not postmodern. It is a PI noir homage and old-fashioned parody, with overtones, undertones, allusive but slighter reachings toward allegorical generalizations, like all of his work. 

We simply differ. So it is. 



--- On Fri, 12/11/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: unreliable narrators
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, December 11, 2009, 4:05 AM
> > 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.,
> 
> It's not besides the point. It's a very important element
> of the work
> as your paragraph above admits. The narrator in GR becomes
> increasingly self conscious, proceeding from rhetorical
> questions to
> statements that presume reader participation.
> 
> see Siegel, Mark Richard. "Creative Paranoia: Understanding
> the System
> of GR." Critique 18, No.3 (1977).
> 
> "The narrator does not seem to be much more certain of the
> nature of
> reality than are the characters of the novel, except that
> he is certain that
> it is not as simple as some of them maintain."
> 
> Fowler
> 
>  "Pynchon splices passages together because they illustrate
> a sequence
> of ideas, not because their textures ar compatible, and he
> frequently
> ignores his characters in talking directly to his reader."
> 
> 
> The narrator talks, discusses, even argues with characters,
> struggles
> to interpret the events of the novel, questions the reader,
> provides
> choices to the reader--"Is the baby smiling, or is it just
> gas?" --and
> dismisses the readers as he shifts in tone and style and
> position.
> "You want cause and effect. All right."
> 
> see Slade "Escaping Rationalization"
> 
> and Schaub "Pynchon."
> 
> This type of relationship between narrator and characters
> and narrator
> and story and narrator and reader is an essential part of
> the modern
> and postmodern narrative.
> 
> see "How does one begin to map a field as vast, as various
> as modern
> fiction?" David Lodge 'After Bakhtin, Essays on Fiction and
> Criticism'
> 
> 
> see any encylopedia of moden fiction or of American
> fiction.
> 
> For a reader of Pynchon to deny that an unreliab;e
> narration is an
> essential part of his works is just silly nonsense.
>