Someone (else) speak on Inherent Vice..?

[alice wellintown]

> This is but one of many examples of the sort of long-term-short-term memory >loss that comes  from chronic smoking of the chronic that Pynchon  displays >from end to end in IV.

It's a good example.

 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[1]) 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.

The narrative here, call it effaced if you prefer, is unreliable
because the narrative is compromised or rendered unreliable by the use
or chronic use of drugs. Fairly standard stuff. But Mark and Robin and
Robert has chimed in on this as well, have argued that the narrative,
while tussled or self-conscious, is still reliable. I disagree.