Someone (else) speak on Inherent Vice..?

[Robert Mahnke]

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I don't see this as unreliable
narration.  You have an omniscient narrator who follows Doc.  The narrator
reliably (to the best of my recollection) narrates things including Doc's
perceptions (which are unreliable, as with the example below).  Though Doc's
perceptions are unreliable, I don't see the indication that we are to take
an older Doc to be the narrator, or that the narrator is otherwise
unreliable, though the world he/she/it describes may be.

As ever, I am happy to be corrected.


On 1/6/10, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
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