Someone (else) speak on Inherent Vice..?

[Mark Kohut]

Alice,

As you have shown as much as anyone, there are lots of perspectives/readings that illumine Pynchon's works. Including Inherent Vice. There are also an infinite number of wrong ways to read any work. 

Re: Inherent Vice:
The facts get known; the case(s) get solved. Coy is saved for Pynchonian reasons. Doc gets 'really' laid. As Booth writes, 'the author's implied norms' are what the unreliable narrator MUST BE SHOWN to be unreliable about. 

The author's implied norms,many of then, are clear. We will in a flash get to the clear 'implied norm' of the ending. The thematic implied norm.

"But [even] difficult irony is not enough to turn a narrative unreliable."
And the irony in IV is not nearly as difficult as the irony in other Pynchon novels....

Reliably finished with this discussion.

Mark

http://books.google.com/books?id=jpSfa6LjZ50C&pg=PA100&dq=unreliable+narrator&lr=&ei=M9xES6jIO5OuzQS_y9zBDQ&cd=13#v=onepage&q=unreliable%20narrator&f=false

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

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Someone (else) speak on Inherent Vice..?
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Wednesday, January 6, 2010, 1:30 PM
> When the narrative assumes
> Larry/Doc's POV and uses his language, it
> is limited by his mind, a mind that, as Robin noted, is
> often confused
> or forgetful or stoned. Moreover, Larry/Doc langauge, the
> diction,
> determines the tone or attitude. Larry/Doc's tone or
> attitude, toward
> females for example, is not the same as the implied author
> of the text
> or Pynchon. Larry/Doc, as I noted earlier, is subjected to
> satire. The
> unreliable narrative permits Pynchon to distance himself
> from the
> attitudes of Larry/Doc. His, that is, Larry/Doc, is not the
> only
> narrative voice in the text. Pynchon, as he does in several
> of his
> works, moves freely (James Wood describes this beautifully
> in his How
> Fiction Works), with a free style in and out and close to
> and away
> from the character tones he creates. This distance, as
> Booth describes
> it, is an importnat narrative tool and Pynchon is quite
> adept with it.
> He does not, atleast not in IV, do what he does in the
> major Romances,
> that is, he does not self-consciously commnet on his
> writing an
> allegory or a fable or deny that he is or instruct the
> reader or name
> himself a Judas or a Betrayer, as he does in GR for
> example. These
> Romantic elements, so essential to Pynchon's great works,
> as they are
> to the tradition of the American Romance, are absent from
> IV.
> 
> 
> I do not know where I can find a better place than just
> here, to make
> mention of one or two other things, which to me seem
> important, as in
> printed form establishing in all respects the
> reasonableness of the
> whole story of the White Whale, more especially the
> catastrophe. For
> this is one of those disheartening instances where truth
> requires full
> as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen
> of some of
> the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that
> without some
> hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise,
> of the
> fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous
> fable, or still
> worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable
> allegory.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 1/6/10, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 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.
> > >
> >
> >
>