Gold, Man, Sax and Violins CH 6 V-2

[Mark Kohut]

Okay Robin (and Dave by proxy),

I'll fold on this one, as the Fla Koran-burner has........
with some position-saving qualification, maybe...

Robin chose a terrif example with Gulliver's Travel's, although Heather below 
would not convince me. Anyone can say such these days, but see below

I have felt Pynchon is illuminated by being read like Gulliver's 
Travels.........................

my current findable edition of Gulliver sez about what Robin wants to analogize 
with by a scholar summing up a lot of considered reading. Yes, "all facts"
lemuel encounters are 'interpretative' and part of Swift's genius---as it is 
TRP's...............I came down too heavily on a stodgy reading.....always 
richer, always shimmering w meaning is TRP.....

Where I came from is the rock-bottom stuff like Lemuel 'coming home' and still 
feeling ten feet tall, (like Alice) bends lower than his wife's face cause he is 
sure he is so much taller...........For me,rock-bottom reality is that.......we 
have to understand that she is normal in order to feel the unreliable reactions
of lemuel.............

In the Menippean Satire book about Pynchon, Tololyan is quoted as saying of 
GR......an historical phantasmagoria wrapped around fragments of reality........

I guess I want to believe in those fragments of reality in V. too.....(like 
pincher martin clinging to his rock).....Benny hunted alligators BUT the rest is
interpretive..elaboration,.full of fiction even within this real 
fantasy............

part of Pynchon's insights into our time......



----- Original Message ----
From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Thu, September 9, 2010 4:06:44 PM
Subject: Re: Gold, Man, Sax and Violins CH 6 V-2

On Sep 9, 2010, at 12:50 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> Laura sez:
>    "Benny's the grounded, reality-based recent young grad side of
>    P, while Stencil's the voice of P the emerging author.
> 
> Stencil is P discovering his historical vision?
> 
> Once again, I will argue, Robin & Dave W., the usual meaning of 'unreliable
> narrator" is not happening here.....as in The Good Soldier or Remains of the 
>Day
> wherein we learn of TRUE FACTS that the narrators blind themselves
> to....................
> 
> Here in V., we have that effaced narrator persona merging with the voice of 
the
> various characters......

I looking at the sense of the parodic, satirical sense of unreliable narrator. 
I'm thinking of such works as "Gulliver's Travels."

A little confirmation that this is also an accepted usage of "unreliable 
narrator."

    Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels is an early representation of
    a novel, resonating both political and social satire. Despite the
    obvious satirical elements in this text, Gulliver's unreliable
    narrative voice is a satire within itself. Mocking the travel
    narratives contemporary of his time, Swift utilizes the narration
    of Gulliver in order to criticize the naïve and gullible English
    men and women who read travel narratives as factual
    documents despite the overt Royalist paraphernalia and overly
    descriptive aspects.


    The text commences with "A Letter from Captain Gulliver to His
    Cousin Sympson," creating the framework of Swift's satire of
    contemporary travel documents. Within the very first sentence of
    this letter Gulliver already states that he urgently published this
    "very loose and uncorrect account of [his] travels" (2331). This
    statement signals to the reader that Swift is purposely
    conveying his narrator as unreliable, and furthermore, he writes
    "I do here renounce...a paragraph about her Majesty the late
    Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious memory" (2331). The
    statements conjointly set up Swift's satire of the travel narrative
    with both elements of "loose and uncorrect" travel accounts, as
    well as a parody of Royalist paraphernalia.


    The unreliability of the narrator runs throughout the text, and is
    presumably Swift's method of satirizing the unreliable
    narrations of English traveler's accounts of their own travels to
    new lands. In Part I, "A Voyage to Lilliput," Swift writes that when
    Gulliver first arrived upon Lilliput he "conjectured [it] was about
    eight o'clock in the evening...was extremely tired...drank
    [brandy]...and slept...above nine hours" (2336). The most
    intriguing aspect of this section is that Swift conveys his narrator
    as overly exhausted, drunk off of brandy, and delirious from his
    swim to shore; therefore, Swift is purposely setting up a narrator
    who is obviously not in a state of mind where his perception is
    unclouded. Swift could possibly be satirizing the delusions of
    the English travelers who were writing back to England at the
    time, mocking that these captains were also drunk and delirious
    from their travels, and they quite possibly could be imagining
    the "wonders" that they described. Anyone who has read
    Samuel Taylor's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is aware of
    the effect that the desolation of the sea can have of one's
    psyche. Swift's inclusion of exceedingly exact measures and
    time frames is also notable in his attempt to satirize the travel
    narratives. For example, the narrator was aware of the exact
    time of day, and exactly how long he slept in the previous
    quotation. Furthermore, Gulliver narrates an entire paragraph
    concerning the description of the ancient temple in which he
    was to stay in Lilliput which exhaustively explains exact
    measurements of the gate being "four foot high" and "almost
    two foot wide," and "a small window not above six inches from
    the ground" (2340). Swift is able to mock the overly descriptive
    narratives of his contemporary British travelers by including
    overly descriptive and unbelievable measurements into the
    narrative of his protagonist Gulliver.

    The Royalist paraphernalia within Swift's text is equally
    significant in his parody of travel narrator's unreliability in which
    English men and women at the time believed as factual. Every
    instance in which Gulliver says something (or provokes from
    another) a negative response about England or England's
    monarchy, Gulliver augments the statement with praise of
    England and/or the monarchy. For example, in Part II Chapter
    VII the narrator uses a pre-verification before he begins to tell a
    story in which his "noble and beloved country was so injuriously
    treated" (2404). Swift then writes "a strange effect of narrow
    principles and short views!" in relation to the King of
    Brodingnag's lack of interest in gunpowder. Gulliver's sarcastic
    tone could not possibly be any more obvious in this line, as
    Swift utilizes his narrator Gulliver as a representation of
    England as a morally corrupt and violent society. In this same
    section, Swift writes that Gulliver will "hide the frailties and
    deformities of [his] political mother, and place her virtues and
    beauties in the most advantageous light" (2404). This statement
    is further demonstrative of Swift's opinion of the travel narratives
    in which the authors continuously praise their mother country,
    not because they were particularly Royalist Englishmen, but
    because their travels were funded by the monarchy, and
    therefore they must bootlick and grovel as much as possible so
    that their funding continues. Essentially, Swift's Gulliver's
    Travels is a text compiled of various layers of satire, and
    Gulliver's narrative voice is satirical within itself. In representing
    the unreliability of contemporary travel narratives, as well as
    their Royalistic purposes, Swift criticizes the English men and
    women who naïvely determined them as factual documents.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/916153/the_satirical_narrator_in_jonathon.html?cat=54