Excellent Point on Unreliable Narrator

[Richard Ryan]

What Laura said...

On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 11:13 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Symbols make boring characters, and symbols of evil make boring bad guys.
>  McCarthy seems obsessed with the idea that Evil is afoot, and The Judge is
> its incarnation.  I don't find The Judge fascinating or scary.  He's
> inhuman, which, to me, makes him single-note and dull.  Evil with genuine
> human elements tossed into the mix makes for a much more interesting
> concept.
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Colter
> Sent: May 9, 2011 12:04 AM
> To: Richard Ryan
> Cc: Edward A Moore , pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: Excellent Point on Unreliable Narrator
>
> The frightening thing to me about Judge Holden is that he does not appear to
> suffer from being a symbol, but rather becomes empowered by being one.
>
> On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 10:49 PM, Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> The Judge suffers from being a symbol rather than a human being.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 11:18 PM, Edward A Moore <edmoorester at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > My bad.
>> >
>> > The Judge is a bad guy and he kills the good guy in the end.
>> >
>> > The Judge is one reliably evil villain.
>> >
>> > ed
>> >
>> > That the judge is an asshole, or in traditional terms, a bad guy or
>> > villian, does not render his statement unreliable. What makes a
>> > narrator or character-narrator unreliable is that his statements are
>> > at odds with the implied author's norms. Is this is the case with the
>> > judge in McCarthy's BM?
>> >
>> > On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 11:48 PM,  <edmoorester at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> "The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not
>> >> constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what
>> >> exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more
>> >> things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order
>> >> in creation which you see is that which you have put there,
>> >> like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way.
>> >> For existence has its own order and that no man=92s mind can
>> >> compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others."
>> >>
>> >> "Blood Meridian"
>> >> by Cormac McCarthy
>> >>
>> >> The Judge(think Marlon Brando in "Apocalypse Now") in this
>> >> book quoted above was an asshole so unreliable narrator thingee
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Richard Ryan
>> New York and the World
>> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
>> Thanks to all who saw VTM's new production!
>> "Brilliant!";"Superb!" - NYTheatre-wire.com
>> www.kingstheplay.com
>
>



-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Thanks to all who saw VTM's new production!
"Brilliant!";"Superb!" - NYTheatre-wire.com
www.kingstheplay.com