M&D. The Unreliable, repetitive Host

[Mark Kohut]

For those still ruminating on the whole literary concept of Unreliable Narrator, which anyone can still be skeptical that TRP had THAT " tradition" in mind. ( I'm not.) 

When you get close to some major modern classics---the beginning is basically traced to FMFord's The Good Soldier, Irving's 158 Pound Marriage is another ( and indebted); Remains of the Day is perhaps the most famous of recent decades---you see that the art, and human insight  connection is not that they usually lie, nor tell Fantastic Tales--Learned Dog, the Duck and more in our case---but that they do NOT tell " the whole story", ---because they have emotional, perceptual blocks. 

The rest of the story they do not tell us reveals them as if a strobe light went on, and changes the meaning of the narrator's story wholesale. 

And as ole Hank James ( or someone)said a major meaning is to reveal the narrator as NOT 
One with the author's vision. Ironic, as we say. 

In M & D for me, that means TRP's  shards--and direct chunks--of his vision are elsewhere. In the Overarching narrator's words, for example.

and it means I need to explore ironically the tales Cherrycoke tells. 

Not unlike other Pynchon novels but it seems different cause M & D is THE title, is the story supposedly.

So: Nature of Cherrycoke's tales? 

And, the omniscient eye is where it's at. ( Easy to say but...) 






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