What is a reliable narrator?

[Joseph Tracy]

I would say that Slothrop's thoughts and actions are being narrated.  Slothrop is not telling his story to the reader or an imagined audience. He is simply not narrating to anyone he might lie to. His thoughts are simply being traced by the creator narrator. His role is to be a narrated character and not the narrator.To my thinking an unreliable narrator has to be a first person narration.  A person does not tell him or herself  lies does not tell himself he is going to the bank when he is climbing a glacier. There has to be an audience for that.

 As to the reliability of the actual narrator, Pynchon is odd because he wants the flexibility to let historic realities have a huge role in telling the story, but also to create fantastic uses of those events/contexts and even to exit the bounds of scientific credibility with wild abandon for the sake of a joke or a dark and powerful philosophical comment. Already he has moved us though ancient and modern dreams, through the lives of fictional characters, and through the realities of wartime London. 

If the unreliable narrator is not a character created by  the writer to let us experience a liar from within, then any unreliable narrator is simply a writer who is putting out  weak or crappy writing.   If the story does not convey something reliably real and pertinent, If it bends events to please expectations, it is just not worth reading and will only attract people who like that flavor of propaganda.

 
> On Apr 6, 2016, at 4:45 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Please show an example of Slothrup narrating.  Then we can discuss the reliablility of said narration.  Otherwise, this is a worthless question.
> 
> David Morris
> 
> On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 3:36 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyone care to explain?
> What do posters mean when thy say Slothrop is a reliable narrator?
> 
> Hard to find anything we can rely on in this book, so if have a
> reliable narrator in Slothrop, if, we have something to hang our hats
> on. Right?
> 
> Papa wasa rolling stone.....
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> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> 

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