BtZ42 ye olde unbelievable story

[Becky Lindroos]

Imo,  an unreliable narrator is a 1st person narrator (of the book not a paragraph)  who is lying to the actual reader (not just to the other characters).   The epitome of  the unreliable narrator is seen in Agatha Christie’s Murder of Roger Ackroyd .  That book was published back in 1926 and caused much controversy -  It was unfair!  Christie cheated!  etc.  Yes,  I read it (in the ‘60s) - and was totally taken aback.   

But the actual term for what Christie did was not coined until 1961 when Wayne Booth gave it the name.   There were other unreliable narrators before Christie’s - they just weren’t given that name.  

I’ve always thought of unreliable narrators as being 1st person narrators - but I guess they can be characters within the story who are telling a long tale about themselves.  (See Cherrycoke in Mason & Dixon).   Still - I tend to call those folks unreliable characters as I don’t see them as being the real narrator.  

Becky 


> On Apr 10, 2016, at 6:12 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Joseph said: 
> In that sense I see all narrators as unreliable.  But what did the concept mean when it was introduced? To me it has always implied that the narrator, who is usually a major character is being  deceptive, dishonest, lying  to whoever is hearing/reading her/his story.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
> 
> This article is maybe too too for me, but ya gotta judge yourself if you even think it worth reading. 
> 
> One of the major 20th Century, post- overt- Depth psychology discoveries pervading the West
> is this aspect of narrating unreliably: We are unaware, cannot see things as they are, because of psychological blinders, passions, obsession, repressions that blind us and as we talk/see honestly, not lying, we are seeing unreliably; others without our 'hangups' can see all around us and therefore us too straight.
> 
> One of the best novels with that theme is not on the list above. It is Ishigura's Remains of the Day. 
> 
> Many contemporary novelists, many who write in Englsih at least that I've read about, think The Good Soldier 
> and Remains of the Day.....and others I don't know.....are increasingly important for artists as
> the extent of our own self-deceptions may be growing....at least in the world they see and want to write about. An early John Irving novel was inspired by The Good Soldier, he has said. 
> 
> PS: 
> Like his fellow Swiss Max Frisch, in Homo Faber(1957), Stamm [in Agnes] chooses a narrator who seems trustworthy but whose view of the world is revealed to be deeply flawed." - Peter D. Smith, Times Literary Supplement 

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