BtZ42 ye olde unbelievable story

[David Morris]

Well said!

On Sunday, April 10, 2016, Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> Sometimes a book will have split narrators - I think Mason & Dixon does.
> The 3rd person narrator of the interior story is reliable (we trust what he
> says)  while Cherrycoke himself, in the frame story,  is unreliable.
> Neither we nor the folks listening to Cherrycoke should take what he says
> as any kind of source material.  He exaggerates and tells tall tales,  he
> might even lie,  etc.  It’s for his own aggrandizement usually -
> unreliable narrators have a reason for being that way - age, booze, mental
> condition,  guilt, ego, personality - etc.
>
> Yes,  1st person narrators are often unreliable,  but imo they’re not
> unreliable simply because they’re first person.  This is not a psychology
> test.    Most narrators are telling the tale as they see it,   but unless
> they are lying, exaggerating outrageously, mentally impaired for some
> reason,  a trickster, a child or very naive person,  we can generally trust
> what the 1st person says. Only if we find evidence that we cannot trust
> his/her version do we “label” them “unreliable.”
>
> Think Watson in Sherlock Holmes - very reliable.  The readers should
> believe what he says or it will be very confusing.
>
> Kinbote in Pale Fire (Nabokov) - completely mad and unreliable.
>
> Humbert Humbert in Lolita -  just defends his own despicable actions
>
> Freddie Montgomery in The Book of Evidence by John Bancroft - a kind of
> evil trickster, imo.
>
> Unreliable narrators are often used in suspense novels these days:
>
> Gone Girl by (Gillian Flynn) has 2 unreliable 1st person narrators -  the
> reader is torn between which story to believe.
>
>  The 1st person narrator of The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins) is a
> drunk - unreliable.
>
> The 1st person narrator of The Room (Emma Donahue) is a child and from his
> pov gives a pretty accurate account,  but still,  the reader has to allow
> for him not really knowing what's going on so still - unreliable (we insert
> what we as readers put together from his basic evidence).
>
> Elizabeth Is Missing (Emma Healey) has a 1st person narrator who has
> dementia - unreliable.
>
> The narrator of GR is 3rd person and I suppose he's omniscient.  That
> said,   not all is revealed to the reader simply because that makes for
> good story-telling.   I don’t know as I’d go so far as to call him
> unreliable because he’s not doing it for any reason other than to tell a
> good story quite well.
>
> Becky
>
>
> > On Apr 10, 2016, at 8:28 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> > 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
> <javascript:;>> 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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>
> -
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