BtZ42 ye olde unbelievable story

[ish mailian]

There are endless possibilities for reliability and for un-reliability and
for combinations of the endless variations of these two
possibilities. Distance too offers endless possibilities.

I've been reading short stories. Not the kind I've ever read about on this
list. The kind, I think, folks here might find dreadful. These stories are
said to fit into the renaissance in American short story making. They are
realistic for the most part. And they are written by and heavily influenced
by academics. What's striking about them is how they use narrators.

For example, in one story the narrator tells a bunch of stories, sometimes
with photographs to aid her, to audiences who are amazed with her story
telling skills, and especially her fancy, that is, with her ability to
make, from her imagination, fantastic stories. But the stories are true.
They are, essentially, parts of an autobiography. When she tells her
stories to her lover, when she, essentially  confesses to her lover, her
lover never believes her. It is in this problem that reliability is
established. We believe her because others don't. A clever turn. Reminded
me of Shakespeare's sonnet about lovers that lie.

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
    Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
    And in our by lies we flattered be.


There are, as Booth, in The Rhetoric of Fiction, where the terms reliable
and unreliable are coined,  endless possibilities.

GR opens in a dream. The dreamer manages other people fantasies. Fantasies
are manufactured with films and reels spin into reals.

In film, sometimes, there is silence. Sometimes in silent films there is
screaming we can see but not hear and sometimes the music of the film makes
a scream and a paprodic commentary on the plot.

One thing is for sure, Pynchon's narrative choices are important, if only
because they permit greater opportunities for irony and parody.

In GR, the history of film making is very important.

Is the narrator of Pirate's dream, Pirate's dreaming mind,  or someone
else's, or is it a movie voice over? Or have the reels meshed with the
reals and dreams and fantasies of actors in a world that, as Shakespeare
might have said, is all staged....all theater/theatre?
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