SLPAD - 48

[Hübschräuber]

Off the top of my head, if there are no indicators in the text (e.g. "Levine thought" or "but Levine had the vague sense") that these are Levine's thoughts, we are indeed dealing with an omniscient third person narrator. If "the character speaks through the narrator" we are dealing with a limited third person narrator or even Gerard Genette's free indirect discourse. The narrator/implied author/author may indeed speak through the character, to the point of a character becoming the author's mouthpiece, but this is not a matter for narratology.  Discerning the author's perspective from the perspective of her or his characters is usually a very tricky business, and numerous discussions and some flame wars on the list about "Pynchon's meaning" can attest to that.


> “There was an implicit and mutual recognition of worth between them
> whenever things like this cropped up. Outwardly neither had any use for the
> other; but each had the vague sense that they were more alike than either
> would care to admit, brothers, possibly, under the skin”
>
> We have an omniscient narrator, it seems.
>
> Or what’s that one where the narrator speaks through the character? - this
> might be the opposite of that, with Levine speaking through the narrator
> with his version of what he thinks Pierce is thinking.