Introduction and Breath

Jerry Friedman · 18 Apr 2011, 04:29 · from 2011-April.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 21:29:51 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Introduction and Breath
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> On 4/17/2011 6:31 PM,  Gerry Quinn wrote:

> > For me, the term 'unreliable narator' implies that the author is  telling us 
>another, different story disguised > >behind the overt story the  narrator is 
>telling is; either the narrator is lying or he doesn't understand  what's > 
>>going on.  I really don't think that either is the case with  Severian.
> >
> > A narrator who simply makes mistakes or who doesn't  know everything isn't 
>unreliable in this strong
> >sense.  Maybe we could  define 'weakly unreliable' and 'strongly unreliable' - 
>but I personally feel  that the
> > expression 'unreliable narrator' should be reserved for the strong  sense.  
>Probably all Wolfe's characters
> > are unreliable in the weak sense -  consider the Nebraskan in 'The Nebraskan 
>and the Nereid' discussed
> > earlier, for  example.  We are told what he sees, but he does not realise 
>that he is  meeting the same girl in
> > the inn and the sea-cave, so we are not told.  But  does that make him 
>unreliable?  It certainly does not
> > make him a liar,  anyway.
>
Antonio Marques wrote:
>I think you're doing overanalysis. 'Unreliable narrator'  simply means that the 
>narrative isn't the absolute >complete truth of  what happened. Which, actually, 
>applies to any narrative. What Gene Wolfe does - as >other did and do - is to 
>craft that part of his work, instead of leaving it to be a subproduct.

The original meaning of "unreliable narrator", as used by Wayne C. Booth in /The 
Rhetoric of Fiction/, is that the narrator's /norms/ differ from the implied 
author's.  He gives examples such as Barry Lyndon, morally as far from the 
author as possible (Booth says--I haven't read it), and Huck Finn, who calls 
himself bad when we can tell the author thinks he's good.  Or the narrator "is 
mistaken, or believes himself to have qualities which the author denies him"--I 
suppose Kinbote would be a good example of that last, or Pooter in /The Diary of 
a Nobody/.  Booth says irony on the narrator's part is not an example, but lying 
is, though an uncommon one.

http://books.google.com/books?id=VfUgMbRYSW4C&pg=PA159

No doubt the meaning has changed.  I'm with Gerry Quinn.  There's no point in 
making a big deal out unreliability unless it's "strong" unreliability--the 
story is or could be substantially different from what you get by believing the 
narrator.

> From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
> ... But I think the "more unreliable than is usual in science fiction"  
>standard applies, in which case
> all the characters you mention are indeed  unreliable.
...

Okay, but why have some people stressed it so much?

> But the Nebraskan is a great example of unreliability, because he  doesn't lie. 
>Yet, we cannot trust his
> narration---that's all that "unreliable"  means.

I wouldn't call a person unreliable who didn't notice something in the dark, and 
I wouldn't say I couldn't trust what he told me.

(I suppose it's just as well if nobody has put forward an interpretation of that 
story where the actual narrator is unreliable, or Thoe is.)

> Similarly, when Blood appears at the manteion unnamed, the
> narrator is,  by conventional standards, being almost dishonest. The fact that 
>he makes the  reader guess is > important, not the clues he offers.

Yes, that fact is important, but it doesn't make him unreliable.  He's just 
choosing an unusual way of communicating, one that his author likes.  Similarly, 
Severian has his own way of telling us that Dorcas is his grandmother, and his 
choosing that way may tell us something about him, such as that he likes 
indirection (or is that Wolfe?) or that he's uncomfortable with having had sex 
with his grandmother.  If that's one of what you called "lies by omission", I 
can't agree.

Jerry Friedman

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