Strongly unreliable narrators

James Wynn · 19 Apr 2011, 21:44 · from 2011-April.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:44:48 -0500
Subject: (urth) Strongly unreliable narrators
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	<880800.11469.qm at web114712.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
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Essentially, an unreliable narrator is someone who:

a) has motivation to distort the truth

b) is obviously debilitated somehow in his perceptive/interpretive ability

There must always be a likelihood significant truth to the story or else 
narrator and the author merge into one voice -- that is, he is not a 
narrator, he is a spinner of tales.

On 4/19/2011 4:27 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>> From: Adam Thornton (IO)<adam at io.com>
>> On Tue, 19 Apr 2011 12:58:56 -0700 (PDT), DAVID STOCKHOFF
>> <dstockhoff at verizon.net>  wrote:
>>> Humbert Humbert?
> ...
>
> He's massively unreliable in Booth's sense of differing  from the author's
> norms, but he does seem to knowingly let you know most of the facts.  Though
> some unreliable-narrator fans think Humbert invented the epiphany while
> listening to the children's voices, the murder of Quilty, and much of the rest
> of the book.
>
>> Charles Kinbote, or perhaps, "Charles Kinbote", of course, as long as
>> we're on Nabokov.
> He's the first who came to my mind.
>
> Also, Agatha Christie narrators who committed the murder, and the third-person
> narration in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge".
>
> Three where the question is whether they're reliable or not: the narrator of
> "The Tell-Tale Heart"; Horselover Fat, in VALIS, as I recall; and the governess
> in "The Turn of the Screw", a classic example.
>
> Another definitely unreliable narrator:
>
> S
> p
> o
> i
> l
> e
> r
>
> f
> o
> r
>
> K
> i
> m
>
> S
> t
> a
> n
> l
> e
> y
>
> R
> o
> b
> i
> n
> s
> o
> n
>
> The narrator of the first third of Icehenge, and maybe the narrator of the
> second third--it's been a while.
>
> Jerry Friedman
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