The Narrator's mistakes

Michael Straight · 22 Jun 2001, 09:16 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (whorl) The Narrator's mistakes
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 09:16:36
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0888 at digest.urth.net>
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On Thu, 21 Jun 2001, Adam Stephanides wrote:

> 2) Narr says that "I cannot correct all or even most of them [his mistake=
s]
> without tearing the whole account to shreds and starting again."  If Narr=
 is
> not just being humble, his original manuscript had a lot of mistakes.  We
> may wonder how many of them the editors caught (there's no reason to think
> they were in a position to recognize all the mistakes) and how many of th=
em
> the editors missed and we are also unable to catch.

The fact that he felt like he would need to tear up the whole account made
me think he was referring more to the way things were written, the things
he focused on, the things he left out, than specific "factual" errors.

"Mistake" is a broader word, encompassing, "I should have started telling
about this, skipped that, gone into detail about this other, and done a
better job of explaining these things."  He's not necessarily saying that
there are lots of false statements.

-Rostrum

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