Re: cheating heart

Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Wed, 15 Apr 1998 08:34:00 -0400

Scottie said:

> I share your curiosity about reliable narrators.
>
> I've no idea if Wayne Booth was the originator
> of the concept but from its current prevalence on
> many literary lists I take it to be the most chic
> thing going.

I have a funny feeling that Will shall (*) know better than I about the
history of the technique of the unreliable narrator, but one of the more
etched-in-stone such characters is Mark Twain's Huck Finn, and at least
some of the narrators of Stephen Crane's stories qualify, too.  If time
permits (I have an article that is sorely past deadline & so may not have
the luxury to look),

	(*) NOTE: it is interesting to come up with ways
	of using Will's name in sentences that have
	verbs of the future tense (e.g., "Will will"), and
	I suspect I note that only because it's in
	some way amusing, at least to me in my
	virtual padded cell.

Even Nick Carraway, the narrator of Gatsby, is in some aspects a classic
case -- we can't be sure whether his infatuation with, or loathing of, the
various characters colors his narrative.  From what I recall, Ring Lardner
also used to like playing with narrators who told the reader one thing,
while the reader could see something quite different.  And Kafka's
narrators need always to be viewed through the lenses of paranoia and
terror and self-loathing.  (Last year, someone here in the U.S. released a
short movie called "Franz Kafka's 'It's a Wonderful Life,'" which conflated
a non-fiction imagination of the composition of "The Metamorphosis" with
Frank Capra's Christmas fable, and the various points of view were dizzying
and hilarious.)

I found one quick source that might be interesting, and it even appears to
be on my local library shelf:

	AUTHOR : Riggan, William, 1946-
	TITLE : Picaros, madmen, naifs, and clowns :
	the unreliable first-person narrator / by William Riggan.
	EDITION : 1st ed.
	PUBLISHER : Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, c1981.
	DESCRIPTION : x, 206 p. ; 22 cm.
	SUBJECT(S) : First person narrative

>From the current American perspective, it's funny to consider Scottie's
remark about this being the "most chic thing going," since some of us here
in the U.S. would argue at least with a small amount of vigor that we here
get plenty of unreliable "narration" in our daily diet of news, which on
occasion resembles fiction.  Certainly in New York City, one can pick any
major urban story and compare its coverage in the three major daily papers
for a dose in narrative variation.  A news piece may come out deeply
slanted in one, comic in another, and scarcely noteworthy in a third.  So
it's not just fiction involved!

--tim