Re: A good insight.

Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Wed, 15 Apr 1998 09:12:23 -0400

Lesley said:

> Well, thank you Will. I love this concept of "unreliable narration."
> Perhaps JDS was foreshadowing the nineties concept of "news reporting"
> when he wrote CITR. Where oh where is there such a thing as "reliable
> narration"?

Ah, yes, the news angle was what I mentioned in a previous message.  Sorry
I didn't read yours first.

I would say that the narrative in many of Hemingway's stories -- especially
the glorious "Big Two-Hearted River" -- is a strong attempt to be objective
and reliable.  Compare that to the ambiguous narration of his "The End of
Something" and even "A Farewell to Arms," and the difference is reasonably
straightforward.

James Thurber, on the other hand, gloried in insanely deluded narrators
when he wrote his comic pieces.  That's what lends so many of them their
outlandish qualities.

Even the new book I recently mentioned -- The Unexpected Salami, by Laurie
Gwen Shapiro -- shifts between variously unreliable and deceived and
slightly deranged narrators, both in New York and in Australia (Brisbane, I
think, but I don't have the copy with me), to hilarious effect.

--tim