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