Tuesday, September 03, 2019

The Myth of the Reliable Narrator

Post-modern literature (and film) abounds with wacky framing devices including the authorial voice and the unreliable nature. This is all messing with the suspension of disbelief and dramatic irony that is the very life of fiction. But fiction is all a lie. There never was a reliable narrator. The book has a cover (a beginning, an end, a narrative arc etc). A film has those weirdest of things, music; pov; zoom/pan etc etc. The author/director/actors may all be dead by the time you read/view this.

So take every story with a grain of salt. or a large G&T. or a deep breath.

Even this brief note is utterly untrustworthy.

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misery me, there is a floccipaucinihilipilification (*) of chronsynclastic infundibuli in these parts and I must therefore refer you to frank zappa instead, and go home