On Unreliable Narrators (Really)

bpNichol: The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid

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Peter Carey: The True History of the Kelly Gang

Unreliable narrator

I was going to prepare but my dog ate my notes

so then I got some chloroform put him to sleep, put my hand down his throat to retrieve my notes then I put them in the oven to dry them out (dog slobber) then they caught fire so patted them down and burnt my hand which I then covered in butter to heal it but then I was hungry so I used the butter to put on toast and so I didn’t end up having time to prepare for the class.

Actually, I was out all night drinking with a friend. I wouldn’t normally but he had just been through a difficult. breakup. We started with drinking, then smoked some weed, then ended up doing coke and drove to Niagara Falls NY on a lark. I was just released from jail this morning and so I wasn’t able to prepare.

Actually, I didn’t prepare because my dog did grab my notes. He’s just a puppy. But I knew he was trying to help. I knew that he sensed I felt ambivalent about what I’d written and so he intervened so I’d write new noes.

How do you know I’m lying?

According to Lincoln, 67% of statistics on the Internet are made up.

It may only become apparent as the writing progresses, it begins to dawn on us, or we know from the beginning.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THE STORY MAY NOT BE AS IT IS TOLD?

Imagine email spam and how you look for clues that it’s not actually true.

COMPARISON TO REAL WORLD OR WORLD OF THE NOVEL—compare narrator with what seems reasonable in our world or in the world of the story as far as one can establish

—Incident of the Dog in the Night Time — child describes thing from autistic POV but we know what is likely in our world — we can draw our own inferences from what is being described—in a different way than the character. 

Lord of the Rings— it is established that this is a parallel world. If I told you that I had an appointment with a wizard later today to go on a mission across the world to destroy a magic ring you’d know that I was telling a story (and you might evaluate the story for internal consistency) …but if I said quantum physics and an object can be in two places at once and communicate over long distances, etc. even though it is hard to imagine, you would likely understand that I’m trying to represent the truth of modern physics.

We compare what is the normal attitude of a reasonable adult to what is represented in fiction.

OBSERVABLE ATTITUDE OF NARRATOR 

Are they lying for self interest, or to cover for something or to prove a point?

Tell Tale Heart (see intro)
https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/the_tell-tale_heart_0.pdf

Lolita—

— is intelligent, “reasonable,” writes well, charming, etc.

https://epdf.tips/lolita-penguin-modern-classics.html
—

THEY DON’T NECESSARILY MEAN TO MISREPRESENT — THEY DON’T KNOW THEY’RE DOING IT

-perspective is different: simple, demonstrates the bias of their perspective on the world

as a result of culture, education, intelligence, social position, mental illness, personality disorder, altered state (drunk, drugged, traumatized, brainwashed, etc.), dementia, etc. 

(see Whale Music — gaps in his perception and memory as a result of trauma and drugs)

—HOW?

—Sometimes they tell you this is their very own subjective recollection. Or the story they received from someone else (of course all stories are inherently unreliable)

-Through their charm, intelligence, force of character — you get swayed by their charm, by the seeming authenticity of their speech/story/recollection. (cf politicians)

See The True Story of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (see image)

—divergence between what is described and what is likely happening — the reader is able to see for themselves through the screen of the narrator’s sensibility

—details don’t add up —within the internal world of the story or with ours. (what is the implied reality of the world?)

—though sometimes the narrator leaves out significant details which are only found out later or can inferred (sometimes about what happened, sometimes about themselves.) And you realize this as you read.

Geek Love— we learn the narrator does indeed have a special skill —telling the future.

—Self justification (see Tell Tale Heart) —they “protest too much,” 

WHY

-to talk about the unreliability of all story, of novels, 

-to examine how the truth is inherently unknowable or all to easily misrepresented and a matter of POV

see example, bpNichol The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid

—to talk about self interest or POV — reality or history depends on POV 

i.e. history is written by the victors (Churchill)

-what is one’s responsibility to see beyond one’s own POV or the assumptions of one’s place in society (cf. Remains of the Day which we looked at earlier in the term — the character doesn’t mean to mispresent. He’s a product of his background. Or is he?)

—it’s an exciting, intriguing way to tell a story, to involve the reader in figuring out what actually happened and how it is being represented. A bit like a mystery.

WRITE

1. Write a short account of an event that happened to you, or could have. But add in several lies or distortions. You’re going to read this to your neighbour and have them try to guess what isn’t true.

2.  a.Someone wakes up beside a dead body. Write what they might say.

Was it self defence? Was there someone else there? They didn’t know what happned? alien abduction? their have a gapped recollection? They don’t remember at all, they have another alibi…

      b. Someone writing a letter to an ex or a parent or a boss about their perspective on an incident or series of incidents in which they could have been implicated

     “They say I am responsible…”
    “It is true that I was there, but…”

“Dear Judge Smith…”

What has distorted their perception? anxiety? drugs? guilt? racism?