Oh, I'm with you there, Miker. If the author is deliberately
misleading ONLY to play an Ace up the sleeve later as a great
"reveal", then something is certainly wrong. It's akin to
having a murder mystery where the killer is only introduced
with 10 pages to go (and unmasked with 5 pages to go).
Another no no.
Steve
_____
From: Michael Robison [mailto:
miker_zspider@yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, 17 August 2006
12:25 PM To:
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: RARA-AVIS: The
undependable narrator / 1st person POV
Steve wrote:
Surely ANY 1st person POV can be seen as being somewhat
biased towards the character... 1st person POV is not
something that can be handled objectively by the
narrator.
*************** You're simply deconstructing the language
till there's no meaning. It's a popular postmodern game that
doesn't go anywhere.
I don't equate biased and undependable. I'm not talking about
a narrator that expresses an opinion different than the one I
might develop, and I'm not talking about a narrator who might
narrate an event with obvious bias, ignorance, or naivity.
I'm talking about blatantly misrepresenting the facts to the
point where an objective reconstruction is impossible until
the author chooses. An example would be Spillane's Mike
Hammer. Opinionated and raging, but it's all there. Lethem's
Motherless Brooklyn doesn't fit, either. It is entirely
feasible for the reader to interpret the events in a
different light than the protagonist.
miker
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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