My first awareness of the unreliable narrator came with
Mordecai Richler's
"Barney's Version". Barney is the narrator reviewing his own
life, but the book is published after his death with his
son's footnotes pointing out that Barney was descending into
the delusions of Alzheimer's disease as he wrote and so his
version is unreliable.
I'm not sure that many would consider Richler a crime writer,
but most of his books have some element of crime in them,
illustrating the temptation and proximity of criminal
activity, for ease and necessity.
I very much admired use of the technique in "Motherless
Brooklyn", where the narrator's view of events are clearly
warped by his own limited experience and the conniving of
other characters. But maybe I've got it wrong and that's not
a good example of this technique, given that the protagonist
goes on to narrate the epiphany that enlightens his earlier
naevity.
Regardless, I think use of the admittedly unreliable narrator
serves to remind us that all narrators are unreliable one way
and another, their tales told from their own, necessarily
limited experiences with points-of-view cramped by human
foibles and, in the case of Barney, disease. In the end
literature is a long history of clumsy groping in a very dark
world.
Oh well, Kerry
At 05:23 PM 16/08/2006 +0000, you wrote:
>A superb example of an unreliable narrator is The
Right Red Hand by
>Joel Townsley Rogers, a forgotten pulpster of some
talent. The whole
>book is a trip, despite its primitive style, because
you can't figure
>out whether or not the whole thing is a nightmare of
the narrator.
>Despite having the air of a rushed job, the novel is
fascinating. I
>think my reprint is in the Blue Murder series of
classics (or, as in
>this case, books that should have been classics but
remain on the
>fringe). It is somewhat Thompsonian, though the
chronology (1945)
>makes it impossible.
>
>For more info on Joel Townsley Rogers (reprints),
see:
>
><http://www.ramblehouse.com/jtrogers.htm>http://www.ramblehouse.com/jtrogers.htm
>
>Best,
>
>MrT
>
>
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