Subject
Unreliable narrators (fwd) -Reply (fwd)
Date
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From: Wayne Daniels <wdaniels@gwmail.mtrl.toronto.on.ca>
I am currently reading a novel titled _Civilization and Its Part in
My Downfall_ by the Canadian author Paul Quarrington. Though hardly a
stylist in the manner of N (who is?), Quarrington makes good comic
use of the notion of a writer (the protagonist) whose narrative has a
maddeningly disjointed quality arising from his writerly ineptitude.
There is a good deal of humor at the expense, as I take it to be, of
those for whom narrative is a sort of tyranny from which we need to
be delivered. Does the narrative unfaithfully represent a reality of
which sense must be made? Or does it faithfully reflect a reality for
which nothing of the sort is possible? I am reminded of Sebastian
Knight.
WD
I am currently reading a novel titled _Civilization and Its Part in
My Downfall_ by the Canadian author Paul Quarrington. Though hardly a
stylist in the manner of N (who is?), Quarrington makes good comic
use of the notion of a writer (the protagonist) whose narrative has a
maddeningly disjointed quality arising from his writerly ineptitude.
There is a good deal of humor at the expense, as I take it to be, of
those for whom narrative is a sort of tyranny from which we need to
be delivered. Does the narrative unfaithfully represent a reality of
which sense must be made? Or does it faithfully reflect a reality for
which nothing of the sort is possible? I am reminded of Sebastian
Knight.
WD