On Unreliable Narrators
Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of writing students attempt something narratively that it has never occurred to me to attempt: going to the page and making a calculated effort to take a set of events in a character’s life and depict them in a way that distorts their reality, in hopes of triggering a realization in the reader that the character is not on their rocker.
“Unreliable narrator,” (U.N.) this is called, for lack of a better term. I’ve developed a fair amount of disdain for this type of narrative, to the extent that it can be called a type. It gives me a guilty feeling for not being willing to play the game. But I’m trying to understand my resistance and aversion and learn about my biases and limitations a reader. Is it me? Am I an uber-serious reader who cannot tolerate a bit of unreliable narration in my stories? Am I hopelessly out of touch, and U.N.s are par for the course for other readers, familiar territory? Do they recognize this scenario and embrace it, detecting a bit of mystery or inconsistency or inexplicable events and saying, Oh, hey, an unreliable narrator situation. Cool, fun, let’s figure this out?
Perspective
It’s hard to say where I stand in relation to others. But what I know is that I have yet to see it executed to my satisfaction. Usually it ends up like a magician’s trick — say, sawing a woman in half. But the…
