# Books you like, yet you want to smack the narrator **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 27, 2007, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659 "2007-09-27T08:54:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/21 "2007-09-28T02:11:29Z")
And why does Ishmael drop out of the story for the last 200 pages? Was he hiding in the bathroom for the entire whale chase? Winston Smith doesn’t narrate **Nineteen Eighty-Four** , but the story is told from his point of view. There’s one scene that makes me want to bitch-slap him–the scene where he questions an old man in a bar to find out what life was like before the revolution. Apparently he expects the man to tell him, either “Life kicked ass”, or “Life sucked”, and be done with it. Instead, he’s disappointed that the old man can only give him a series of disconnected personal stories, stripped of any political context. Winston, you doofus, that’s exactly what you _should_ be asking for! The man gives him a treasure trove of experience which totally refutes the Party line on the old days, if Winston would only listen. Winston would have made a piss-poor social historian. ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/22 "2007-09-28T02:17:15Z")
_The Hippopotamus_ by Stephen Fry. Loved the book, but spent the first couple of chapters having to put the book down and argue with the main character. Lazy, rude, inconsiderate misogynist _slob_. Great book, brilliant character. Bastard. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/23 "2007-09-28T03:32:38Z")
[QUOTE=maggenpye] _The Hippopotamus_ by Stephen Fry. Loved the book, but spent the first couple of chapters having to put the book down and argue with the main character. Lazy, rude, inconsiderate misogynist _slob_. Great book, brilliant character. Bastard. [/QUOTE] I liked that book a lot, including the narrator. Somehow, there’s a certain type of Brit that’s allowed to be lazy, rude, inconsiderate, and misogynistic. ---
**Author:** ![Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hey_It_s_That_Guy)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/24 "2007-09-28T04:10:30Z")
I can’t believe I’m the first person to mention Holden Caulfield. I love _The Catcher in the Rye_, and it was my favorite book through my turbulent teen years. I used to reread it every summer, like a ritual. But now that I’m closer to 30 than I am to 20, I see that he was the original Emo Kid and really needed to get over himself. ---
**Author:** ![Panurge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@Panurge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Panurge)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/25 "2007-09-28T12:01:24Z")
Franz Kafka’s diaries. You never heard such whining… ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/26 "2007-09-28T12:35:42Z")
**The Book of the New Sun** by Gene Wolfe. This is actually my favorite series I’ve ever read. Severian is a liar and a rapist, among his other failings. ---
**Author:** ![Winston\_Smith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e95f7d/32.png) [@Winston\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winston_Smith)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/27 "2007-09-28T14:34:18Z")
[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig] Winston, you doofus, that’s exactly what you _should_ be asking for! The man gives him a treasure trove of experience which totally refutes the Party line on the old days, if Winston would only listen. Winston would have made a piss-poor social historian. [/QUOTE] **Freddy** , that’s the _point_ of the novel. He’s not listening because he’s incapable of understanding the answers to the questions he’s asking. The constant blunt trauma Party orthodoxy inflicted upon him has rendered him incapable of detecting subtlety, and despite his efforts, incapable of true unorthodoxy. This is reflected in the narration and thus the points made are subtle. And for what it’s worth, Winston _was_ a social historian. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/28 "2007-09-28T16:29:28Z")
The main character in Ira Levin’s “A Kiss Before Dying.” It’s an incredibly good first book, but the protaganist is a true sociopath. ---
**Author:** ![Cemetery\_Savior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@Cemetery\_Savior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cemetery_Savior)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/29 "2007-09-28T16:46:25Z")
[QUOTE=Scumpup] **The Book of the New Sun** by Gene Wolfe. This is actually my favorite series I’ve ever read. Severian is a liar and a rapist, among his other failings. [/QUOTE] Same author, different book. Wolfe makes a habit out of using the Unreliable Narrator in his fiction. the narrator I want to throw in a hole (but it’s not his fault) is the narrator from the _Sidon_ books. I can’t remember his name. The guy has severe short-term memory problems, forgetting everything each evening (his name, why he’s where he is, etc.). Makes for a very frustrating view by the reader! -Cem ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/30 "2007-09-28T17:38:58Z")
[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas] Give the guy a break. He had just lived through some horrible and very bizarre explosion, which turned him invisible. How coherent would you be if you woke up invisible? The trap is what snaps the narrator back into his right frame of mind, realizing he doesn’t want to be in the government’s hands for the rest of his life. It spurns him to escape. I loved that book. [/QUOTE] I too loved that book. The movie version however sucked to the end of time. Turning it into a Chevy Chase comedy was a mistake of the highest order. ---
**Author:** ![Kizarvexius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/da6949/32.png) [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/31 "2007-09-28T18:03:20Z")
I have a tendency of re-reading favorite books, sometimes starting the same book again immediately after finishing it. In so doing I finally wearied of the first person narrator in Nicholas Guild’s _The Assyrian_. Magnificent novel. First class research. Brings alive a period of history that few other authors have ever touched on. But o, ye gods! After Tiglath Ashur is robbed of his birthright by his father’s scheming number one wife, he steadfastly refuses to do anything about it. Yet every time the subject of the queen-to-be, Esharhamat, comes up, the stoic mask slips and he launches on a whiny soliloquy about how fair she is and how he loves her and fate is SOOOOOO cruel. When a died-in-the-wool hopeless romantic starts yelling “get over her!”, you know the simpering has gotten excessive. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/32 "2007-09-28T18:25:31Z")
[QUOTE=Cemetery Savior] Same author, different book. Wolfe makes a habit out of using the Unreliable Narrator in his fiction. the narrator I want to throw in a hole (but it’s not his fault) is the narrator from the _Sidon_ books. I can’t remember his name. The guy has severe short-term memory problems, forgetting everything each evening (his name, why he’s where he is, etc.). Makes for a very frustrating view by the reader! -Cem [/QUOTE] I think his name is Latro, but I forget. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/33 "2007-09-28T18:42:54Z")
[QUOTE=Antinor01] I too loved that book. The movie version however sucked to the end of time. Turning it into a Chevy Chase comedy was a mistake of the highest order. [/QUOTE] One of my dreams is to buy the film rights to that book and make a real movie of it, not one with the same title and premise. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/34 "2007-09-28T19:15:41Z")
Almost anything by H.P. Lovecraft. I _love_ his work. God, how I love it. But every single Lovecraft narrator is essentially Lovecraft himself…weedy, anemic, and vaporish. Yes, yes, we know that the Cyclopean Horrors from the Deep Aether are beyond human comprehension and whatnot. I just wish the narrator wouldn’t keep fainting every other page. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2007, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/35 "2007-09-28T22:37:55Z")
[QUOTE=Winston Smith] **Freddy** , that’s the _point_ of the novel. He’s not listening because he’s incapable of understanding the answers to the questions he’s asking. The constant blunt trauma Party orthodoxy inflicted upon him has rendered him incapable of detecting subtlety, and despite his efforts, incapable of true unorthodoxy. This is reflected in the narration and thus the points made are subtle. [/quote] I disagree. Winston is capable of all kinds of unorthodoxy. He persists in thinking of the past as better even after the failed interview–based on such subtle cues as Charrington’s nursery rhymes–but somehow misses the evidence the old man is giving him, only because Orwell wanted to make a point about de-politicized proles and had to temporarily “dumb down” Winston to do it. > [@](#): > > And for what it’s worth, Winston _was_ a social historian. 😕 Winston was a journalist. ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2007, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/36 "2007-09-29T01:05:53Z")
[QUOTE=Smeghead] I liked that book a lot, including the narrator. Somehow, there’s a certain type of Brit that’s allowed to be lazy, rude, inconsiderate, and misogynistic. [/QUOTE] _The Hippopotamus_ - Stephen Fry By the end, I was prepared to forgive his manners, but it was an effort at the beginning (and the narrator does go through a mellowing of his cynicism through the novel). The main problem was that I read it straight after _Making History_, which I was besotted with. They’re both just about equal favourites, by a long margin ahead of any of his other books. ---
**Author:** ![Winston\_Smith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e95f7d/32.png) [@Winston\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winston_Smith)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2007, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659/37 "2007-09-29T01:17:18Z")
[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig] I disagree. Winston is capable of all kinds of unorthodoxy. He persists in thinking of the past as better even after the failed interview–based on such subtle cues as Charrington’s nursery rhymes–but somehow misses the evidence the old man is giving him, only because Orwell wanted to make a point about de-politicized proles and had to temporarily “dumb down” Winston to do it. 😕 Winston was a journalist. [/QUOTE] The best example I can give is when Winston contemplates suicide and laments that it would be difficult to get hold of a gun or poison (or whatever). The narator points out that it didn’t occur to Winston to throw himself off the top of a building - it ties in with Ampleforth’s observation (I believe it was Ampleforth - been a while since I read it) that as Newspeak is refined as a language it will become more and more difficult to even concoct unorthadoxy thoughts because the language needed to do so will have been purged. This has already happened to some extent to Winston. And Winston is only a Journalist in the most loose of interpretations of the word. He doesn’t write the daily, he re-writes the daily. He records history as seen through the kaleidascope of the Party, thus the history of the party and the history of Party orthadoxy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-like-yet-you-want-to-smack-the-narrator/420659.md?page=1)