The Maids of Honor

The projectionist as ever-present observer

labyrinths

"Bioy Casares had had dinner with me that evening and we became lengthily engaged in a vast polemic concerning the composition of a novel in the first person, whose narrator would omit or disfigure the facts and indulge in various contradictions which would permit a few readers - very few readers - to perceive an atrocious or banal reality. From the remote depths of the corridor, the mirror spied upon us."

"Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in "Labyrinths", p.27


"One of the schools of Tlon goes so far as to negate time: it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory."

Ibid, p.34


"The methodical fabrication of hronir (says the Eleventh volume) has performed prodigious services for archaeologists. It has made possible the interrogation and even the modification of the past, which is now no less plastic and docile that the future."

Ibid, p.38

Hejduk's narratives

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/John+Hejduk.+%28Reviews:+New+York%29-a095676031


http://www.architectureweek.com/2000/0726/news_2-1.html

The Poetics of Architecture
from Mask of Medusa, by John Hejduk

I was interested in the poetics of architecture, in that which only the architect can give.
Everyone else can give everything else, but it's the only thing thay can't give that interests me. I'm not an ambiguous architect; I deal with fabrications, with clarities.... the forms are there, they don't have double meanings, they're singular, any one should be able to look
at them. The wall itself is the most "present" condition possible. Life has to do with walls; we're continuously going in and out, back and forth and through them. A wall is the quickest, the thinnest, the thing we're always transgressing, and that is why I see it as the
"present," the most surface condition. The painter starts with the real world and works toward abstraction, and when he's finished with a work it is abstracted from the so-called real world. But architecture takes two lines. The architect starts with the abstract world, and
due to the nature of his work, works toward the real world. The significant architect is one who, when finished with a work, is as close to that original abstraction as he could possibly be... and that is also what distinguishes architects from builders.

Narrator

What types of narrators are there? The first major distinction critics make about narrators is by person:

a FIRST PERSON narrator is an "I" (occasionally a "we") who speaks from her/his subject position. That narrator is usually a character in the story, who interacts with other characters; we see those interactions through the narrator's eyes, and we can't know anything the narrator doesn't know.

a SECOND PERSON narrator speaks in "you." This is an extremely rare case in American literature, although we will read a few examples.

a THIRD PERSON narrator is not a figure in the story, but an "observer" who is outside the action being described. A third-person narrator might be omniscient (ie, able to tell what all the characters are thinking), but that is not always the case. Third-person narration may also be focalized through a particular character, meaning that the narrator tells us how that character sees the world, but can't, or at least doesn't, read the mind of all the characters this way.




The role of the narrator is integral to the success of our narrative, the narrator is somewhat outside the cast, in the main observing rather than taking part in the action of the story. What can the way in which the narrator relays the story give us an insight into the persona of the narrator? In many ways the narrator seems to be in a place of authority as it is he/she who decides what parts of the story are revealed to us.

One example that came to mind (though certainly not resolved) is the boy who narrates in "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" , Mark Haddon. The 15 year old relays in minute detail the story even though much of it is beyond the realm of his understanding. But what, I found myself asking would happen if the narrator either was unable to tell the story or chose not to? Is it possible to have an untruthful narrator?

Perhaps most importantly, why is the narrator bothering to tell the story at all?


image via hello friend

The Narrator

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9B_HdjVDhs

0:52 - "Little did he know..."