Throughout this course, questions of reliability, authenticity, and truth have been asked in regards to the stories we have read. Is the author reliable? Is their account the truth as best as they can tell it? Or is their account specifically false because they intended it? Basically, how do the authors affect the story, and how effectively do they tell it? Does it detract from the story – or, as is the case with Gould’s Book of Fish, does it add to the story?
There are many, many deep and confusing layers to this book, but I think probably the most problematic of all is the layers upon layers of truth undoubtedly mixed with falsehood.
The first narrator is a con man, a liar, and most importantly a man known for telling people what they wish to hear (or in our case, read). Yes, he operates under false pretenses and lies about the authenticity of the furniture true, but what really makes us question his unreliability is his admittance to story-telling, his trading not only of chairs, but also of their untrue history.
And yada yada yada – he turns into a sea dragon and we know all too well what kind of stories sea dragons tell, those slippery bastards.
And then the narrator is Gould, a criminal, a self-proclaimed murderer. He is so honest (which perhaps implies truth?) that he feels the need to address the reader: “I am compelled by my lack of virtue to tell you that I am the most untrustworthy guide you will ever trust…” (54) He is a convicted forger, an artist (not so unlike the sea dragon) and writing from memory in unfit conditions with literally his own blood. Do we honestly expect accuracy?
No. But it doesn’t matter. “A man’s story is of little consequence in this life, a pointless carapace which he carries, in which he grows, in which he dies” (44). The story, the literal autobiography of Gould, is not what this book is about. So I don’t mind too much about reliability, and I don’t think it ever made any of the novels we’ve read anything less.
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ReplyDeleteMadolyn,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree. I think Flanagan is specifically making the point that, yes, the storyteller in this novel is inaccurate and unreliable, but that doesn’t mean that the story isn’t valuable or contain some sort of truth. Throughout the book, there are several references to the scientific, the historical, or the factual which contrast with what the narrator views as truth. We discussed this a bit in class. For instance, at the beginning of the novel, Sid Hammet seeks out different scientists and intellectuals to do carbon dating, research, etc. and to examine the book of fish, and they all disregard the book as “a sad pastiche” (20). However, despite this criticisms, Hammet is so enchanted by the book and what it has revealed to him (“…cast into darkness and the only light that existed in the entire universe was that which shone out of those aged pages” (2)), that he deems it necessary to rewrite it. Hammet says that these historians and scientists, “looked for truth in facts and not in stories,” (20) and seems to disagree that that only in facts can you find it. “…in madness lies the truth, or in truth madness” (33). I think that Flanagan is arguing for the value of the truth in emotions over the factual or historical truth of events. He is uninterested in the Surgeon’s ambitions and puts down Dr. Bowdler-Sharpe’s observances of eggs, as he wishes to capture something greater in his work with the fish (“Much better to hear the plaintive toot-toot of the nightingale when it is alarmed…than analyse a collection of stuffed birds (132)). He wants us as readers to feel something as we read the novel. In class, Josh made the point that by painting the fish, he can portray some sort of facial expression or appeal human emotion. Gould seems to agree, for when writing of the sketch of the fish that he was most pleased with, he discusses the emotions that the fish’s appearance conveys. “…in the…slightly bellicose uplift of the eye’s large pupil I could feel the sudden excitement…” (137). Feelings and emotions are universal and the narrator wants us to take the novel as we will and apply it to our own lives just as Sid did with the book of fish—“The book, I began to suspect, was waiting for me" (28). “At best a picture, a book are only open doors inviting you into an empty house, & once inside you just have to make the rest up as well as you can” (46).
Personally, I am really enjoying reading this novel and the challenges that have come along with it. I think that if people stopped focusing their attention on the confusing timeline of events or the narrator’s ability to portray those events with accuracy, then they may be more inclined to pick up on the emotional appeals of the novel and therefore find the writing revealing and much more beautiful and worthwhile.