ment of these two kinds of unreliability, especially in part 1 of Lolita, pro-
vides the grounds for our understanding of the relations between his authorial
audience and the two sets of flesh-and-blood readers I have described above.
But before I explore this hypothesis, I want to place the distinction between
estranging and bonding unreliability in the context of the account of unreli-
able narration I have offered in Living to Tell about It.
ESTRANGING AND BONDING UNRELIABILITY WITHIN A
RHETORICAL APPROACH TO NARRATION
Unreliable narration, like character narration more generally, is a mode of
indirect communication. The implied author communicates with his or her
audience by means of the voice of another speaker addressing another audi-
ence. Put another way, we have one text, two speakers (one explicit, one
implicit), two audiences, and at least two purposes. This model predicts noth-
ing about the relation between implied author and narrator in any given
instance of character narration, but instead imagines a very wide spectrum of
possible relations. It does make the descriptive claim that narrators and audi-
ences interact along three axes of communication that correspond to a nar-
rator’s three main functions: reporting (along the axis of information about
characters and events), interpreting (along the axis of understanding/percep-
tion of what is being reported), and evaluating (along the axis of values).
For now, I will just identify the two ends of the spectrum of character nar-
rator-audience relations. At one end is what I call mask narration, a rhetorical
act in which the implied author uses the character narrator as a spokesperson
for ideas that she fully endorses. Indeed, the implied author employs the mask
of the character narrator as a means to increase the appeal and persuasive-
ness of the ideas expressed.^2 At the other end of this spectrum is narration
that is unreliable along more than one of the three main axes of communica-
tion. Such narration along the axis of characters and events is misreporting or
underreporting; along the axis of understanding/perception, it is misreading
or misinterpreting/underreading or underinterpreting; along the axis of val-
ues, it is misregarding or misevaluating/underregarding or underevaluating.
- My concept of mask narration is indebted to Ralph Rader’s concept of the “mask lyric”
developed in his essay “The Dramatic Monologue and Related Lyric Forms.” One important
difference between the poet-speaker relationship in mask lyric and the implied author-narrator
relationship in mask narration is that the poet has the option of using the mask to try out ideas
that he or she does not endorse.
ESTRANgINg UNRELIABILITY, BONDINg UNRELIABILITY • 99