window on time is more important than the reasons for the failure, and that
the difficulty of producing the narrative—the flesh-and-blood Bauby worked
out a system in which someone would read letters to him and he would blink
when they reached the letter he wanted—means that he will stay focused on
the most important aspects of any events he narrates. But that justification
is finally not satisfactory because this story of Mithra-Grandchamp is not
only about the experiencing-I’s own near miss but also about his responsibil-
ity for the near miss of the others. Thus, not getting to the window on time
is as much of an ethical failure to follow through on his agreement to place
the bets of his coworkers as it is a near miss for himself. Consequently, the
implied Bauby needs to have his narrating-I address his failure to get to the
window. Thematizing the event without addressing this ethical failure partly
undermines that thematizing. The implied Bauby’s decision to conclude the
chapter with the sentence about the experiencing-I repaying his coworkers
indicates that he has some awareness of the ethics of the told in this situation,
but that sentence does not remedy the problem in the ethics of the telling.
How, then, can we theorize these passages of unintended off-kilter narra-
tion from Didion and Bauby? Here are six proposals.
(1) This narration is not unreliable but deficient, precisely because its going
awry is unintended. The different terms help us conceptualize the difference
in the relationships of the actual audience to the implied author, the narra-
tor, and the authorial audiences in both types of narration. In unreliable nar-
ration, the actual audience seeks to stand with the implied author and the
authorial audience at some distance from the narrator whose report, interpre-
tation, or evaluation goes awry. With deficient narration, the actual audience
stands at some distance from the implied author, the authorial audience, and
narrator, all of whom regard the narration as reliable.
(2) The emphasis on intentionality provides a basis for using the same cri-
teria to make judgments of unreliability and deficiency whether we are read-
ing fiction or nonfiction. An implied author of a nonfiction narrative who
endorses a narrator’s erroneous report about a historical event is constructing
reliable narration just as much as an implied author of a fictional narrative
who endorses a narrator’s racist views.^4 As members of the flesh-and-blood
audience, we should deem both kinds of narration deficient, but, again, such
faultfinding is not an activity to which the implied author guides her audience.
- In this respect, I depart from the model of unreliability proposed by Shen and Xu,
since they would regard the erroneous report in the historical account as an instance of extra-
textual unreliability. In my view, we capture the rhetorical dynamics of such a report more
adequately if we view it as reliable but deficient.
IMPLIED AUTHOR, DEFICIENT NARRATION, AND NONFICTION • 211