(Un?)Reliable Narration

Virginia Woolf wrote that there is no such thing as omniscient narration. In many ways, this is an argument that Brian Artese revisits in this study. From the limited, but exemplary, perspective of Joseph Conrad and Henry James, Artese questions critical assumptions about narratology. He asks: Is the concept of the unreliable narrator entangled in value judgements? Does the concept of the unreliable narrator lack footing in the formal aspects of modernist texts? A unifying answer comes in the shape of the book’s primary and most powerful argument: the narratology of modernism has invented ‘the structural law that denies the power of comprehension to any framed or testimonial narration’ (p. 40).

For Artese, testimonial narration is an example of an unconscious, institutional fallacy of literary criticism that projects obscurity onto modernism. In this way, he controversially suggests that ‘modernism’ denotes a set of inherently transparent texts. For him, language, theme, or structure do not make modernist texts obscure – our modern reading glasses do, shaped as they are by the technical vocabulary of narratology. If this is true, the claim would revolutionise our understanding of modernism. So this review will look very critically at Artese’s evidence.

The very idea that undue attention has been lavished on the connection between obscurity and embedded narration is a fresh and original thought. The attempt to destabilise the concept of the unreliable narrator, and raise ‘testimony’ to a reliable source of information is an equally rousing idea. It is, however, unfortunate to see that these promising ideas are not explored to their full potential. Large sections of the study appear to be cherry-picking; Conrad’s ambivalent and inconsistent attitude is many times overlooked. The study further makes no sustained attempt to situate its contributions carefully within the scholarly discourse. This unevenness of quality can perhaps be accounted for by a divergence between Artese’s expansive aim – to engage an argument that could change how modernism itself is perceived – and his modest writing style: sweeping, caustic arguments are caught behind a staccato language that moves in qualification upon qualification. It is as though he has written a manifesto, or call to arms, in journal article format.

The lack of precision is partly due to the impressive scale of the project. The book has a penchant for large arguments that intertwine narratology, twentieth-century journalism, the history of the novel, and the defining features of James’s and Conrad’s texts. Indeed, the project is reminiscent of Allon White’s masterful The Uses of Obscurity (1981), which also looks primarily at James and Conrad. Whereas both White and Artese explain obscurity in relation to enlightenment and sentimentalism, Artese’s project is uncommonly genealogical in its methodology; the study could have marketed itself as the first book-length history of the concept of the unreliable narrator.

Following Wayne C. Booth’s discussions, unreliable narration is frequently analysed as a stagnant concept, without a genealogy of shifting identities.¹ Artese gives the concept of unreliable narration an explicit origin and emphasises that it was invented and manufactured, rather than unearthed from the texts themselves. Instead of focusing on the formal aspects of narratology, Artese concentrates his study on the processes of reading and interpreting texts. With a quasi-Nietzschean attitude to words as fleeting signifiers, Artese primarily battles the concept of unreliable narration from a genealogical perspective. He classifies his methodology as ‘an extended reconsideration of influential literary criticism inspired by Michel Foucault’ (p. 11).

Artese’s approach to James parallels his more substantial discussion on Conrad. He explores both authors’ critical attitudes to newspaper journalese, omniscient narration, enlightenment ethos, and ‘their sentimental ancestors’ (p. 84). However, it is primarily Conrad criticism he takes to task for having imbued testimony with obscurity. This review will consequently focus on Artese’s engagement with Conrad.

Artese’s aim is not close reading but rather to generalise about Conrad’s literary output: ‘In the “elaborate” narrative environments of Lord Jim, Nostromo, or...