Unreliable narrators pose a problem for the stories they tell. They make the world they depict for us, and we see that world through their eyes. In fiction, unreliable narrators betray themselves in a variety of ways or, to be more precise about it, they are betrayed by the writers who invented them. Unreliable narrators can be deceptive, but readers nevertheless slowly begin to doubt the narrator when contrary facts are revealed.
The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad monotonous song. “Summer is over and gone,” they sang. “Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying.”
The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year–the days when summer is changing into fall–the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.
It’s not something you’re likely to read front to back. You flip through it, skip around in it. Glance at the afterword first and then maybe the introduction. The middle is full of off-putting grammatical nomenclature. The pronominal possessive. The appositive. The split infinitive. To soften the blow, some peculiar characters usher forth from the wings to illustrate these grammatical lessons.
After more than a year of darkness and silence, the lights of the White House Press Briefing Room, without much warning, turned back on. The flat fluorescent light reveals the shadowless theater once again. Once again, video cameras have started to record the dialogue, as the discursive engines rumble back to life. In some ways, everything is the same as it ever was.
Jody Powell. James Brady. Marlin Fitzwater. Dee Dee Meyers. Ari Fleisher. To name a few. All typically deft in directing media attention toward one subject and away from others, setting the terms of journalistic conversation, while also shaping the rhetorical tenor and texture of the country’s business. Bundled into one job title, the press secretary acts as the president’s director of metaphor and plot, scriptwriter, and dramaturg.
