By Prospero Dae
Certain things about him stood out: he was afraid of heights, an infelicitous marriage had made him glum, and he hated all brands of canned tuna. What a sad state of affairs. Here’s someone in need of counseling.
Luckily your trusted narrator, omniscient, infallible—and who frankly doesn’t mind canned tuna—can do something to brighten his prospects. And look at Freddie now. As happy as a giraffe in a tall tree forest.
But as this is fiction, there is, requisitely, a problem. Your narrator is kind of blue. And no amount of omniscience or free airline miles can change that.
Just as there is canned tuna in water, and canned tuna in oil; solid white, and chunk light—there is a dualism involved in this story, as well as an entropy of blue in the world. So the glum man has given over his kinda blue to the narrator. It was contagious. To be an author is to suffer for one’s characters. Still, since blue is my favorite color, I love blue. And your imagination, too.
Metafictional entropy! Is the narrator reliable? Maybe Freddie was never glum in the first place and is only mirroring the narrator’s glumness. And can a narrator be infallible? And what if the narrator is actually not glum, but under the thrall of a glum author. And perhaps the author is unreliable. This is a recipe for a splitting headache, so the best thing to do is to put Freddie Freeloader on the turntable and give Miles a listen.
I am in total agreement.
I was hoping you would confute my ecstatically distorted view of narratology. Maybe next time…
Fun one.
One should never underestimate the jocosity of canned tuna or, and this goes without saying, of even-toed ungulates.
I’m with Cynthia, I love blue, so sorry for the glumness of the narrator, for me it comforts my soul no matter – cobalt, ultramarine, prussian, or cerulean they are my go-to. Now for tuna fish – yum, bring it on.
Poor Freddie, he needs to appreciate what his narrator can do for him ~ time for a happy “face.”
Well, Freddie, our long-necked mammal, seems happy to be browsing acacia tree tops–so let’s leave well enough alone. Now if we could just get the narrator signed up for counseling twice weekly…
Is it possible to simply like this story for its creative whimsy? Am I a reliable commenter? Is it possible to think outside the comment box? Is there a way out of this box?
Between the twin peaks of the reliable commenter and the unreliable narrator there is a chasm–a chasm filled with orphaned words, lost punctuation, and many opened cans of tuna…
I say chasm, and you say box
Box, chasm
let’s call the whole thing off.
Sung to the George and Ira Gershwin tune, while on roller skates, if at all possible.
I’m very happy for Freddie, now grazing in that lovely, tall forest. But the formerly omniscient, infallible (?!) narrator, who didn’t mind canned tuna before, is now really down in the dumps and a definite shade of blue. Can he not see how beautiful blue truly is? One only has to look at the sky and the sea to know that, let alone lapis lazuli. A lot of unreliable aspects being bandied about here, so this now definitely fallible – though hopefully not unreliable – commenter must take leave for now. I need to make a tuna fish sandwich.
You saved the best for last!