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/lit/ - Literature

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6643485 No.6643485 [Reply] [Original]

Can /lit/ recommend any books or stories with strong narrators?

That is stories most likely told in third person but the narrator does not pretend they do not exist. So the narrator might speak in first person occasionally to talk about their relation to the characters (or that kind of thing). This style is more common in writing for children and comedy but I wanted to find more literary examples.

I can't think of really any examples. Richard Ford's Canada is what comes closest.

>> No.6643490

>>6643485
Gratsby

>> No.6643508

>>6643485
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis.

>> No.6643509

Dostoevsky does that a lot. I remember it in Demons specifically. Now and then he'd self-insert.

Moby Dick is good too.

>> No.6643530

>>6643490

Kinda but that sort of feels more like a first person narrative. I was also looking for narrators that weren't writing the book at hand or at least not explicitly so. I didn't want a novel that was self aware.

Basically stories that are told as though a stranger on a bus is telling you it but it's not a frame story.

>> No.6643534

DFWs Pale King

>> No.6643591

>>6643485
life of oscar wao

>> No.6643646

>>6643591

Yes. This is the best one so far. I mean in terms of what I'm looking for.

Some of the others have been a bit formal to the point that the narrator still felt invisible.

>> No.6643876

iliad obviously

>> No.6643878
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6643878

>>6643485
A Pickle For The Knowing ones

>> No.6644218

Lord Jim for a classic. Londonstani for something more contemporary. Both use the limited perspective of a narrator to effectively spring surprises on the reader.

>> No.6644232

the razors edge by W. Somerset Maugham.

>> No.6644246

Jacques and his master (It should be translated like that) by Diderot.
It's an interesting read, funny at times.

>> No.6644278
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6644278

>>6643878
why is he so based

>> No.6644292

Pnin
Madame Bovary

>> No.6644310

>>6643485

Don Quixote

>> No.6644325

>>6644292
seconding madame bovary. Flaubert was put on trial for writing it, because the narrator is ambivalent .

>> No.6644613
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6644613

>>6643485
The Double by Dostoevsky occasionally has a strong narrator.

I recommend it also because it's very good; quite underrated for Mr. Fyodor

>> No.6644768

>>6643485
>That fucking image
>Hurr men are strong and women are weak

Go back to /pol/ OP

>> No.6644809

Gogol- Dead Souls

>> No.6644895

>>6643485
is that the ladette from homeland?