The narrator walks into a bar...

I would like to offer some comments on the nature of the narrator in Loving, which I find rather fraught and problematic. In particular, I'd like to focus on how the narrator behaves like a character present at the action in the sense that the narrator possesses a visible and consistent ideological position, consistent treatment of characters, and a limited knowledge and thus a necessary interpretive faculty. On the other hand, the narrator is, at least in principle, able to be everywhere, if not necessarily two places at the same time.

Here's some examples. On p. 99, the narrator states that Mrs. Welch pulls "a tumbler of what appeared to water," but will later be revealed as gin, towards herself. Though it is possible the narrator is aware that it is gin, and is simply being coy, this is a boring answer which fails to explain the narrator being forthcoming with the information that it is in fact gin on p. 100, when the bottle from which it came becomes visible. This leads to another quality of the narrator, that though it is in principle able to "hover" (as Updike notes) anywhere, it relies on senses analagous to those of the characters. Weird!

Regarding the narrator seeming to not possess all information (or the acoumatic entity which emits the narration is unwilling to share all information), consider the narrator's inability (or reluctance) to understand Paddy. The narrator, despite its ability to pass through walls, must be English. Weird!

Most strikingly, the narrator seems to be subjective, even possessing desire. On p. 107, the narrator describes Edith thus: "She was brilliant, she glowed as rang her curls like bells without a note." The narrator is using metaphor, is freighted with associative memory. Edith inspires poetry in the narrator! And if any character said this about Edith, we'd rightly suspect that character of desire for Edith (note that no males are described this way, so we may go so far as to ascribe sexuality to the narrator). Weird!

Most importantly, this narrator does not seem to be the usual novelistic ghost, which when it can view any scene unfolding as a fly on the wall, tends to also be able to evaluate the thoughts and perceptions of the characters. This narrator seems only able to interpret from what can be perceived from the vantage point it chooses (?) to occupy.