The writer's barely plausible alibi.
#i think this is that thing where 19th century authors had to contrive a series of events for the manuscript to “appear” in their possession #complete with justifiable narrator and with total disregard for the rest of ways the rest of the text break reality #“yes it is entirely possible that a guy was briefly in another world and made it back here to give me his journal before leaving entirely” #“don't think too hard about it” (via @flameintheblacknight)
Say what you will about 19th Century literary critics' inexplicable hate-boner for the third-person omniscient perspective, but the lengths that 19th Century authors often went to in order to avoid getting CinemaSins dinged for failing to adequately contextualise how the narrator could possibly know all this are frequently the funniest stuff I've ever read.
#there's one point in Frankenstein where we're like four layers of meta-narrative deep #safie telling a story to the delaceys being recounted by the creature to Frankenstein who is telling this to Walton #who is recounting everything to his sister #wonderful stuff (via @bones-edition)
I'm trying to recall whether Shelley's Frankenstein is actually the most deeply narratively-nested 19th C. novel I've ever read, and I think it might actually be – I can think of a couple of others that get three layers deep, but none that exceed four.
