Signifying nothing?

[felis_ultharus]

The problem with stream-of-consciousness novels is that they tend to produce unconsciousness in their victims readers. It was a little interesting when Gertrude Stein tried it because it was still so new, but the lesson I took away from Stein is that all writing needs to be at least a little contrived because if you reproduce the way people really talk and think, the result is incredibly boring.

I'm muddling through The Sound and the Fury now, and thinking of all the better ways the story could've been written. There are enough hints about what's really going on under the surface of this wealthy Southern family to be interesting, but I really crave a fucking sentence right about now -- you know, subject, object, verb. Period.

This book needed a good mystery writer to pinch-hit for Faulkner -- one who'd present the family's surface, then peel away the layers like an onion. Right now we're getting bits and pieces of the horror in Tourettes-like spasms and it's just not a worthy style.

It's a shame. I really liked Faulkner's Light in August, one of the best novels ever written about racism. It was much better constructed, better crafted, well-built.

Comments

[rougemacabre.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, The Sound and The Fury.... I vaguely remember reading that novel. Well, that is the sense of pain I felt at being forced to read the work. Really, I think school isn't trying to teach us to like reading, it's trying to cause voluntary illiteracy. :-P

There are novels I've gone back to later in life that I didn't appreciate at the time. So far, TSATF is not one of them. Give me another fifty years, and we'll see.

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

Stream of consciousness works should be limited by law (as in 'of the cosmos', not as in 'federal law') to minor pieces such as poetry or short stories. It's an effecive device if you are H P Lovecraft and you need your author to go gibberingly insane at the end of a ten page story, when he has seen the Eldritch Horror, but otherwise all it does is alienate the reader. The whole point of writing is to translate what is in your head into a format that other people can view and theoretically understand. Stream-of-consciousness novels are like trying to give your English-speaking audience an 'authentic' view of your character's thoughts by writing in un-translated Swahili for the entire book.

Even Timothy Leary could write in full sentences, for fuck's sake.

[ubergreenkat.livejournal.com]

I've never managed to read Faulkner, but I did laugh aloud reading this.

When Oprah decided to read Faulkner with her book club last summer ("because no American can claim to be well-read without reading Faulkner" cause that makes a fuck-load of sense, Oprah), several of his books became instant best-sellers when they had been slated to be out of print. My rational side says this is good - people reading and all that. My overwhelmingly superior academic side still hates Oprah.