Signifying nothing?

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.