/lit/ - Literature

stop

>>11968893
>not understanding stream-of-conscious
Jinkies.

>>11968893
>>11968910
Okay, now this is epic

fuck i need to read Faulkner

>>11968927
No you don't you need to secure an existence for the white race

>>11968939
>No you don't you need to secure an existence for the white race
fuck off white nationalism is a tool for the JEW to stop the white MAN from colonizing asian woman. i'm going to have a half yellow son and there's nothing that a schlomo kike berg like you can do to stop me now fuck off

>>11968939
>>11968964
Please refrain from shitting up my thread, thank you!

>>11968967
kys yourself kike, you're a literal lazy parasite. your thread was shit from the start: you just posted a passage and couldn't form a sentence with more than 10 words, expecting that anons would gather here and offer content to you. we aren't your content farm, nigger, how about next time you write something of value in your "O"p

wow bad threads can get worse

>>11968984
I'm sorry...

>>11968893
"Nice prose"

Why wouldn't we defend it? Faulkner is the most profound and great author the 20th century and beyond. The Sound and the Fury is the most beautiful and important novel to have ever been written. Time will tell if it doesn't wear him away like it did Jesus

>>11968893
once you get into a certain kind of mindset it isn't nearly as hard to read as it looks.

>>11968927
do it

>>11969086
>now we're getting at it
>bunch of psuedointellectual nonsense

>>11969086
>>11969097
I'm reading the part not long after the page in the OP where Quentin is having a stream of consciousness-style conversation with someone, no punctuation. Who is he talking to? Is it Jason? He mentions Quentin's mother, puts a cigar on the mantel (?) and tries to give Quentin money. Struggling to figure out who it's supposed to be.

>>11969275
It's Herbert.
Herbert is the guy that Caddy gets engaged with soon after she discovers that she's pregnant (probably to that guy Quentin finds on the bridge and tries to beat up only to get beat up himself). He comes to the house to meet the family, meets Quentin and promises all sorts of things to the family, like money for the family and importantly a job for Jason. Quentin thinks the guy is a charlatan pseud for lack of a better term and immediately dislikes him, though his motives for doing so may have more to do with Caddy than him

>>11969329
Ah thank you! I thought it was the guy Caddy gets married to but wasn't totally sure. Everything feels very tightly wound right now, can't wait for it to unfurl. I'm guessing that the jumps in sentence structure - 'Letter on the table by hand, command orchid scented coloured If she knew I had passed almost beneath the window knowing it there without My dear Madam [...]' - is significant of Quentin's jumbled thoughts, something akin to the italic sections of Benjy's chapter?

>>11969382
Yeah exactly. It differs a bit from Benjy's chapter in that Quentin's thoughts are even less organized and controlled. Quentin is in a very poor and dark state of mind as becomes obvious throughout the section. The irregularity and abruptness in the "flow" of his thought are, among other things, an indicator of exactly how bad a shape he is in mentally. Whereas Benjy's flow sort of behaved more mechanically and intuitively (Benjy sees fire or gets cold -> Benjy remembers something that happened when he saw fire or got cold, etc), Quentin's is completely all over the place.

Keep track of how it changes from where you are now to the end of his section

>/lit/ will defend this

>>11969495
I need to reread AILD, haven't read it for like 5 years and did not think much of it after I finished.

>>11968893
>/lit/ actually defends this
Like pottery to a flame

>>11968893
HOLY FUCK WHERE ARE THE COMMAS AND PERIODS AAAAAAAAAA

>>11969608
>t. turbopleb

>>11969462
Good to know, thanks again. Luckily I find it exciting to keep track of what Quentin is saying/thinking, it makes me look forward to what it is all leading to more. I've really never read anything like this novel so I'm trying to savour every moment among the deluge of thoughts.

>>11969643
don't worry anon it only gets better with rereads

why dont anons like this book

bump

>>11969086
>not a single punctuation mark or capitalized letter
BRAVO FAULKNER

>>11968893
I honestly fucking suck at reading and yet find this easy to read. He's just pacing it with word-level repetition instead of grammatical marks, which means if anything that there's less for me to look out for. And yes, I get that there's a point to commas besides just pacing things and that there're things you can't quite say without them, but it's obvious that none of these things would fit the character. I mean what's next? Are we going to say Flowers for Algernon looks like it was wrote by a retard?

>>11970772
>Are we going to say Flowers for Algernon looks like it was wrote by a retard?
Isn't that the point?

The character is on the verge of suicide. Of course his thinking is scattered and images are coming from all over the place.

This one section alone makes Faulkner one of the greatest.

>>11969086
Is Quentin's dad referring to Quentin's committing suicide throughout this passage? With the "no you will not do that until..." and the "risks everything on a single blind turn of a card..." and the "you wont do it under these conditions it will be a game..."? If not, what?

>>11968893
can it retard

>>11970862
Well yeah, that being the point is my point.

>>11968893
This motherfucker should have been shot in the head for his lack of punctuation, which effectively is the forefather of the verbal diarrhea that today passes as poetry. Stupid fucking nigger hick.

>>11971136
i heard he only got promoted due to a sort of proto-affirmative action where the new england literary establishment were looking for some regional lit to put in the spotlight

>>11971136
>b-but anon, it's just stream of consciousness!
No you stupid mongoloid retard, this is NOT how consciousness feels like. If your head is full of verbal diarrhea without punctuation you're probably a schizo who forgot to take his meds. This is NOT phenomenologically accurate and should be PAINFULLY obvious to any halfwit who did the least amount of psychological introspection: this is just NOT how it feels being conscious. This is just a PATHETIC over-intellectualizimg (read: logocentric, as in literally word-centric) account of consciousness that is not only completely INACCURATE from a phenomenological point of view (which COULD be forgiven) but also aesthetically as pleasing as eating a steaming, stinking pile of SHIT. Fucking modernist niggers should have been hanged: maybe that way we would have been spared MUCH aesthetic suffering. Fucking retarded word niggers.

>>11971136
>>11971140
*throws up*

>>11971151
Nice buzzwords, got a source or wanna elaborate on a single point?

>>11971181
How about you suck my dick, you monumental faggot? How's that for an elaboration?

>>11969134
>>11971136
>>11971151
>i don't like it, therefore it's bad
go to bed timmy

>>11971181
you are a retarded faggot and should go back

>>11971205
I've given legitimate reasons though. This kind of garbage writing is defended on the grounds that it is a technique which tries to mimic how consciousness feels like. It is abundantly clear to any conscious human being that this sort of verbal storm is not how being conscious feels like though. The fact of the matter is that consciousness is a lot more than words, and these infantile niggers seemingly think they can circumvent that fact just by forgetting about punctuation. Well, too bad, modernist niggers: you can't. Not only can't you do what you want to do (that is: conveying verbally what cannot be verbally conveyed), which, admittedly, might have been forgiven as a futile but noble attempt. The issue is that this attempt is an aesthetic abortion.

>>11971219
consciousness is individual and subjective

maybe you don't experience consciousness this way, but who's to say that I don't? or that any number of the modernists didn't?

even if the technique is "off" somehow, that doesn't negate the beauty of it; people don't think or talk in iambic pentameter, but Marlowe and the Bard are beautiful reads

and to say modernist writing "is defended on the grounds that it is a technique which tries to mimic how consciousness feels" would sell the argument short

i'd argue that the chief achievement of the modernists isn't mimicking consciousness; rather, it's finding a way to make repetition beautiful

read Gass' foreword to The Making of Americans for an actual defense of modernist style

>>11971257
>consciousness is individual and subjective
No, not really. Consciousness is a natural phenomenon which doesn't differ much from person to person. This is because consciousness is casually related to the brain, which is extremely similar across different human beings. Nobody experiences consciousness as an endless stream of words, that is just empirically false. If you think you do, you're either: 1) misunderstanding what is meant by the word "consciousness", or 2) suffering from mental illness (schizophrenia?).

What beauty is there in removing punctuation? The beauty of removing an incredibly useful feature of written language that makes comprehension and rational discourse much easier to achieve? My God. Please, just kill yourself, I'm not wasting any more time with you morons.

>>11971276
You seem like a very troubled individual.

>>11968910
the word is consciousness you illiterate cunt

>>11968893
One of the better parts, Quentin is absolutely based

>>11970462
>>11969608
Oh no now i can’t read it :((

Is this is a classical version of
BBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

snnnnniiiiiiffffffffffff...oh yes my dear....sssnnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiffffffff....quite pungent indeed...is that....dare I say....sssssssnniff...eggs I smell?......sniff sniff....hmmm...yes...quite so my darling....sniff....quite pungent eggs yes very much so .....ssssssssssssssnnnnnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiffffff....ah yes...and also....a hint of....sniff....cheese.....quite wet my dear....sniff...but oh yes...this will do nicely....sniff.....please my dear....another if you please....nice a big now....

BBBBBBRRRRRRRAAAAAAAPPPPPPPFFFFFFFFLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPFFFFFF

Oh yes...very good!....very sloppy and wet my dear....hmmmmm...is that a drop of nugget I see on the rim?...hmmmm.....let me.....let me just have a little taste before the sniff my darling.......hmmmmm....hmm..yes....that is a delicate bit of chocolate my dear....ah yes....let me guess...curry for dinner?....oh quite right I am....aren't I?....ok....time for sniff.....sssssnnnnnnniiiiiiiiffffffff.....hmmm...hhhmmmmm I see...yes....yes indeed as well curry......hmmm....that fragrance is quite noticeable....yes.....onion and garlic chutney I take it my dear?.....hmmmmm....yes quite.....

BBBBBBRRRRRRRRPPPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTT

Oh I was not expecting that…that little gust my dear….you caught me off guard…yes…so gentle it was though…hmmmm…let me taste this little one…just one small sniff…..sniff…ah….ssssssnnnnnniiiiiffffffffffff…and yet…so strong…yes…the odor….sniff sniff…hmmm….is that….sniff….hmmm….I can almost taste it my dear…..yes….just…sniff….a little whiff more if you please…..ssssssnnnnnniiiiiffffffffff…ah yes I have it now….yes quite….hhhhmmmm…delectable my dear…..quite exquisite yes…..I dare say…sniff….the most pungent one yet my dear….ssssnnnnniiiifffffffffffffffffffffff….yes….

>>11971276
1. People literally think differently from one another, some in literal words, som in pictures or feeling
2. He is troubled and very clearly having an episode
3. The point of SoC is to translate the feeling into the text, you absolute mongrel

>>11971693
>classical
You really couldn’t get past the fourth word, could you?

>>11971693
Yes, in a way SoC is a proto version of greentexting, pastas, Brapposts etc. I'm somewhat terrified by the realization that they're connected, but I can't deny the connection.

>>11971276
>The beauty of removing an incredibly useful feature of written language that makes comprehension and rational discourse much easier to achieve?
The absolute state of you.
I can never fathom how people manage to come this close to understanding something, and then not ask the simplest of questions.

Itt: brainlets are incapable of reading Faulkner and get angry over it

What a faggy little bitch thing to say, that Faulkner's writing contributed to the way people write today. Bullshit

>>11972156
I don’t understand this post, are you contradicting yourself or not?

>>11972156
> Hi, I am Faulkner and this is literary Jackass.
Sometimes "hardcore" isn't a good thing, broseph.

>>11971276
>Consciousness is a natural phenomenon which doesn't differ much from person to person. This is because consciousness is casually related to the brain, which is extremely similar across different human beings.

Is joyces "le alliteration and reference" stream of consciousness any better?

>>11971276

>niggers will defend this

>/lit/ will write and then defend this

>>11971670
>the word is consciousness you illiterate cunt

>>11972507
I'll defend it. In just one paragraph, it encapsulates the truly horrible condition of the modern, sexually unfulfilled male - "not even faggots would fuck you, you're just THAT repulsive". Give me one other novel that gets that close to the bone so quickly and so eloquently, all while using modern parlance.

>>11972471
unironically not bad

>>11968893
Is this one of the easier sections of TSATF or am I totally ready to read it?

>>11972634

t. nigger

>>11972507
What book is this?

>>11972713
This passage is not all too difficult because all of the page is presented as one single continuous event/thought/memory (something that is very rare in the first two sections of the novel). It gets more difficult when thoughts switch with no concrete indicator (the lack of punctuation is prevalent throughout), especially mid-sentence. There's another layer in trying to figure out when the events that are thought about occurred and putting them into a time line. In Benjy's section, it can be difficult trying to translate his impressionistic language into what is actually happening/what he is actually seeing. But it's really not as inaccessible as people make it out to be. The first two sections are difficult, yes, but if you read slow and pay attention you will get the gist of what they are telling. If you can handle the lack of punctuation please give it a go, it is one of the greatest novels ever written and its beauty will not be lost on you.

>>11972785
Should I read AILD first?

>>11968910
>stream-of-conscious
Pretentious twattery.

>>11972785
It's from L'anomie, considered the most important novella of the 21st century by Professor Harold "No!" Bloom

http://www.lulu.com/shop/anonymous/lanomie-ou-le-tumulte-des-tapirs/paperback/product-23534633.html

>>11972910
Is it good?

I'd say just jump right into TSATF. AILD is great in it's own right, but the first time I read it I disliked it. While it may be similar in overall structure and thematically, technically it's much less complex and experimental.

The best introduction for the novel is the first section of it. Benjy's section starts out really patchwork and you may find that you understand very little of what's going on, but as you read through it you'll start to notice things and be able to piece some of the narratives together. Just read carefully: you don't need to understand what's going on, especially at first, but keep an eye out for italics and bizarre/nonsensical syntax, which usually will mean a jump in thought. Pay attention to what Benjy's doing, how people talk about or treat him, etc etc. Think about the impressions things give him to understand what they are as well as what benjy thinks of them.

Try to get into Faulkner's rhythm (maybe not the best word for it) and idiosyncrasies: if you can do this then you'll be able to keep up much easier when he starts dropping punctuation and jumping rapid-fire across different thoughts.

At the risk of sounding like I'm sucking the novel's dick, it's really not the type of novel you can prepare for. Academics have been studying it for decades and can't make heads or tails of a lot of it (Sartre has an essay on it where, in my opinion, he misunderstands the novel heavily). I've read it cover-to-cover five times and reread portions here or there frequently and every time I open the book I get something that before didn't make sense or that I previously interpreted differently. There's really nothing like it. READ IT

>>11973504
whoops, meant for >>11972805

>>11968910
>stream-of-conscious
HOLDUP

>>11973413
You tell me

>>11974302
>>11973413
>>11972910

It's open source, you don't have to buy it

Fans of this book are like a fucking cult.

bump

>>11968893
>mierdafilter_irl

Books I instinctively avoid are always worse than I imagine.

>>11975380
same

this is a fucking great book

>>11975433
bad photoshop

>>11975458
who gives a fuck. you think Terry Davis was posting on 4chan in the 90s?

>>11975481
you do, obviously. you replied

Greatest 300 pages ever put to paper

>>11975500
epic burn

Bump

What did u guys think of The Sound and the Fury?

>>11971151
Ever thought it is stream of consciousness insofar as it reveals something about the character and their mental state rather than as a psychologically accurate representation of thought?

>>11977948
is YA good stream-of-consciousness for teenagers then?

>>11970772
>wrote by a retard
>wrote by a retar
>wrote by a reta
>wrote by a ret
>wrote by a re
>wrote by a r
>wrote by a
>wrote by
>wrote b
>wrote

i r o n y

>>11971151
Stream of Consciousness is meant to simulate how the human mind is unorganised, and skips between different things frequently.
"Where are my keys I think I left them on the counter lemme check I hope I do well at this interview the keys aren't here If I don't get this job where the fuck are they I better not think about what'll happen finally here they are."
This is a really shitty example, but it shows how SoC reflects the inner voice rather than consciousness itself.

>>11978360
>This is a really shitty example, but it shows how SoC reflects the inner voice rather than consciousness itself.
No one actually has an inner voice to this extent. This is a post-facto intellectualizing account of consciousness. If you really pay attention at what ACTUALLY is going on when you do the things you described, it rarely is accompanied by inner speech. Every time I cross a street there is NOT a voice inside my head that says "yep, no cars, safe to cross my dude!", I just SEE that there are no cars and it's therefore safe to cross the street.

>>11978484
t. NPC

>>11978484
>No one actually has an inner voice to this extent. This is a post-facto intellectualizing account of consciousness. If you really pay attention at what ACTUALLY is going on when you do the things you described, it rarely is accompanied by inner speech. Every time I cross a street there is NOT a voice inside my head that says "yep, no cars, safe to cross my dude!", I just SEE that there are no cars and it's therefore safe to cross the street.
Holy shit are you dumb? Do people actually talk like people do in books? Do the things actually happen? You tool

>>11968939
why not

>>11974734
I bought a physical copy of the first TLoTiaT for novelty's sake. I like the idea of finding it on a shelf in thirty years long after this site is gone and remembering the weird shit I used to discuss and the way this place used to be, for as many years as I've been here.
And imagine somebody else finding it after I'm gone who had never heard of 4chan, when the internet as we know it will have long since changed completely. It makes absolutely no fucking sense even to anybody today who isn't immersed in this hyperspecific way we talk. Imagine a team of anthropologists and linguists desperately trying to understand esoteric references to Baneposting. Even if they could piece together what it was, they would never understand it.

>>11979082
That's the same reason I bought L'anomie. Just think, someday my grandson will pull it from its place on my shelves and ask me what it means, and I'll get to read to him about the tapir and Mr. Bloom and all the rest

>>11979114
In a hundred and fifty years a copy of that book may still exist, but there will be zero living humans who could ever possibly grasp what the tapir was in reference to, no matter how hard they tried.
Imagine how many similar small details of other works are already beyond our grasp completely.

>>11979143
>>11979114
What is the tapir in this context? The book?

>>11979171
Even time travel will not reveal our secrets, scholar. Begone

>>11968893
No this is pretty bad stream-of-consciousness. Joyce and Woolf are far superior and its a shame that Faulkner couldn't be better

>>11979198

>>11972240
He's wrong in that consciousness definitely varies from person to person, I've met people with absolutely no inner monologue who function much better than the other people in my friend group and I have friends who have a running narrative of their whole life yet operate at what I can only call a subhuman level of intellect and awareness. What he's more getting at is that the "stream of consciousness" or running monologue is a piss poor description of even most people's inner worlds/ the problem is that: you can't be expected to faithfully describe the conscious mechanics of your mind much less the unconscious; stupid people will be less accurate judges of what is indeed happening in their minds; liars and "artistic" or emotional types will exaggerate and distort what is experienced; much of it has no analogue in language, metaphor especially, and even in image. Conceptual thought is largely a "blank" for people who aren't geniuses, when it happens it feels as if it emerged from the tree of words, branching dialogues and statements/arguments but in actuality precedes them or occurs coincidentally with them. There's also the issue of people who think purely in symbol and don't have a rich relationship with language; phonetics and the experience of pairing objects to ideas using language varies too, and so while we've moved far from the original dispute (which i grant you're correct in being amused by the previous anons' total lack of acknowledgement of) the actual existence of interindividual variation in internal life is itself a problem for the claim to be "stream of consciousness" unless this is literally just a description of a very rarefied and constrained form of verbally oriented thought (it couldn't even be called the only kind of "stream of consciousness" even for verbal thought and certainly not for non-verbal). That's however more nuance than anyone in this thread would dare establish because god forbid people on this board had to think deeply and wait a few minutes or hours before regurgitating the surface reflections of whatever machination is mobilizing their mind at that point in time. If anything this is just more evidence this board should be merged with /his/ where I've seen far more thoughtful discussion and allowance of these kinds of intellectual impasses.

>>11979224
Are people just throwing NPC at things they disagree with because they cant think up an argument

>>11979251
you didn't post an argument anon, your post was just as bad as the npc post ("wahh wahh")

>>11979224
>haha! this guy said thinks something I don't think! what a vacuous NPC!

>>11979269
if you didn't feel offended you wouldn't reply, npc

>>11979226
/his/ talks about books?

>>11979327
sometimes. They have charts and things, but you will find that after twenty posts or so every thread will turn into a discussion about Jews.

>>11979255
I didnt say I made an argument

>>11979284
Thats not me, I wouldn't misuse quoting. Also there is a reason to reply besides being offended

>>11979226
>He's wrong in that consciousness definitely varies from person to person
I love how everyone just assumed that I claimed consciousness manifests exactly in the same way in every single individual. What I ACTUALLY said is that consciousness doesn't vary MUCH between individuals; that this is manifestly TRUE is proven by the fact that we CAN communicate SUCCESSFULLY with each other most of the time. The fact that some people have more inner speech than others is hardly an extreme difference that would make a reasonable person say that those two kind of consciousnesses are different (like one could reasonably presume is the case between, for example, a human and a bat consciousness). I can hardly see how any of this is controversial. What I DID claim is that most people don't have an inner voice TO THE EXTENT that the stream-of-consciousness literary technique would led us to believe. This is of course an empirical claim that I can in no way prove, but which to me sounds perfectly plausible. I agree with the rest of your post and it perfectly conveys what I was trying to say.

>>11978484
Oh Jesus Christ, you don't have an inner monologue do you? I think you should try thinking about what and why you do the things you do because I think you'd be surprised at how many decisions you make without really thinking about them.

>>11979501
Read >>11979493 and shut the fuck up, you boring drone. I do have an inner monologue (in fact, I'm "hearing" it right now as I type and read these words) but I'm not a lying retard who claims his head is CONSTANTLY filled with inner speech (which to me seems an incredibly onerous cognitive overhead).

"Stream of consciousness" is like that tumblrspeak where mentally ill 15 year olds ramble in childish language and use "fucking" three times per sentence. No caps, unnecessary txt language, limited or exaggerated punctuation- someone suggested this was a subconscious attempt at effeminate "submissive speech".

>>11979811
"someone" I'm sure was part of /r9k/'s most elite misogyny scientist inner circle

>>11979811
cringe

>>11968910
The mind is an intersection, not stream

Stream of consciousness attempts to emulate or otherwise represent consciousness. In Faulkner's case that is done by a flow of thoughts that may be conscious or subconscious but anyway invoke real emotion for the character. That is why Quentin's section is so much more jumbled than Jason's : a lot more is going through his head. The lack of punctuation is there to signify how fractured Quentin's thinking is and better show the myriad of emotions he's experiencing, whereas Jason just shows anger and resentment

>>11968910
yikes

>>11969495
>not liking kino

>>11971151
Anon you are talking to NPCs that are incapable of internal speech. Give these poor golems some respite from your criticisms, the little ones can’t take it.

>>11978536
He isn’t an NPC you retarded faggot. Honestly, how is it possible for actual NPCs to delude themselves so much with a false definition of the meaning?

Damn, you just convinced me to never touch a Faulkner book. Thank you.

>all these brainlets are scared by Faulkner's writing
I really don't like posting anime girls but this is just too good. Rarely do I allow myself to feel such superiority to anonymous plebes on an image board

pick up the book

FAULKNER