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/lit/ - Literature

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4941124

Critique It Anonymous Tue May 27 19:03:27 2014 No.4941124 [Reply] [Original]

Just a stream of consciousness narrative:

They sit in shade, out from the sun. The tree, green, full. Long, rolling hills. Green and simple like pointillism. The sun, at the horizon drawn by the end of the earth, is on fire, sitting. Cotton hats and shirts and pants lay loosely over the two: man and woman, both children; not out of joy, but ignorance for their surroundings, their fate. They hold the meritless smiles of figures in oil on canvas, blurry as well, excesses forming rounded edges were a conscious pursuit of refinement would hold harder edges, definitive in purpose and boundary. They're talking. Irrelevant, inconsequential nonsense that's afforded as a luxury to those with time and money and an inability to identify personal void as just that instead of a starting gun to drink and fuck. Planes overhead. Birds as well. Clouds. Streaks. Sounds.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:07:33 2014 No.4941140 File: 1.10 MB, 350x204, 1397057955923.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4941124 fucking why

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:09:05 2014 No.4941145 >>4941140 lol, didn't think it was that bad... alright then.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:09:19 2014 No.4941148 File: 1.73 MB, 295x211, 1391544052563.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4941124 Terrible.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:10:43 2014 No.4941153 >>4941145 You write well, but its obnoxious.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:11:41 2014 No.4941154 >>4941153 how so? (on both points)

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:14:50 2014 No.4941166 File: 1.86 MB, 300x164, 1395598425834.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4941124 >I read a shit story, not giving but of perhaps, just one and a half fucks. Wordy, overly-analytical butt noise. I weep. It's almost over...

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:16:38 2014 No.4941172 >>4941154 Good use of grammar, punctuation... a good sense of surrounding, constant prose... ...but obnoxious.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:16:47 2014 No.4941175 >>4941166 Thank you for the vulgar incoherence. Excellent contribution and use of your time.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:18:09 2014 No.4941182 >>4941172 yes... and why is it obnoxious? Too judgmental?

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:18:54 2014 No.4941184 >>4941124 This. Is a paragraph. How do you expect any meaningful judgment of one out-of-context paragraph of a narrative?

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:20:15 2014 No.4941186 File: 904 KB, 427x240, 1356827971105.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:20:47 2014 No.4941188 >>4941184 because it exists... and you can interact with it, and thus evaluate its quality subjectively... pretty much like anything else in the world.

>>

Anonymous Tue May 27 19:23:13 2014 No.4941194

>>4941175
Why do you feel the need to be validated? It's not something even understandably remarkable. It just is. Everything is right; the flow, good choice of adjectives and verbs, a good simile to keep it interesting (sort of). It just isn't captivating. It's like... I was there, but I didn't care one way or another. Like being somewhere you take for granted.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:24:01 2014 No.4941198 >>4941153 >You write well, 0/10: bait harder

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:26:00 2014 No.4941201 >>4941198 I was trying to be nice. I know we're all comforted behind the anonymity of our computers, but it wasn't worth shitting on this guy's whole day.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:26:01 2014 No.4941202 File: 1.63 MB, 320x176, Happy Nazis.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] If a stream of consciousness isn't very good, it's bad. Better keep your hands off it. Here, have some happy Nazis since this is a gif thread now.

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Anonymous Tue May 27 19:26:28 2014 No.4941205

>>4941194
I agree 100%. Though I wasn't asking for validation; I was just wondering how people related to something I wrote without conscious design--something that manifested naturally, emotionally, to which I simply tried to assigned language. It's unremarkable because there was no genuine inspiration; it was somewhat forced--just an experiment. But thanks to everyone except the guy alluding to butts.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:26:51 2014 No.4941207 File: 62 KB, 362x332, 1355990952511.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >mon visage quand people think this is stream of consciousness writing

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:29:18 2014 No.4941214 >>4941201 I would prefer you just be honest. It's kind of the point of coming to this hell hole.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:31:17 2014 No.4941217 File: 43 KB, 480x480, 1392135283853.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>4941205 >It was supposed to suck, duh

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Anonymous Tue May 27 19:37:44 2014 No.4941229

>>4941205
stream-of-consciousness doesn't mean without conscious design, you actually have to think harder for it than for normal writing.

Faulkner for example wasn't just crapping out random words (although maybe he was, dude was a genius, a very undisciplined and even unrefined genius, but a genius), he was paying very very special attention to thought processes. There was a study on the frequency of certain words in The Sound and the Fury, and in Quentin's section there was an abundance of words relating to thought, thinking, think, etc... and in Jason's section, a lot of words related to judges, judging, judgment.

And about that thinking part, Faulkner also in Absalom, Absalom! overuses the word "thinking" purposely in relation to Quentin/or in his stream-of-consciousness interludes with Quentin.

And from my personal experience, the highly highly disordered thought process of Vardaman in As I Lay Dying after he gets depressed is amazingly realistic.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 19:50:38 2014 No.4941267 >>4941229 It was more free association than stream of consciousness. The terminology that surrounds the piece is not what concerns me though.

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Anonymous Tue May 27 20:01:30 2014 No.4941308

>>4941229
And ya, stream of consciousness is without conscious design--true stream of consciousness. If an author is, however, playing a character, inhabitating the mind of another, and designs a torrent that is to appear as stream of consciousness, then it's simply for show, for style, and for the meaning that is implied by such a display, but it is not a true 1st person stream that actually reveals cognitive artifacts of which perhaps the author was even unaware.

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Anonymous Tue May 27 20:02:56 2014 No.4941314

>>4941267
Faulkner wrote As I Lay Daying in 6 weeks without changing a word of it. I imagine a lot of that was free association too.

But still, you have a good vocabulary and you're not entirely incompetent. Keep writing and reading. If you want a critique, it's that you have too many commas and too many short fragments that don't fit. Fragments should be used mainly for one thing, which is to create a sense of disorder/overbearing impressions too fast to be put into subject/predicate form. It doesn't work here where it's a calm and you even say SIMPLE setting. The artist can manipulate a calm and simple setting by using all the facts of the setting (shade, sunset, trees, hill, birds) but using unconventional verbs/adjectives and fragmentary sentences.

But instead, you have the conjunction of green and simple with a sun that's on fire, and with things like ignorance, fate, and the suddenly crass usage of "drink and fuck".

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Anonymous Tue May 27 20:03:34 2014 No.4941317

>>4941229
>Wow he actually increased the frequency of some words in specific parts, genius!
This is just another proof most /lit/fags are dumb. If you had read a true genius, like for example Hernst, that had a true passion for prose in pentocal-style...

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Anonymous Tue May 27 20:06:34 2014 No.4941326

>>4941308
I doubt that Faulkner was aware of the thinking/judging parts in Quentin and in Jason either. You don't have to think deeply WHILE you're writing (this leads to stilted writing) but in preparation to the writing. Faulkner clearly understood the mindsets of both Quentin and Jason (and, miraculously, the plethora of narrators in AILD).

Faulkner wrote all his books fast for money. But with all his themes like nihilism vs. morality, thinking vs. acting, horizontality vs. verticality that come out in a lot of his books, you could tell he thought about a lot of these, and it showed when he wrote.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 20:07:47 2014 No.4941327 >>4941314 I love how naturally condescending you are. I'm not entirely incompetent? Lol. You assume to much of yourself and too much of me.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 20:09:23 2014 No.4941329 >>4941317 Who the fuck is Herst and what the fuck does pentocal mean?

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 20:12:41 2014 No.4941339 >>4941329 Pentocal is to books what a fugue is to music.

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Anonymous Tue May 27 20:12:41 2014 No.4941340

>>4941327
I'm judging the writing. Parts of it are incompetent (like mixed tones that don't work + incomprehensible sentences), parts of it are better than the other schlock people on /lit/ call stream-of-consciousness. By judging the writing, I am judging your skill as a writer -- you are not an entirely incompetent writer. Unless you're secretly Thomas fucking Pynchon or something, but I'm just judging your ability as a writer from this piece of writing.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 20:13:59 2014 No.4941342 >>4941340 Good. Glad you're aware of what's going on here.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 20:15:28 2014 No.4941345 >>4941342 What is going on here?

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 20:18:50 2014 No.4941352 >>4941345 Limited perception by way of limited substance in a limited context in conjunction with a bit of ego.

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 20:20:18 2014 No.4941357 >>4941352 Wanna have a fucking internet fight m8?

>>	Anonymous Tue May 27 20:21:32 2014 No.4941360 >>4941357 No, because you wouldn't be able to hang. And what a waste of time it would be.