It's Friday and I can write about whatever the heck I want to! So today the topic will be, much to all of your guys' enjoyment, I'm sure (maybe Lauren's :) )... LITERATURE!

I'm reading William Faulkner's Sound and the Fury right now and it is sooooooooooooooo interesting! It's so hard to read and just fascinating! I'm only two tales into it and I'm going crazy because I want to find out what happens to Caddy and I can't find out till next week! Well, I could read it, but I don't meet with my professor to talk about it until Friday and I kind of want it to be fresher in my mind than if I read it, for instance, tomorrow. :) Or today... Seriously, it's SO interesting!

The book is about a family of three brothers and a sister. There are four tales, I call them. Each is written about the family from a different brother's point of view, and the last tale is written by a third-person narrator. The first brother has a host of developmental disabilities. The second brother is mentally unstable. The third brother is, my professor tells me, a liar. I've read the first two tales and, oh my goodness, were they difficult to read through! My one task in reading this is to try and make sense of what the heck is going on, and what a challenge! But I am absolutely loving it. I'm such a nerd. :D

The second tale of the book is written in stream of consciousness. I don't suppose everyone knows what that means... I'll try to explain clearly. There are very few people who think one thought at a time (especially of the female persuasion!). Most people think several thoughts at once. Right now, I am thinking of what I am typing, of the fact that I need to be back in my apartment in the next 30 minutes, of my friend Becca who I got to talk to today for the first time in ages, of the temperature in the room, of whether or not I should watch "Howard's End" today, and a lot of other things. And these thoughts necessarily aren't complete thoughts. They go more like, Fingers typing boy coming in heels clicking like my aunt's too warm in sweatshirt weather is nice so nice to be relaxed need to watch movie Hill name Howard's End Howard Zen paper flipping fingers typing Faulkner stream of consciousness... The stream of consciousness refers to how your thoughts just come in a continuous stream, but are not necessarily all connected to each other. And that's how he writes the second tale of Sound and the Fury. The first tale is similar, sort of, but it's the brother with the developmental problems, so his thinking is even more disconnected. He's like a recorder. He records what he hears and sees but there is no other attachment to it than that. In addition, his disabilities don't allow him to have a sense of chronology--that things happen in a sequence of time. So he'll be talking about completely different events at completely different times without any indication of when the events are happening in his head. So the things he records people saying have no context at all. It's SO INTERESTING!

Here's an excerpt from the second tale, the stream of consciousness one:

"Jason I must go away you keep the others I'll take Jason and go where nobody knows us so he'll have a chance to grow up and forget all this the others dont love me they have never loved anything with that streak of Compson selfishness and false pride Jason was the only one my heart went out to without dread

she will forget him then all the talk will die away found not death at the salt licks

maybe I could find a husband for her not death at the salt licks

The car came up and stopped. The bells were still ringing the half hour. I got on and it went on again, blotting the half hour. No: the three quarters. Then it would be ten minutes anyway. To leave Harvard your mother's dream for sold Benjy's pasture for"

Eek! And I have to get back to my apartment.

See? How I just switched between thoughts? That's what stream of consciousness is.

But anyway... Ponder Faulkner for the day; that is your assignment. :) I may be able to come back later and finish typing out my thoughts.

Isn't it interesting that we can have thoughts and come back to them?

-Stephanie

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