Just ask William Faulkner, who created this mind-boggling post-colon description in The Sound and the Fury:
"...that blending of childlike and ready incompetence and paradoxical reliability that tends and protects them it loves out of all reason and robs them steadily and evades responsibility and obligtations by means too barefaced to be called subterfuge even and is taken in theft or evasion with only that frank and spontaneous admiration for the victor which a gentleman feels for anyone who beats him in a fair contest, and withal a fond and unflagging tolerance for whitefolks' vagaries like that of a grandparent for unpredictable and troublesome children, which I had forgotten."
Why is it that nearly everything we consider a masterwork typically rages against those things our high school English teachers tell us about the necessary conventions of writing? And why is it that Faulkner's anarchic structure and novel as a whole reads as much like a "fuck you" to critics of traditional literature as it does a piece of classic story-telling? Read the above sentence in one breath if you dare, but don't blame me when you come to on the floor.
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1 comment:
Ah, so much like Dickens. My philosophy (if you care)...when writing an expository piece, write like a professional because you may have to write professionally one day. When writing creatively, let all conventions fly IF the lack of them do not interfere with the intended meaning.
Mom
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