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thePeorian.com
Literarea
WRITING FROM THE
TOPS OF THEIR MINDS
The Stream-of-Consciousness Poetics
of Joyce, Faulkner and Kerouac
Kevin Kizer
During my senior year of high school many eons ago, I was taking a college-level composition course in which a
rather optimistic, bookish and bearded educator attempted (and succeeded in many cases) to open our minds to litera-
ture and the different styles and approaches to writing.
At some point during the semester, while we were reading James Joyce, he introduced us to the concept of sponta-
neous prose, aka stream of consciousness writing. After some rather intensive reading and study over a week or so,
he gave us each a piece of paper and a challenge: spend 15 minutes composing spontaneously, jotting down whatever
came into our minds, not worrying about grammar or syntax or punctuation, in order to produce our own very
short spontaneous prose story.
At the end of those 15 minutes – and in the intervening moments thereafter – the disappointment was so thick
it almost left a coating on the inside of your mouth. If he had a crest, I’m sure we would have witnessed it falling.
Clearly, none of us was on our way to becoming the next great experimenter in stream of consciousness literature.
Now looking back on those days and weeks we studied my primary thought is: well, what did you expect? For
some, the concept of stream of consciousness writing is very simple because there’s “no thought” going into what
you are writing. You are, after all, just mapping what’s going on in the mind of yourself (or a particular character).
What could be easier than that? Actually, stream-of-consciousness writing is arguably the most difficult form of
writing of all.
C
oined by psychologist
William James
1
,
stream
of consciousness lives
in both the literary and psycho-
logical worlds. In psychology,
it’s that unending flow of ideas,
thoughts, and feelings that form
the content of an individual’s
consciousness. In literature, it’s
the manner of channeling and
presenting that flow of ideas,
thoughts, and feelings usually in
long passages oftentimes without
punctuation. By “consciousness”
we mean the entire area of the
mind’s attention – from the ratio-
nal and communicative to those
areas and levels that are less fully
formed, the places at the edge of
the attention.
Novels that use the stream-
of-consciousness
2
technique
typically depict the conscious-
ness of a character, which filters
the material of the novel. Robert
Humphrey
3
called it one of the
more “delusive terms” used in
literature because even though
it sounds concrete enough, it’s
used in a wide variety of ways
to define any number of styles
of writing. While the concept of
s/o/c may be elusive, the concept
of consciousness has been well
defined and divided into two lev-
els: speech and prespeech. Speech
is rational, organized and con-
trolled; prespeech is completely
uncensored, unrestrained by
control and not logically ordered.
In order to communicate this
prespeech level, authors have in-
vented new narrative techniques
or manipulated old ones. And
that’s where many of the writers
who successfully utilized s/o/c
–
Joyce, Faulkner and Kerouac –
found their inspiration.
Because of this prespeech level
of communication, s/o/c writing
gives the impression that one
is eavesdropping on the con-
sciousness the character’s mind
is experiencing, which can be
interrupted by phones ringing,
dogs barking, and text messages
vibrating – in other words, things
that otherwise wouldn’t be in-
cluded in a rational, speech-level
story remain in a prespeech, s/o/c
story because that’s the whole
point of the s/o/c story. You are
gaining a direct, unvarnished,
intimate look into the conscious
(
and subconscious in some cases)
mind of the writer and/or charac-
ter. Here is a quick look at three
of the best known s/o/c writers
4
:
