Stream of consciousness

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a literary technique which seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her sensory reactions to external occurrences. Stream-of-consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement. Its introduction in the literary context, transferred from psychology, is attributed to May Sinclair.

Style classification

Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative (and at times dissociative) leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow, tracing a character's fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings. Stream of consciousness and interior monologue are distinguished from dramatic monologue, where the speaker is addressing an audience or a third person, and is used chiefly in poetry or drama. In stream of consciousness, the speaker's thought processes are more often depicted as overheard in the mind (or addressed to oneself) and is primarily a fictional device. The term was first introduced to the field of literary studies from that of psychology by philosopher and psychologist William James, brother of the influential writer Henry James.

Several notable works employing stream of consciousness are:

• Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song.
• Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage (1915-28)
• James Joyce's Ulysses (in particular Molly Bloom's Soliloquy), as well as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves
• William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying
• Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea's Illuminatus!
• William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness
• Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren
• Hubert Selby Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream
• Jerzy Andrzejewski's Gates to Paradise
• A.B. Yehoshua's A Late Divorce
• Will Christopher Baer's Phineas Poe Trilogy (Seen in all of Kiss Me, Judas and Hell's Half Acre and parts of Penny Dreadful)
• Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy
• T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
• Oğuz Atay's Tutunamayanlar (The Disconnected)
• Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
• Suzan-Lori Parks' Getting Mother's Body
• J.D Salinger Seymour: An Introduction

Multi-media

The technique is not specifically confined to literary sources, and has been used loosely to describe either separately or in combination with other media. For instance, Travis Trent sings unwritten stream of consciousness lyrics on five of the six songs on the album Stories: His, Mine, Others.

Cinema and sketch comedy

• The British comedy troupe Monty Python used the technique in their sketches. The technique capitalises on the nonsensical absurdist humour for which Python is famous. The technique also features in the animated shorts created by Terry Gilliam for the show, which, similarly, use stream of consciousness as means to showcase absurdist humour. An example of this within their work is the famous opening scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which conversation progresses from a discussion about the master of the castle to African swallows, all due to the characters who speak their thoughts, nonsensical though they may be. Another example is the Bloody Weather sketch.

• Terrence Malick is notable for using a stream of consciousness voice over for one or several of his characters in all of his four films to date. His characters usually express thoughts of existentialism and are deeply rooted in philosophical matters.

• The movie The Weather Man with Nicolas Cage presents a scene where the main character narrates his line of thought when going off to buy tartar sauce. The use of stream of consciousness in this scene has the purpose of explaining why the character forgot to buy the tartar sauce.

• The movie Adaptation., written by Charlie Kaufman, starts with an internal monologue from the main character, who is also called Charlie Kaufman. The monologue shows he suffers from a writer's block, and is by association filled with random thoughts of failure. [1]

Television

• The NBC sitcom Scrubs is presented with the protagonist’s thoughts heard by the viewer as a stream-of-consciousness voiceover playing the role of narration; it often goes off on seemingly random tangents—much as any person’s thoughts tend to wander if not focused on something specific. The viewer also frequently sees the protagonist’s imagination at work.
• The Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show is entirely filmed in a Point of View shot camera mode and derives much of it's humour from the characters' internal monologues, particularly during faux pas moments.
• Stand-up comedians Dennis Miller and Richard Lewis perform fast-paced monologues containing pop culture references which are often described as stream-of-consciousness.
• TV show Family Guy often uses the technique. For example, the protagonist once stated "And it'll be special! But not special like the boy down the street. More like Special K. And for that matter, whatever happened to regular "K"? Or Kay Ballard? You know, if you had a cold and said "ballard" it would sound like "Mallard."

World Wide Web

One example of a website that uses the technique is Cognitec/3rd Force, which is the progressive work of an anonymous author known only as "HC." The site began in the mid 1990s as a series of bizarre and sardonic original passages which was "spoofed" to look like prominent web portals of the early Dot com boom. For example, the now defunct "Pathfinder" site (now simply the Time Inc. portal [2]) was parodied as "Crapfinder," the "New York Times" became the "New Times York."

Because of the site's extensive use of the literary method, transitory and seemingly-unrelated themes became connected through hyperlinks. These seemed to further reflect the free-flowing thought process of the strangely prolific author. It was later revealed that much of the content consisted of excerpts from the metafictional novel MFU (ISBN 188640402X) [3]. The novel's desultory narrative structure and breadth of material was sufficient for creating years worth of related material in the form of multiple parodies, faux news reports, and essays, as well as providing prospective readers of the novel an opportunity to "sample" the book. Most of the novel was subsequently released as either readable or searchable on-line [4].

Many online forums have sections for so-called "Off-Topic" discussions. Threads in these forums tend to loosely follow stream-of-consciousness simply by virtue of the fact that multiple people express their own thought processes without hesitation of retribution. This perspective is, of course, controversial since traditional stream-of-consciousness is the result of one person's writing alone.

A relatively new website, http://chainofthoughts.com conforms to the stream of consciousness style of writing using tag clouds to shift readers through various seemingly unrelated pages. Following the Virginia Tech massacre the website was used as a place of semi-anonymous mourning and was highlighted on the BBC website.

Music

• At least two of the songs on Van Morrison's acclaimed album "Astral Weeks" were said to be stream of consciousness by the composer. "'Madame George' just came right out. The song is just a stream of consciousness thing, as is 'Cyprus Avenue'. Both these songs just came right out. I didn't even think about what I was writing."

• R.E.M.'s song "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" features rapid-fire lyrics that are described as stream of consciousness.

• Bob Dylan's songs "Like a Rolling Stone", "Desolation Row" & "Subterranean Homesick Blues", the latter of which was said by R.E.M. to have influenced their song above.

• Bruce Springsteen's first two albums, "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J." and "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" feature the stream of consciousness technique in a majority of the lyrics, such as Springsteen's first single, 'Blinded By The Light'.

Thom Yorke of Radiohead frequently writes songs in this style, especially "A Wolf at the Door" from Hail to the Theif.

Rap has many examples, such as:

• Rapper Eminem has also used the technique in his song Rain Man, parodying the character in the film Rainman on his album, Encore.

• anticon. rapper Doseone (born Adam Drucker) is known for his nasal, high-speed polyrhythmic rapping style and abstract lyrics.

• Canadian rapper Buck 65 has also been known to employ the technique, e.g. "sexy girl, air freshener, snacks in the pin wheel".

• Hip hop artist Ghostface Killah is well known for his stream of consciousness rapping, a style largely his own that utilizes complicated and constantly shifting subject matter to illustrate his mindset and viewpoint.

• Kool Keith is known for his complicated and Stream Of Consciousness rap flow.

Trivia

• The technique has been parodied, for example by David Lodge in the final chapter of The British Museum Is Falling Down.

References

• Yorke, Ritchie (1975). Into The Music, London:Charisma Books , ISBN 0-85947-013-X