Nobody told me this had a Reddit-type narrator
>>25275593that's every gogol's work
>>25275593it doesn't have a reddit-type narrator, you have an internet-type brain. but it's not too late - have faith in the human imagination! we will not let history rot into memes.
>>25275703This is my first book by him. I didn't expect it to be so modern with the stream of consciousness thing and the modern meta narration.>>25275707You know what I mean, don't play dumb.
>>25276854>You know what I meanI don't. Please quantify reddit-type writing.
>>25276863Not playing this game.
>>25276854>stream of consciousness>modern meta narrationYou have no clue what you are talking about.
>>25276863The narration talks directly to the reader in quirky quips, breaking the 5th wall, instead of focusing on the narrative.This is "Reddit", all nods to a meta narrative are "Reddit". Now go back
>>25276881There was no 4th wall in those days (at least not outside theater), narrator was accepted as the person telling you the story, mimicking the performance of a story teller, as in a person who sat in front of an audience and told stories. It was very common in Gogol's day and long before for the narrator to address the reader and part of this is because much of fiction in those days was written to be read to an audience as much as it was written to be read alone. What you consider to be stream of conscious is just mimicking the style of a story teller and most writers in those days defined their writing style off of how they would tell stories; the literary convention of a narrator was just being developed. Shortly after Gogol, fiction started to exploit the written word and be written to be read alone, the change was starting in his day but was not really there, it wasn't until the late 19th that this change really happened and literature moved passed its performative roots. The idea of the 4th wall outside of theater did not come about until Gide wrote Marshlands. Stream of consciousness was a more gradual evolution, writers slowly increased inner monologue until in the early 20th century writers started building novels around it. All you are really saying is that you are a poorly read chronically online retard. I would tell you to go back but /lit/ seems to be the source of poorly read chronically online retards these days, you are right where you should be.
>>25276927NTA but as a new reader I'm interested in learning more about these kinds of literary conventions. I've just recently come across the term "free indirect discourse" from having read P&P, and it's honestly hard to believe that something so widespread and taken for granted now was apparently a revolutionary invention.
>>25276927I might have misused the term stream of consciousness but what is it called when a character in a story pours out his unpolished emotions and thoughts through his heart then after the internal melodrama you get engagement again.But yes it's still quirky and reddit, in the way he engages with the audience. Stop playing stupid.
>>25276940>playing stupidUnlike you who are absolutely not playing at stupidity.
>>25276940>But yes it's still quirky and reddit, in the way he engages with the audience.It's really not.
>>25276881You should go back (to anime and video games). They seem more your speed.
>>25276942>>25276954>>25276965Hit a nerve? Gogol is Reddit.
>>25276939Free indirect speech wasn't really revolutionary, it was a part of the same revolution as metafiction (which is not the same as breaking the 4th wall) and stream of consciousness and all that stuff. This all comes from the move from the performative roots of literature and the development of the idea of a narrator who is not a story teller or the writer but a distinct entity removed from everything else. This distinction can seem like hair splitting but it is anything but and once you really understand this distinction a great deal about literature will suddenly make sense. The development of the idea of a narrator is what the revolution was all about, the rest is just fallout. Free indirect speech is a weird one, it has been sort of a part of literature for long before we called it free indirect speech (or free indirect discourse) and goes back to the old story tellers using a character's voice for something other than things said by that character. But that isn't really free indirect speech, that is just performance and being a good performer. Free indirect speech starts developing with works like Portrait of the Artist but this is hardly revolutionary, this is just using it as part of tone and applying tone towards theme; it is mostly just tone and still in the performative tradition. We don't really see it developing as its own thing until GR where it is used for tone and rhythm and directly convey vital information for interpretation and blurring the line between narrative and stream of consciousness (reality and unreality). But even that is simplistic compared how the third author of the meme trilogy used it, now we need to understand the narrator himself and we do that partly through his evolving use of free indirect speech and this is very directly related to theme and interpretation and structure and pretty much every fucking aspect of the novel. The revolution is still going on and it is the convention of a narrator, and really understanding all of this starts with understanding the distinction between narrator storyteller and narrator convention, the convention is what makes this all possible. The meme trilogy is a meme for a reason and yes I should have used Ulysses and not Portrait but Portrait is more direct in this case. Ulysses is pretty much the same in this regard, just uses multiple narrative techniques towards the same ends instead of just the free indirect speech. >>25276940You misused both stream of consciousness and meta, and demonstrated having no clue what either are. >>25276987>its seething Gaddis anonHello.
>>25276881>all nods to a meta narrative are "Reddit"
midwits love to use terms like "stream of consciousness" when they clearly have no fucking idea what it is or means, kek
>>25276996Free indirect speech did not start with Portrait. It's true that free indirect speech has its roots in much earlier narrative techniques, but the term refers chiefly to the novel and its development. The quintessential examples of free indirect speech come from Austen and Flaubert, where there is a universal narrator who adopts the tone and speech of certain characters without use of quotation. Earlier novels had a firm separation between narrator and character (think Don Quixote) or were epistolary (think Clarissa).What Joyce is doing in Portrait is stream of consciousness, where instead of adopting the tone of the character's speech, the narrator is adopting the thoughts of the character. In Ulysses this becomes even more important as Joyce rejects the idea of a "universal narrator" that is central to the free indirect discourse of Austen. James Wood is a bit of a retard but his book "How Fiction Works" is pretty good on these points.
>>25277616So what is it
I read the quantum thief and it has some tech named after gogol. Great book, havent read any gogol.
>>25277734Portrait is not at all stream of consciousness. Narrator almost exclusively uses Stephen's language, not his thoughts and when it goes to his thoughts it is fairly standard reporting of inner monologue. Don't talk about books you have not read. I explicitly stated that free indirect speech has always been a part of literature, my post was about the development of the convention of narrator and literature moving beyond its performative roots which allowed things like the development of free indirect speech being used for more than part of the narrative style as it was in earlier works; the development of it as a literary device from the narrative device of writers like Austen and Flaubert. For the past century these terms have referred to the literary devices and not the narrative devices they developed from unless stated or pedantic. We either accept this distinction or the terms become meaningless and Gogol becomes meta.
>>25277736NTA but stream of consciousness is more than 'following the thoughts of the narrator', its a specific technique where the transition of one thought into another is mimicked in prose through sentences that continuously flow from one thought into another, often following a subconscious logic. Here is an example by Faulkner i quite like, by a character about to kill himself that has incestuous fantasies about his sister:>It was propped against the collar box and I lay listening to it. Hearing it, that is, I don't suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don't have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn't hear. Like Father said down the long and lonely light-rays you might see Jesus walking, like. And the good Saint Francis that said Little Sister Death, that never had a sister. haven't read dead souls so cant comment on whether the prose is stream of consciousness or not but i dont think its generally considered to have stream of consciousness.
Dead Souls absolutely has stream of consciousness ejaculations from the protag.
>>25277736nta but been thinking about this and it is a difficult thing to define in a generic sense that covers a century worth of development and refinement but if I had to I think I would say it is literature's subjective mode. What stream of consciousness tells the reader is that there is no objectivity or agenda, it is a purely subjective view on the events.
ITT:>The redditor is immunized against all dangers. One may call him a pleb, a dilettante, a fedora, it all runs off him like water off a raincoat. But if you call him a redditor, watch how hurt he is, how he shrinks back - "I've been found out"
>>25278100Ulysses engages in far more stream of consciousness than Portrait, but that doesn't mean that Joyce doesn't use stream of consciousness in Portrait. The opening of the novel sounds nothing like how a child speaks because Joyce is trying to get into the fragmentary way a child processes sensory input and songs. Portrait isn't close to the best example of stream of consciousness in Modernism or even in Joyce, but when you say something like "Free indirect speech starts developing with works like Portrait of the Artist" you are off by a century. Portrait does involve more free indirect speech than stream of consciousness, but mentioning it as an example of the development of free indirect speech is ridiculous. I've read Portrait, so maybe you should read Austen (who is more essential and better than the "trilogy").
>>25278239lol. Just admit he said nothing wrong.
>>25276881Gogol is funny. If you categorize his humor as a quirky quip and feel the need to dismiss it because of its perceived association with reddit, that's fine I guess, but it's not a substantive criticism. Do you have a reason for disliking it other than it somehow reminds you of reddit?
>>25278343Being reminiscent of reddit is absolutely a substantive criticism and a reason for disliking something. Funnily enough your post reeks of reddit
