Veggies for the Mind

I’ve been thinking a lot about Faulkner’s fondness for playing around with different points of view. What I think of it is this: I like it. Sure, it wasn’t really easy getting through The Sound and the Fury, but I feel, now that I have finished reading the blasted thing, that I am richer for the experience. Take that, whiny high school students…reading is actually a good thing for you, like veggies for your mind. So here is what I’ve been thinking about with regards to Faulkner’s way of telling the same story several times: I like it. My minor is Psychology, so I like to understand, even empathize, with people, fictional or no. I think that we better understand each other if we can see for ourselves the thought patterns behind a person’s, or in the context of this class, a character’s actions. This is why I am not fond of writing or reading works that are written in the third person, whether limited or omniscient. There’s always that sort of Fourth Wall between the reader and the characters. So maybe you get the story in a relatively quick and efficient way, and maybe you get some expositional information along the way, but there’s not a lot on paper to bring you into the story completely. At least that’s how I feel. This is not to say that all works should be written in a Faulknerian style (I don’t know if that’s a real thingor something I just made up, but I like it), because if everyone wrote like Big Willie (as I’m calling him in my head right now), I think all reading would die out really quickly, save for 140 character tweets or what have you. I just think that this is a form of storytelling that should not fade out of existence. I don’t think it will, but I just want to make sure that my opinion on the subject is noted by anyone and everyone who reads this. So…..on that note, I will bid you good day so that I can go start on a new book by Big Willie Faulkner…It’s As I Lay Dying…pray for me.