My favorite part about reading Gertrude Stein is experiencing her flow of words. The way she writes draws me in as if the whole book were poetry about all-too-common geniuses and an overabundance of nascent art. Her writing surprises me and is soothing like a beautiful song.
However, like a beautiful song, I get so caught up in the words and their construction that I have a hard time keeping track of the story. I think perhaps Gertrude may have, too. When she lists off all these people she knows, I feel like they are woven in and out of her life fluidly. While Henry Adams was dedicated to concrete events and conventional grammar, Stein follows a meandering path with Toklas. At first I thought it was just the style of Toklas that Stein was imitating but perhaps there is a lot of Stein’s voice here also. Like many other posters, I am not sure where Toklas ends and where Stein begins. Also, I feel like the relationships she has with the artists is as recursive as one of her poems – the artists flow in and out of her life without making a significant impact, or am I missing something> All in all, living in Stein’s (or Toklas’s) worldwould be much more compelling if she organized it more linearly, but to linearize Stein’s work would be to take away the beauty of the meandering.
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I definitely fall into the same camp-- In Stein's writing, it really feels like her work is based on her unconventional grammar and the story is just a fringe benefit (if you consider it a benefit, I guess). Usually I'm not too fond of "meandering" in writing, but in this case I think it captures an essence than a simple plot line couldn't handle. By describing the menagerie of influences that stepped into and out of her life, Stein is making a really interesting comment on how one can be changed by a single person or experience; from Toklas' perspective, I think the same can be said. It's almost like she's absorbing all these fascinating people and experiences through Stein.
ReplyDeleteThis book, to me at least, is the classic journey vs. destination conundrum, and the way I read it, Stein is somehow stradling both premises. It's a journey in that she's describing the experiences she has throughout her life as important in themselves, and a destination in that she's showing us who and what she's become as a result.