Thursday, March 26, 2009
She paints with words
The thing I noticed most about Stein's writing style is that is feels messy. While I'm reading, I get the feeling that her writing is very informal, almost like a diary. Her jumping from place to place reminds me of Poe's NAGP in that it could stand for more organization and could be more thought out. Her dialogue has a chatty air to it and sometimes I get the feeling that we are simply one of her friends she is having a conversation with. One of the things I was thinking about in class tuesday during our discussion was that Stein writes much like a painter paints. Her writing is not just simply black and white, but full of color. I've painted before, and the instances where she begins describing someone or some event and then stops and says she'll come back to it later remind me of painting. Sometimes you reach a certain point in your painting where you stop and paint a bit of something else and then come back to that spot. Painting is not a uniform process and there is no correct format or guidelines to follow. Sometimes we think of writing as having this process that you need to follow, and to me Stein has broken free of this process and created something different.
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I have to agree with Adam in that Gertrude Stein paints with her words. The way she writes is so unconventional and different than anything I have ever read or learned. In some ways it becomes hard to follow, but most of the time it is quite enjoyable. It is amusing to me how she starts talking about one subject, gets distracted, and later gets back to the first subject. Reading Stein’s writing is much like reading a diary. For me, it makes the read so much more real. I feel like I can relate to the book much better and get a sense that I am in the moment with Stein and Alice.
ReplyDeleteI can also relate to what Adam said about painting. Throughout my life, I have been fond of art and have done my share of paintings. In the way that Stein skips around when writing, I find the most productive way of painting for me is to skip around. This unusual take on writing has left an impact on me and taught me that writing does not always have to be a certain way.
I agree with you about Stein’s writing process being similar to that of painting. It makes sense that she writes in this style; she seems to share the same creative process as the people whom surround her. I also think that Stein uses this writing style (where she mentions an event, moves forward, but then circles back to it) in order to say something about the routine and predictability of life. She briefly mentions something about being foolish when people repeatedly make the same mistakes, but she organically inserts several examples of this from people in her own life. For instance, one character always drops her keys when going up to her apartment and never seems to learn her lesson after she must climb back down to retrieve them. Also, Picasso and Fernande have a on-again/off-again pattern that expresses a sense that people will often retreat to the familar, despite declarations to change. I think that Stein’s writing style is both an effective way to describe the instances of this circuity in life as well as a means of mirroring such a pattern.
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