Cognitive Dissidents discussion

I've recently decided to try to read the 925pp edition of Gertrude Stein's "The Making of Americans". In Steven Meyers' introduction to it I found this quote from Stein:

"Disillusionment in living is the finding out nobody agrees with you not those that are and were fighting with you. Disillusionment in living is the finding out nobody agrees with you not those that are fighting for you. Complete disillusionment is when you realize that no one can for they can't change. The amount they agree is important to you until the amount they do not agree with you is completely realized by you. Then you say you will write for yourself and strangers, you will be for yourself and strangers and this then makes an old man or an old woman of you."

Yep.

Ok, I'm posting this in multiple places - in none of wch is it likely to be read - b/c I'm hoping SOMEONE will read it SOMEWHERE (& here it's broken into multiple parts):

As I was Saying, "The Making of Americans", y'know?
- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

review of the Dalkey Archive's 925+pp edition of Gertrude Stein's
"The Making of Americans"
- read from March 14, 2009 to May 22, 2009 (70 days)

I finished it. The entire thing. As I was saying, it is finished. As I was saying I read all of Gertrude Stein's truly mind-bogglingly tediously self-indulgent & largely contentless "The Making of Americans". As I was saying, all 925 pages of it + the 29 pages of the Foreword & the Introduction. I AM THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD TO EVER DO THIS. I don't believe the author of the Foreword, William H. Gass, has read all of it. As I was saying, I don't believe the author of the Introduction, Steven Meyer, has done this thing. As I was saying, I don't think the editor(s) of the Dalkey Archive have done this thing. As I was saying, I don't believe it. Maybe Alice B. Toklas did it, maybe. It is claimed that Alice B. Toklas typed all this for Stein.

Wch isn't to say that Gass's Foreword isn't excellent, wch isn't to say that Meyer's Introduction isn't even more excellent. As I was saying, both are excellent. Nonetheless, Meyer claims that "the author-narrator who, despite being unnamed, is perhaps Stein's most significant creation" [p xxvi:]. Furthermore, "The narrator of "The Making of Americans" is as much a creation of Stein's as is Melanctha" & "Readers are likely to forget this, however, and to attribute "characteristics" belonging to Stein to the narrator" [p xxvii:]. As I was saying, Meyer's claim is that a narrator exists who isn't Stein. While I'm sure Meyer has great scholarly knowledge to back this up I'm not convinced. To me, Stein is clearly the narrator & no effort is made whatsoever to create any presence contrary to this.

Stein's writing reminds me of 3 main things:

1. A friend I had who began almost every conversation w/ "You're not mad at me are you?". He had a problem. His problem was that he had about 10 phrases that he repeated. Over & over. As I was saying, he repeated them. Over & over. He repeated his sentences over & over. One wasn't mad at him the 1st time he sd "You're not mad at me are you?". One was probably not made at him the 2nd & 3rd times that he sd "You're not mad at me are you?". But as he repeated it over & over one got increasingly mad. "I told you that I wasn't fucking mad at you but now I'm getting pretty fucking sick of you asking me "You're not mad at me are you?" so will you please shut the fuck up?!" "You're not mad at me are you?"

2. Speech Crutches

3. Charles Berlitz's bk "The Bermuda Triangle". Why? B/c in this latter Berlitz has a few chapters worth of material wch he somehow manages to stretch into an entire bk by just rephrasing the same old sensationalist (but somehow simultaneously tepid) crap over & over. Just like Stein. "The Making of Americans" is 925pp. If one were to synopsize its content it wd surely be less than 100pp, maybe less than 50.

SO, let's give Stein the benefit of the doubt, let's say that the bk's content is NOT in its 'content' but in the telling of its content. What did I get from this telling? That Stein was a relentlessly arrogant person - assured that her blithering was somehow worth it. I don't agree. The Dalkey Archive shd be ashamed of killing off however many trees were sacrificed for the printing of this. As I was saying.

P 198: "Repeating then is always coming out of every one, almost always in the repeating in every one and coming out of them there is a little changing. All the repeating in each one makes a history of each one always coming out of them. There is always repeating in every one but such repeating has almost always in it a little changing, the whole repeating then that is always coming the whole repeating that comes out of them every one who has living in them and coming out from each one is a whole history of each one."

That cd be called the claim that justifies the whole 'structure' of the bk. Although I've only presented one small paragraph here - DON'T GET THE IMPRESSION THAT SHE EXACTLY MOVES ON FROM THIS & 'DEVELOPS' IT. I claim that she doesn't. She makes a few shallow statements & then permutes them. They never become less shallow. Perhaps the repetitions of a person can be used to define what's most common in that person. Big deal. A person has routines & habits wch, somewhat, make who they are.. But, "coming out from each one is a whole history of each one"? Nah.. I don't think so. Everything is infinitely complicated, Stein makes it redundantly stupid. For 925 pages.

Now every time I'll quote Stein here & every time Gass does & every time Meyer does the quote is fairly short & out-of-context. It's interesting by virtue of its 'exoticness', its unusual wording in contrast to Gass' & Meyer's & my writing styles. But, for me, that 'exoticness' wore off quickly. Like almost immediately. Then it just became as tedious as my friend's "You're not mad at me are you?". What do I learn from it? That my friend had an abusive childhood that left him severely neurotic & paranoid? That Stein was wealthy & spoiled & egomaniacal & insensitive to others around her?

review of "The Making of Americans" continued: pt 2:

Gass claims, on p vii (the 1st page) of his Foreword, that "It should no longer be necessary to argue Gertrude Stein's importance or insist upon her artistry" & there's a time when I wd've whole-heartedly agree w/ him. But, NOW, after suffering thru this 925pp, I totally disagree. Stein, in a sense has CURED ME of my hitherto enthusiastic attachment to something that I'll call for the moment (but wdn't usually call) "Modernism". Most of my life I've eagerly sought out work that is the MOST original, the MOST innovative & those 2 qualities alone wd give them a high status for me. Stein is both. But she's both in the way any spoiled rich brat's whims can distinguish them w/o making them necessarily lovable in any way. She's like a despotic aristocrat endlessly proclaiming utter bullshit w/o fear of reprisal. She WILL be printed. Her support money WILL continue to roll in. She WILL NOT have to work to support herself. She WILL NOT have to really interface w/ others on any terms other than her own. SHE IS SPOILED. Stein is now canonized. Such is the implication of Gass's claim. It's precisely this canonization that deserves scrutiny & critical thinking.

Gass writes, quoting Stein: ""A man in his living has many things inside him, he has in him his important feeling of himself to himself inside him." The schoolteacher would be expected to delete the "in him," because it is redundant, however this "in him" will be followed by ten more, as well as two that are submerged slightly in "inside him," with the total number of "him"s reaching seventeen. One way or another the passage will beat away on im im im like a drum." - & this is, indeed, a highly perspicacious observation on Gass's part. & the stubbornness of Stein's deviating from the schoolteacher's lack of imagination is appreciated by me. BUT, don't expect me to like Stein's repetitions JUST B/C THEY REPEAT. Stein may be a word drummer but she's a monotonous one to me.

Gass continues his argument, on p x, that "Assonance, consonance, rhyme, rhythm, repetition, phrase placement, the movement of singulars to plurals, the elaborate colloquial vagueness of reference, the careful distinctions which underlie the meaning, are used together to give emotional weight to the journey". I find that excerpt from his critical reading more interesting than the entire bk otherwise AND I completely disagree w/ it. I DON'T FIND that Stein's writing style adds weight to anything - EXCEPT THAT the massiveness of the bk has weight just thru the sheer amt of pages. & that's that. It's a Magnum Opus NOT b/c there's really much to it but b/c it's so long.

I'm accusing Stein here of being tediously self-indulgent. That's a cheap shot. A cheap shot once taken at me by Village Voice critic Cynthia Carr in an article entitled "The Triumph of Neoism" originally published Dec 13, 1988. Carr wrote about a screening I presented: "Most of the rest were tediously self-indulgent. During tENTATIVELY's taped document of every book and record he's ever owned, several drunken members of the Rivington School took the mike and began to chant the usual: "Fuck you! Die Yuppies!" I went home."

Aside from the usual reporter's inaccuracies (the movie in question was shot on super-8 film, it wasn't of every book and record I've ever owned), I want to point out 2 main things: She characterizes the political sentiments of Lower East Side NYC gentrification resisters pejoratively as "the usual" - asi if that somehow disqualifies the reasons for the chanting; she "went home". When? After the event was over? Or before? I suspect the latter is implied. I, at least, read the entire damned bk before going to the trouble here of writing a substantial critique of it. Carr's style of writing tells the reader what to think, mine tells the reader what I'M thinking. There's a big difference. 'Reporters' write in a clipped, inaccurate style that's quick & meant to just give a 'feel' fro things w/o getting into nuance; I'll be writing here in a way that gives more detailed info. Is that self-indulgent? Perhaps, b/c few people are ever likely to read what I write. Perhaps no-one. I'm writing it for myself & a very hypothetical readership. As did Stein.

I call Stein tediously self-indulgent b/c I think that her repetitions are more for her love of repeating than they are for formally presenting things in a ways in wch the form HEIGHTENS the content. There's very little content, IMO, & the form just drags it on.. & on.. - just like in Berlitz's "Bermuda Triangle" or in the use of Speech Crutches or in the speech pathology of an Obsessive-Compulsive hebephrenic neurotic. As I was saying, if you have nothing of much substance to say, bludgeon people w/ it until they succumb to yr sheer tenacity - & it helps to be RICH.

On the back cover blurb is written: "Stein sets out to tell "a history of a family's progress," radically reworking the traditional family saga to encompass her vision of personality and psychological relationships." Stein may've set out to do such a thing & I agree that she "radically rework[s:]" but I deviate after that: Stein radically reworks by NOT telling much of a history at all, & by NOT getting into anything but the most shallow "personality and psycholog[y:]". To me, she's like a student (of William James to be exact) who takes the most superficial ideas & proceeds to go 'nowhere' w/ them.. for 925pp.

Again, on the back cover, a Washington Post review is quoted as saying that Stein's bk is "one of those mammoth. monstrous books that's worth carrying around for weeks." "Weeks"? Uh, I'm a prolific reader of often difficult works & it took me 70 days to read this. "Weeks", if it's taken to mean less than a mnth (mnths wd've been written otherwise) is wishful thinking on the part of someone that I seriously doubt every read the whole thing.

As I was reading this, I asked a friend of mine who's a creative writing professor if he'd ever read it. he replied something like this: "Oh, yeah, I read that in college." "The whole thing?!", I asked, disbelievingly. "No, just an excerpt." As it turned out he didn't remember how much they read - but certainly less than 100 pages - "just enough to get the idea." What idea?, I ask. Unlike w/ Joyce's work, eg, I don't think there IS much of an idea here.

I think most people, when they read Stein, read it in excerpt - as I previously had. They read things like the Penguin "Gertrude Stein - Writings and Lectures 1909-1945 edited by Patricia Meyerowitz" or "The Yale Gertrude Stein - Selections with an Introduction by Richard Kostelanetz". In other words, they read the EDITED Stein - where only the HIGHLIGHTS are presented - by people who went to the trouble to edit out the juicy bits that Stein never filtered her writing down to. It reminds me of the films of Andy Warhol: very few people actually WATCH THE ENTIRE THINGS - they just refer to them & use excerpts in documentaries. I ought to know, I'm the projectionist at the Andy Warhol Museum. The only time I ever saw the director of the museum show any interest in the films is when a critic of these films came to talk about them. & that's over an over 12 yr period.

review of "The Making of Americans" continued: pt 3:

On page 285 at the end of one of the sections, Stein concludes w/ this paragraph: "This is now a history of the Hersland family being and of the being of the people they came to know in their living. There has now been some description of the Hersland family and their living in the beginning and the middle living of Mr. David Hersland and his wife Fanny Hersland. There has been already a little description of them. There will be later more description of them. There is now to be a beginning of the description of the being and the living in each of the three Hersland children. There is now to be a beginning of of description of the being of Martha Hersland and a beginning of a description of the being in every one she ever came to know in her living. Later there will be a description of the being in all three of the Hersland children and a description of every one they ever came to know in their living. Now there is a beginning of description of the being of the oldest of the three children, now there is a commencing a beginning of a description of the being and the living in Martha Hersland the oldest of the children and of every one she ever knew in her living. To begin then."

Promises, promises. Yes, this entire bk is "a beginning of a description" - even though the reader's already on page 285. & that's about all it ever amounts to. If you like description, DON'T READ THIS BK. It promises description & delivers outline w/ filler, mostly filler. If you're looking for "every one she ever knew in her living" FORGET IT.

Page 289: "I want readers so strangers must do it. Mostly no one knowing me can like it that I love it that every one is of a kind of men and women, that always I am looking and comparing and classifying of them, always I am seeing their repeating. Always more and more I love repeating , it may be irritating to hear from them but always more and more I love it of them. More and more I love it of them, the being in them, the mixing in them, the repeating in them, the deciding the kind of them every one of who has human being."

Whatever. If you're expecting some magnum opus of detailed classification of human psychological types, FORGET IT. Stein's always beginning & getting nowhere. We 'learn' that there are, according to Stein "independent dependent" & "dependent independent" types & the development that these categories get cd be reduced to a few sentences - but, in "The Making of Americans" it goes on & on for hundreds of pages. There's "resisting", there's "attacking". That's about it.

As I was saying, WHATEVER. So she likes the repeating, so she repeats, & repeats. It reminds me of when I used to spend Thanksgiving at my mom's house. The same guests wd be there, the food was great, the conversation abysmal. Every yr I thought of just recording it & playing it back the next yr. Why? B/c i wanted to demonstrate that IT NEVER CHANGED. As such, no-one, except myself, every sd ANYTHING that wasn't just a formula, a fake form of conversation that just involved repeating whatever was 'appropriate' to their Personality Type. The MISSIONARY (yes there was one) spouted her missionary dogma, my mom was neurotic, etc.. I stopped attending.

As I read this, I bookmarked pages that had things I figured I'd quote when writing this review. This is not my usual practice. Usually, I'd write in pencil at the beginning or the end of the bk page numbers & more specific references so that I'd be able to quickly return to the specific passage that struck me. Now, when I go to the bookmarked pages, I have to skim them to find something that might be useful. I knew this problem wd happen when I was reading this but I followed this inefficient procedure anyway. Why? Maybe I intuitively decided that I shd let the flow of repetition & of my reviewer's reading thru it shd determine the quotes rather than something more exactingly preplanned. Dunno, really. I think I just didn't think being more specific by taking notes was worth the bother. But here I am, wasting a pefectly good Friday nite writing this lengthy review when I cd be out trying to get laid or something. Fool. At any rate, I'm 'torn' between my usual, preferred, practice & what I've done here. I hope this works. Writing this might take days. I've already spent hrs & I feel like I'm just beginning. As I was saying, I'm just beginning giving a history of this bk & its lack of content.

Page 388: "It is very hard telling from any incident in any one's living what kind of being they have in them. Kinds in being is a subject that is very puzzling. Martha Hersland had independent dependent being but this that I have just been telling might have been in the living of a little one having independent dependent being, might have been in the living of a little one having dependent independent being, might have been in the living of a little one having a mixture in its being." Does that mean that her classification system is worthlessly vague? Perhaps, perhaps not. See what I mean? I find no psychological insights in this bk whatsoever. Maybe William James did better. I've never read him.

review of "The Making of Americans" continued: pt 4:

HOWEVER, from time-to-time, as I was saying, as I am beginning to tell, something is sd that steps a little outside her reliance on repeating-as-filling filling-as-repeating: "It is the french habit in thinking to consider that in the grouping of two and an extra it is the two that it is the two who get something from it all who are of importance and whose claim should be considered ; the american mind accustomed to waste happiness and be reckless of joy finds morality more important than ecstacy and the lonely extra of more value than the happy two." [p 438:] &, there you have it, one of the ONLY moments, if not THE only moment in the entire bk where something clear is actually sd about "american"s. So much for "The Making of Americans". As I was saying.

Page 479, the 1st paragraph of the "Alfred Hersland and Julia Dehning" section: "I have been giving the history of a very great many men and women. Sometime I will give a history of every kind of men and women, every kind there is of men and women. Already I have given a history of many men and women. Sometime I will be giving a history of all the rest of them. This is now pretty nearly certain. I have been already giving the history of a very great many men and women, I will be now giving the history of a number of more of them and then of a number of more still of them and then still of some more of them and then this will be the end of this history of very many men and women. Sometime then I will give a history of all of them and that will be a long book and when I am finished with this one then I will begin that one. I have already begun that that one but now I am still writing on this one and now I am beginning this portion of this one which is the complete history of Alfred Hersland and of every one he ever came to know in living and of many other ones I will be describing now in this beginning."

Yeah, right, the narrator who isn't Stein (according to Meyer) but who sure seems like Stein to me has been "giving the history of a very great many men and women" - but, somehow, in the 479 pages I'd read by this point I sure haven't found any "history" of any substance. Stein's "history" is the kind of "history" a person remembers when they're in a severely advanced stage of senility or some other form of brain decay characteristic of advanced age. Imagine Stein's telling of Custer's last stand: "Custer, who was Custer in his beginning and until the beginning of the middle when he was no longer in the living of his being was in the beginning of the middle of the showing of the independent dependent being of him." You wdn't find out that he was a hired thug for murdering Indians or how he died or anything. No! In Stein's "history" there's little rm for details, only for REPEATING & for 'psychology' so shallow you cd wade across it even if it IS a mile wide w/o any fear of being sucked into those complicated undercurrents of the unconscious.

Page 538: "[..:] I have just mentioned it here so that every one can be certain that I have not any dramatic constructive imagination." I'm pretty sure that that excerpt from a sentence is NOT the reason why I bookmarked that page but, HEY!, it's a nice little tidbit isn't it? I mean, I like it that she puts this out there. OK, she doesn't have "any dramatic constructive imagination" - that's ok, a 'novel' written by a person w/o such a thing might be interesting, it might be EXTREMELY ORIGINAL.. but, the problem here for me is that all Stein seems to have IS this originality. In other words, Stein just 'proves' to me being 'ORIGINAL' doesn't take much if 'ORIGINAL' just means different from everyone else. Stein cd've written entire bks just using the word "frog" & it wd've been different from everyone else but I think the 'interestingness' of that wd wear off fast. Page 539: "To be using a new word in my writing is to me a very difficult thing." Of course, Stein doesn't stop there - she has to rephrase & rephrase ad nauseum. I prefer writing w/ larger vocabularies. Writing where I might actually learn a new word. A little neologismizing thrown in to rivet the attn. A little jismism to jazzimasm.

review of "The Making of Americans" continued: pt 5:

& that brings me to Raymond Roussel. Who I was going to get to sooner or later. Roussel was rich & his plays are among the few works that I know of (the only?) that were lambasted by the press as crap that wdn't've ever made it to the public if it weren't for his money. Did Stein ever suffer the same fate? Dunno. She's certainly canonized now while Roussel remains even more obscure than she does. Roussel eventually committed suicide - perhaps out of despair & frustration w/ the lack of appreciation that his work rc'vd. They wrote around the same time, both in France.

In Alastair Brotchie's preface to the Roussel Atlas Anthology 7, he writes: "Roussel's plays are of the "you will already know," or "never shall I forget" school, the characters recite past events instead of enacting them, which empties them of drama" & "His plays begin well, situations are constructed which could lead to conventional dramatic resolutions, but as soon as the "method" is brought into play they fall apart. The method, with its random basis and artificial elaboration, is alien to any sort of plot or character development."

SO, we have 2 writers, each w/ a specific ORIGINAL method that defeats dramatic development - but w/ Roussel the results are FANTASTIC: "Locus Solus" & "Impressions of Africa" & "The View" are 3 of the most astounding things I've ever read. Roussel's method pries the possibilities free & sends them running rampant; Stein's keeps us in a whirlpool that I kept waiting to suck me in.. to no avail - it's like she's flushing content down the toilet & the reader w/ it but the water just keeps swirling b/c the toilet's backed up.

Page 565: "It is a very difficult thing to really believe it of another one what the other one is really feeling, it is such a very long learning anybody must be having to be really to be actually believing this thing. I do this thing. I am a rare one, I know this always more in living, I know always more in living that other ones are really believing what they are believing, feeling, what they are feeling, thinking, what they are thinking, always more and more in living I know I am a rare one." Right, this is classic Stein: she's a rare one b/c she constructs a tautology, tediously repetitively expressed, & acts like it's somehow wisdom. Who but Stein wd've ever thought that people feel what they feel?! Wow! If Stein spent her life figuring this out it's b/c she thinks like she writes - wch means it must've taken DECADES to formulate one simple sentence: people think what they think.

Page 573: Why did I bookmark this damned thing? I just want to write this review & get it over w/. I'm not recommending this bk to anyone. Here're 5 blessedly short paragraphs:

"When I have not been right there must be something wrong. Every one says to me I am certain I am always right about everything and I must be certain of that thing because otherwise there is something wrong and that is a wearying, wearing thing and then I must be beginning learning everything."

[More fodder for arguing against Meyer's assertion that Stein is not the narrator is that on the back cover there's a quote from Hemingway that ties in to the above-quoted paragraph: "Gertrude was always right." In other words, this is reminiscent of the above paragraph's "Every one says to me I am certain I am always right". So there.]

"I have been very glad to have been wrong. It is sometimes a very hard thing to win myself to having been wrong about something. I do a great deal of suffering.

"I have been glad to have been wrong and I have felt certain that this was making me a really joyous wise one. I have been very sad to have to bring myself to be certain that I have been wrong about something. This is now a little more history of me and the kind of suffering I do have in me.

"When I have not been right there must be something wrong. That is what I say to myself inside me. That is what some one sometimes says to me. This has been said to me. This I do say to myself inside me. When I have not been right there must be something wrong.

"This is in a way the meaning of all living in me. This is the way I have suffering in me. When I have not been right there must be something wrong. I have been very glad to have been wrong. It is sometimes a wearing thing to have been wrong about something."

In other words: Stein makes mistakes. This bothers her but she feels wise for noticing. Who cares? & did we really need to have the sentence "When I have not been right there must be something wrong" repeated VERBATIM 4 times in 5 paragraphs?! Gass might praise this as rhythm, but, so what? Are all rhythms 'good' just by virtue of being rhythms? Why?!

Now I'm an anarchist, so on page 590 this caught my attn: "The other one the woman is a practical, anarchistic, attacking servant girl person not feeling any difference between being a dirty one or a clean one having ugly things or nice ones in anything near this one, having a need for seizing everything to use in a servant girl fashion and always this one is living a life of independently loving beauty in living having justness in appreciation and needing a delicate flavor in loving and not keep anything that does not want to be kept by this one." In "The Making of Americans" there're servants - just as there were in Stein's life - after all she was rich & privileged. & I hate the beginning of this sentence as symptomatic of the kind of stereotyping that some rich snob might make about someone that they consider to be lowly.. But, then, Stein sortof 'redeems' herself w/ what many wd deem contradictory: "loving beauty in living having justness in appreciation"!

Page 598, the beginning of the 2nd part of the "Alfred Hersland and Julia Dehning" section that started way back on page 479. 119 pages later & I remember thinking as I was reading this that almost NOTHING was written about either of the 2 characters in the preceding pages. As I was saying, that cd be interesting to me.. but it wasn't. At all.

review of "The Making of Americans" continued: pt 6:

"Some have very pleasant living when they are very young men and women, some have anything but pleasant living in them then. Very many have quite pleasant living in them then and when they are writing it then in diaries and letters to themselves and others there is not very much pleasant living in them then. It is a pretty difficult thing to be remembering, in a way ever to be certain about whether one is having, has been having pleasant living. It is quite a difficult thing to know it in them to know it of them quite young men and quite young women whether they are whether they were having pleasant living A very considerable number of very young men and women are not having very pleasant living in them. It is very difficult to know it inside in one in remembering or in living whether one is having then pleasant living. Pleasant living is a very difficult thing about which to be certain. A great many are thinking that mostly every one is having pleasant enough living, a great many are thinking that not any one is really having pleasant living, a great many are thinking that some are having pleasant living. A good many are thinking every one should have pleasant living in them. A certain number are thinking every one could have pleasant living in them, I find it quite puzzling to be certain about any one whether they are having pleasant living in them. As I was saying Alfred Hersland in his early Bridgepoint living had quite completely pleasant living." & that's only about half of that paragraph.

What I find somewhat amusing about the above excerpt is that Maryland (in particular the Chesapeake Bay area) is sometimes called "the land of pleasant living" - & "Bridgepoint" is supposedly Baltimore - wch is in Maryland. Baltimore is where Stein lived for awhile. I've been in her house - it's a mansion - when I was there, a mansion smack dab in a ghetto. Whether the servants that Stein wd've employed when she lived in Baltimore were having pleasant living is doubtful, whether the rich people living in the mansion were having pleasant living is more likely.

Maybe I bookmarked some of these pages just b/c something DIFFERENT happens in the writing every RARE once in a while: "Very many like it that they are doing something, living, working, loving, dressing, dreaming, waking, cleaning something, being a kind of a one, looking like some one" - of course this goes on & on but at least it's what might be called an observation list poem. Ok, I'm sick of this. End of day 2 of trying to write this review.

Back again, Day 2's not really over, I'm trying to hurry thru this: page 634: "As I was saying some having attacking being in them have it in them to have sensitiveness in them as passion in them. I was telling about one having attacking being and having it as wobbling, having it as being in this one as a soft jelly mass making of this one an individual one by the skin of this one separating this one from any other one." A "soft jelly mass"? SOMETIMES she drops something in that SHE DOESN'T REPEAT & it's like a breath of oxygen in a rm full of methane. What a fucking relief! I know there was an earlier part where that happened (maybe a few hundred pages earlier) that I bookmarked but that I missed whilst writing this.

Page 708: "I could go on and on, I am so certain that it would be a very important thing if some other going on being living, some other ones going on being in living could be knowing really how to be distinguishing the resisting from the attacking kind in men and women, could be understanding the way having it in them to have religion in them is in them of the resisting kind of them, is in them of the attacking kind of them. I am so certain that I am knowing a very great deal about being being in men and women that it certainly does seem as if something would be missing if not any one could be coming to know from me all of that everything." Isn't that a fairly obvious way of explaining one reason WHY many people write? B/c they feel like they have something to say & want to say it to others so that others will understand? &, if Stein really does have something that she is "knowing" here isn't her formal method interfering w/ its communication? From lower down in the same large paragraph: "I am almost certain I am completely a wise one." Whatever.

review of "The Making of Americans" continued: pt 7:

I keep alluding to Stein as a spoiled rich one whose lifestyle wd've never enabled her to write this magnum poopus if she hadn't been taken care of her whole life, if she'd had to actually do something useful for other people for a living. & on page 717 we get to one support for this argument: "I was paying that one for teaching me that thing, the thing I was needing just then. Once I was saying to this one I will not be paying you to-day, I will pay you in three weeks, you will wait till then, I said to this one. This one said yes I will wait till then, but I am now asking you to tell me what you are meaning when you are saying to me and to yourself then that you have not money to pay me to-day for this thing. Do you mean that you cannot get the money to pay me to-day, is that what you are meaning, that you cannot get it to-day if you need it to day is that your meaning. I said no that is not my meaning, I mean that I have not the money to-day and that I will have it in three weeks that is what I am meaning by what I am saying. You mean you will not get it to-day because you are feeling you are not really needing to have it to-day that is your meaning, said that one. No I said that is not the way to understand this thing, I have not got the money to-day and I will have in three weeks from to-day, my brother sends me the money every month that is what I mean by what I am saying. That is what my meaning is said that one, you are needing the money to-day to your feeling, I am needing the money today to-day we will say to my feeling but you do not need the money to-day to your feeling, that is what you are meaning, money is a thing like working you are giving it when you are feeling that you are needing the money to be giving it, I am giving work because I am needing money to be receiving it, said this one. I had a confused feeling then. Money was something I was owning yes, but not owning because it was like being in myself that I needed to be living, having money was as natural to me then as being in living and I could not be spending in irregularly, I must spend it as an income, I had it yes but not give except when regularly I had some." ETC!

In other words, Stein hires someone to do something, they do it, but then Stein postpones paying them b/c she wants the money for herself! If the person hired had broken Stein's arms it wd've been fine w/ me but that person wd've gone to jail & Stein wd've been legally the victim. Too bad Stein didn't live in Mexico during the revolution. NOW, here's the beginning of a section of her wikipedia entry:

"Political views

Gertrude was politically ambiguous, but clear on at least two points: she disapproved of unemployment when she had trouble getting servants (Hobhouse, 1975, p.209), and she had "a general dislike of father figures". (Ibid.)

As for the unemployed she said,
“ 'It is curious very curious ... that when there is a great deal of unemployment and misery you can never find anybody to work for you.' 'But that is natural enough ... because if everybody is unemployed everybody loses the habit of work, and work like revolutions is a habit it just naturally is.' ”

(Ibid., with citations to Gertrude Stein's words in Everybody's Biography)."

Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Stein was rich, Stein didn't work for it, Stein had time to jerk off w/ this self-indulgent largely contentless writing all day long while Toklas did the work for her &, yet, Stein had contempt for the unemployed. A wise one? Hardly. "It is curious [..:] that when there is a great deal of unemployment and misery you can never find anybody to work for you." Maybe you shd've tried paying them in a timely manner, asshole; maybe you shd've realized that you were a completely privileged & largely stupid autocratic creep & that these 'servants' probably didn't want to be around you b/c they cdn't stand being reminded so brutally of how unfair it all is. Maybe they knew they'd want to rip you to pieces & serve that fat cat body to their starving children. Maybe you wd've deserved it! Eat the Rich, Feed the Poor!

I remember seeing a movie about Stein in 1987 w/ my friends Laura & Martha. We were riding the bus (yes, the public transportation system) home & I sd something to the effect of "I think I wd've hated Gertrude Stein but I like the writing." & that's still sortof true. The writing still exerts a peripheral fascination w/ its oddness. & I might read something shorter by her. But I highly DON'T RECOMMEND "The Making of Americans" as I was saying.

Page 821: "David Hersland knew some who were living while he was being living. He was with some of them very often. Some were pleased to be with him very often. Some were pleased to be with him but they were not with him very often. Some were certain that anyone might be pleased to be with him quite often. Some were certain that not any one would be pleased to be with him very often. Some certainly were with him very often. Some were certainly very pleased to be with him very often. Some were with him very often, some were not pleased to be with him very often. Some were with him quite often, some of such of them were very pleased to be with him. Some were with him quite often, some of such of them were not pleased to be with him. Some were very certain that some one would be very pleased to be with him very often. Sometimes some one was very pleased to be with him very often."

Isn't that the writerly voice of someone who just likes to hear themselves talk? Over & over? DAVID HERSLAND KNEW PEOPLE. SOME OF THEM LIKED HIM, SOME DIDN'T. It's that simple & it's completely uninteresting to me. It's at times like these when I long for Hemingway's sparseness.

A tiny excerpt from alot more of the same: "When he was not such a young one sometimes he was with one. Sometimes he was with six. Sometimes he was with more than six. Sometimes he was with two. Sometimes he was with three." DAVID HUNG AROUND PEOPLE IN VARYINGLY SIZED GROUPS.

Page 862: "He was being living every day. In a way he was needing to be certain he was being living every day he was being living. He was being living every day he was being living. He was being living every day until he was not being living which was at the end of the beginning of the middle of being living. He was being living every day." ETC. HE DIED WHEN HE WAS MIDDLE-AGED. This wd've been more interesting to me if the reader wd've discovered that, actually, David Hersland wasn't really alive, he was just a fictional character, but we were reading about him anyway - or that he was a ghost like in Flann O'Brien's great "The Third Policeman". But Stein didn't have the analysis of the wit for either of those - so, instead, we get "He was being living every day until he was not being living which was at the end of the beginning of the middle of being living." What a bore.