Really Reading Gertrude Stein: A Selected Anthology With Essays by Judy Grahn

by Judy Grahn

Gertrude Stein is widely [...] have really read her books because they consider her work difficult. The Crossing Press, therefore, asked Judy Grahn (poet, wise-woman, novelist, essayist) to provide some assistance.
Grahn offers, in this volume, a selection from little-known Stein works including Marguerite or A Novel of High Life. She has written three essays containing practical hints on how to really read Gertrude Stein.
From the book :
"We have been taught by most of our writers to expect certain functions of writing: that it model emotion from us, as blues singing also does, allowing us to explore feeling; that it provide tension-relief in the form of solved mysteries, cliff-hanging adventures, and will-she-won't-she romances; that it recreate foreign and exotic places, and fantasy landscapes; that we be reflected back to ourselves in sociological form or slice-of-life photographs. Stein's work does not perform any of these social functions nor did she ever intend that it would.
"Stein spent much effort distinguishing for herself the difference between identity and essence: 'Am I I because my little dog knows me?', she asked.
"Or stated this way, can I enter her or anyone's writing only if I already recognize myself and my own past experiences in it? Can I experience the writing as current event rather than reflection?
"By suspending judgment about how a story, poem, or play 'should go' and by agreeing with myself to keep reading even when I can't find a way to recognize myself, I have begun to muddle into the landscape of her mind."

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989