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Geography and Plays
From one of the modern era's most influential and boldly experimental writers—a generous collection of poems, stories and plays—all dating from 1910–1920. Wide range of the author's styles reveal Stein as philosopher, poet, portraitist, dramatist and short story writer, as the investigator of the nature of language, and much more. Superb sampling of works drew attention to the artistic avant-garde movements of the early 20th century and introduced new directions in experimental writing.
420 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1922
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About the author
Gertrude Stein
409 books1,190 followersGertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. Her life was marked by two primary relationships, the first with her brother Leo Stein, from 1874-1914, and the second with Alice B. Toklas, from 1907 until Stein's death in 1946. Stein shared her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, first with Leo and then with Alice. Throughout her lifetime, Stein cultivated significant tertiary relationships with well-known members of the avant garde artistic and literary world of her time.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
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April 10, 2016I can't rate this. It would be like rating a draft, or a child's drawing.
Geography and Plays is all nonsense. It is composing composition and free writing, and an excellent opportunity to try out your own logic. How does your head work? With what loose ends can you construct a whole, a reason? Can you make it fit together? How is your own writing? Do you create your own logic or do you follow the given one? Can you bend reality as you can bend light? Will others understand? Is it all in your head or is it comprehensible? Will you be ridiculed? Go back and edit. Cut your text, kill your darlings and make it concise.
Is this a theory, or are they just random words? Sometimes a theory is just random words.
Don't expect literature, expect an exercise. This is a demonstration of non-logical sentence construction. You will learn a lot, especially what not to do. I like it and I hate it.
Some quotes of my preference, very random:
"I was very much surprised that water was the same color.
As what.
As the sun."
"Dear friends have a way of relating themselves to a town."
"One special absence does not make any place empty."
"A curtain is not crazy, it has no way of being crazy, it has hardly a way of enraging a resemblance, it has no resurrection."
"Surely no change is a blessing. All the search is in violation and yet a single search is a single search willing. It is cautious. There is riot."
".. silence that is silence is not sufficient there must even be sleep."
"A silence is no more than occasional."
(how can I make it be permanent, while noticing the difference?)
"Surprise an engagement, surprise it so that an agreement is all the time."
"A little thing is never tender. The size is there."
"If the width is more the wider is wider."
"Why should an engagement fit two."
"A cause for disturbance rests in the fact that more time is used in a long time than in a short time."
"It was the time of day to fill all day."
"To change often is to say that the use of something is the same."
"Any attempt is a return of a permission."
"That is settled that which needs some introduction."
"About the time when a book is borrowed is the time to return it and leave it."
"Any language cannot be foreign."
"If the three are one they do not have voices, that means no more than that all of them are four."
"Pleasant and an interval which is empty and there is no empty way to begin again."
"He has it, he is the son and the mother, he has it, there is no darker brother, he has it."
"The language of education is not replacing the special position that is the expression of the emanation of evil."
"Kiss my hand.
Why.
Because Russians are rich.
All Russians are valuable. That is what I said.
I wish I could be as funny as he is.
Yes thank you I believe in Russia."
"A clever saucer, what is a clever saucer, a clever saucer is very likely practiced and even has toes, it has tiny things to shake and really if it were not for a delicate blue color would there be any reason for every one to differ."
Geography and Plays is all nonsense. It is composing composition and free writing, and an excellent opportunity to try out your own logic. How does your head work? With what loose ends can you construct a whole, a reason? Can you make it fit together? How is your own writing? Do you create your own logic or do you follow the given one? Can you bend reality as you can bend light? Will others understand? Is it all in your head or is it comprehensible? Will you be ridiculed? Go back and edit. Cut your text, kill your darlings and make it concise.
Is this a theory, or are they just random words? Sometimes a theory is just random words.
Don't expect literature, expect an exercise. This is a demonstration of non-logical sentence construction. You will learn a lot, especially what not to do. I like it and I hate it.
Some quotes of my preference, very random:
"I was very much surprised that water was the same color.
As what.
As the sun."
"Dear friends have a way of relating themselves to a town."
"One special absence does not make any place empty."
"A curtain is not crazy, it has no way of being crazy, it has hardly a way of enraging a resemblance, it has no resurrection."
"Surely no change is a blessing. All the search is in violation and yet a single search is a single search willing. It is cautious. There is riot."
".. silence that is silence is not sufficient there must even be sleep."
"A silence is no more than occasional."
(how can I make it be permanent, while noticing the difference?)
"Surprise an engagement, surprise it so that an agreement is all the time."
"A little thing is never tender. The size is there."
"If the width is more the wider is wider."
"Why should an engagement fit two."
"A cause for disturbance rests in the fact that more time is used in a long time than in a short time."
"It was the time of day to fill all day."
"To change often is to say that the use of something is the same."
"Any attempt is a return of a permission."
"That is settled that which needs some introduction."
"About the time when a book is borrowed is the time to return it and leave it."
"Any language cannot be foreign."
"If the three are one they do not have voices, that means no more than that all of them are four."
"Pleasant and an interval which is empty and there is no empty way to begin again."
"He has it, he is the son and the mother, he has it, there is no darker brother, he has it."
"The language of education is not replacing the special position that is the expression of the emanation of evil."
"Kiss my hand.
Why.
Because Russians are rich.
All Russians are valuable. That is what I said.
I wish I could be as funny as he is.
Yes thank you I believe in Russia."
"A clever saucer, what is a clever saucer, a clever saucer is very likely practiced and even has toes, it has tiny things to shake and really if it were not for a delicate blue color would there be any reason for every one to differ."
December 15, 2018
Voguish experimentation. Little substance.
October 17, 2009
She is a hen and being a hen is to hen. Hen next to hen in. In her hen hemmed nest of in. Her in. Next hen. Next.
She is a "bullet in the back of the rooster."
That hen.
She is pleasing sequences in order. Straw time, wire feet,
She is a "bullet in the back of the rooster."
That hen.
She is pleasing sequences in order. Straw time, wire feet,
November 16, 2009
It's Stein so...best served by reading a little. Took awhile to read this but that's just because of the inevitable, purposeful repetition.
February 21, 2019
It is very hard to rate this one, but in rating this one, no I won't rate it, oh yes I will rate it as it is in rating that one learns to rate, even when one is not actually rating, and a rater is in the process of rating being rating.
I am exaggering a little (seriously only a little bit) but this is how you begin to write when you read too much Gertrude Stein.
I enjoyed this more than The Making of Americans because there was just TOO MUCH repetition in that large ambitious, experimental and incredibly arrogant book.
Geography and Plays is much more enjoyable and fascinating to read because Stein adopts a different style, tone, level of clarity and 'theme' or 'story' (if you can call it that) from chapter to chapter. I ended up writing down about 30-40 quotations from this book. Every 4-5 pages, I came across an incredible sentence - something which sounded like it came out of a non-sensical nursery rhyme on acid. I loved these sentences and as I read through this book hungered for the next weird but totally singular and unforgettable sentence. If you read them out aloud, in fact, some of these sentences were hysterically funny. I still had NO IDEA what she was talking about for about 80 - 90% of the book. But that's cool. As Liam Gallagher once said, "you gotta roll with it. you gotta take your time."
Because of the variety of styles I enjoyed this book much more than The Making of Americans, a book which should not be read in full unless you are as insane as me, or unless you are a real Stein completist. Seriously - reading that book will tell test the strength of thine own sanity. Be forewarned!
Geography and Plays, on the other hand, may still be unreadable to some, to some it may be slightly unreadable whereas for others being reading Stein, aware of being reading her books and being living simultaneously, they may find it slightly readable. There are also others who may find it completely unreadable and others who find it immensely readable. Okay, I'll stop there. Enough, Gertrude, enough.
I am poking fun at her but to be honest, I also admire her. She obviously very strongly felt at the time, as did many of her stellar and now legendary contemporaries which includes Ezra Pound, t s eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and H.D., just to name a few, that English literature was in a stale state of affairs. They were looking to break new ground (or "make it new" as Pound once famously said and which became a kind of rallying cry to the imagist cause) and all of them did in their own special and great ways. Hemingway is probably the most celebrated of all of these writers because he is the easiest one to read. I always find it fascinating how Stein, who is one of the hardest modernist writers to read in English, was incredibly fond of and close to Ernest Hemingway, one of the easiest writers to read in English. William Carlos Williams also was a huge fan of her writing and always championed her cause, as did Sherwood Anderson and many others.
If you haven't read any Stein before, I recommend starting with something slightly shorter, such as Three Lives, or one of her portraits (Picasso or Matisse etc.) or the very readable and enjoyable The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (which is still my favorite Stein book so far) but if you are feeling up for the challenge, I recommend this one too - a book that will completely, albeit temporarily, rearrange your mental architecture, for good or for worse. And you'll come out the other side still scratching your head, just like you might after going to an abstract art exhibition. She is a writer of that ilk. But truly one of a kind. I'm sure she has been imitated since but as far as I can tell, there was NOBODY writing the way she was at the time.
What I admire most about her is that surely, being an intelligent woman, she knew that she would be openly facing immense ridicule and misunderstanding from her reading audience, but it didn't matter. She had to do it anyway and for that, Gertrude, I salute you and say 'chapeau'!
I am exaggering a little (seriously only a little bit) but this is how you begin to write when you read too much Gertrude Stein.
I enjoyed this more than The Making of Americans because there was just TOO MUCH repetition in that large ambitious, experimental and incredibly arrogant book.
Geography and Plays is much more enjoyable and fascinating to read because Stein adopts a different style, tone, level of clarity and 'theme' or 'story' (if you can call it that) from chapter to chapter. I ended up writing down about 30-40 quotations from this book. Every 4-5 pages, I came across an incredible sentence - something which sounded like it came out of a non-sensical nursery rhyme on acid. I loved these sentences and as I read through this book hungered for the next weird but totally singular and unforgettable sentence. If you read them out aloud, in fact, some of these sentences were hysterically funny. I still had NO IDEA what she was talking about for about 80 - 90% of the book. But that's cool. As Liam Gallagher once said, "you gotta roll with it. you gotta take your time."
Because of the variety of styles I enjoyed this book much more than The Making of Americans, a book which should not be read in full unless you are as insane as me, or unless you are a real Stein completist. Seriously - reading that book will tell test the strength of thine own sanity. Be forewarned!
Geography and Plays, on the other hand, may still be unreadable to some, to some it may be slightly unreadable whereas for others being reading Stein, aware of being reading her books and being living simultaneously, they may find it slightly readable. There are also others who may find it completely unreadable and others who find it immensely readable. Okay, I'll stop there. Enough, Gertrude, enough.
I am poking fun at her but to be honest, I also admire her. She obviously very strongly felt at the time, as did many of her stellar and now legendary contemporaries which includes Ezra Pound, t s eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and H.D., just to name a few, that English literature was in a stale state of affairs. They were looking to break new ground (or "make it new" as Pound once famously said and which became a kind of rallying cry to the imagist cause) and all of them did in their own special and great ways. Hemingway is probably the most celebrated of all of these writers because he is the easiest one to read. I always find it fascinating how Stein, who is one of the hardest modernist writers to read in English, was incredibly fond of and close to Ernest Hemingway, one of the easiest writers to read in English. William Carlos Williams also was a huge fan of her writing and always championed her cause, as did Sherwood Anderson and many others.
If you haven't read any Stein before, I recommend starting with something slightly shorter, such as Three Lives, or one of her portraits (Picasso or Matisse etc.) or the very readable and enjoyable The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (which is still my favorite Stein book so far) but if you are feeling up for the challenge, I recommend this one too - a book that will completely, albeit temporarily, rearrange your mental architecture, for good or for worse. And you'll come out the other side still scratching your head, just like you might after going to an abstract art exhibition. She is a writer of that ilk. But truly one of a kind. I'm sure she has been imitated since but as far as I can tell, there was NOBODY writing the way she was at the time.
What I admire most about her is that surely, being an intelligent woman, she knew that she would be openly facing immense ridicule and misunderstanding from her reading audience, but it didn't matter. She had to do it anyway and for that, Gertrude, I salute you and say 'chapeau'!
June 22, 2016
"Geography and Plays" is an exceptional representation of Gertrude Stein's genius. In this idiosyncratic collection, you'll find delightful short stories ("Ada," "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene") and cultural meditations ("France," "Italians") as well as plays which defy easy categorization and all the rules ("Bonne Annee," "What Happened"). Everything herein displays Stein to be an artist who challenged convention, meaning, expectation and logic. Her writing here is consistently assured, often cryptic, just as often fun, and never pompous or without purpose.
February 21, 2008
surely its not too sincere when the cartography starts to slouch.
December 17, 2007
"read this book"--not like I ever finished it.
February 27, 2022
Reading Challenge 2022: Read a Book that Makes You Laugh Out Loud
"Would it not be a lovely and charmingly ironic gesture of the gods if, in the end, the work of this artist were to prove the most lasting and important of all the word slingers of our generation!" --Sherwood Anderson
And maybe that's what Stein is--a word slinger. I enjoy her best in short bursts, and there's enough in Geography and Plays to keep me giggling for many a rainy day to come.
"Would it not be a lovely and charmingly ironic gesture of the gods if, in the end, the work of this artist were to prove the most lasting and important of all the word slingers of our generation!" --Sherwood Anderson
And maybe that's what Stein is--a word slinger. I enjoy her best in short bursts, and there's enough in Geography and Plays to keep me giggling for many a rainy day to come.
March 25, 2024
A collected works with maximum experimentation
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews