Status Updates From Charmed Circle: Gertrude St...

"' . . . in advertising and in road signs, and you will see what I mean, words left alone and more and more feel that they are moving and all of it is detached and is detaching anything from anything and in this detaching and in this moving it is being in its way creating its existing. This then is the real difference between English and American writing and this then can lead to anything.'"

"American literature was not concerned with the soothing reassurance of daily life and routine habits. In a mobile society like that of the United States, what was wanted was not the confirmation of a settled and placid routine, but the quickening sense of activity both in life and in the language. 'Think about American writing, . . . and you will see what I mean, as well as in advertising and in road signs . . .'"

"[T]he English language . . . had been evolved to express the 'daily island life' of the English people. But, having been transplanted to America, it was being pressured into new usages, to fit the life of a continent. That, she avowed, was one of the exciting things about America and American literature. It presented a new and unheard of situation: 'History repeats itself but all this had never happened before.'"

"Not so dots large dressed dots, big sizes, less laced, less laced diamonds, diamonds white, diamonds bright, diamonds in the in the light, diamonds light diamonds door diamonds hanging to be four, two four, all before, this bean, lessly, all most, a best, willow, vest, a green guest, guest, go go go go go go go. Go go. Not guessed. Go go. / Toasted Susie is my ice-cream." - Gertrude Stein on Preciosilla

"Give known or pin ware. / Fancy teeth, gas strips. / Elbow elect, sour stout pore, pore caesar, pour state at. / Leave eye lessons I. Leave I. Lessons. I. Leave I lessons, I" - Gertrude Stein, "Guillaume Apollinaire"

"Matisse and all the others," [Gertrude Stein] concluded, "saw the twentieth century with their eyes but they saw the reality of the nineteenth century, Picasso was the only one in painting who saw the twentieth century with his eyes and saw its reality and consequently his struggle was terrifying, . . . because he had nothing to help him, the past did not help him, nor the present, he had to do it all alone."

[Picasso told her] that the artist who first creates a thing is 'forced to make it ugly,' that 'those who follow can make of this thing a beautiful thing because they know what they are doing, the thing having already been invented, but the inventor because he does not know what he is going to invent inevitably the thing he makes must have its ugliness' . . .

This will be a long slog.

93

I finally finished it. It was a looong read

This book is going to lead to reading so many others... I have suddenly realized I've never read anything by Hemingway.

This book is fascinating, but slow going. I appreciate the excerpts of Stein's writing, but I re-read them several times to absorb them properly. Also, I take a lot of time to look up the paintings (Picasso, Matisse, etc) to remind myself what they look like.