Here’s my own small anniversary: 50 times Gertie, many more quotes! Inspired by the sisterhood of She Writes, in Oct. 2009, I started sharing my musings about my first Muse — my passion (and sometimes exasperation) for Stein. 50 is a good moment to take a little loop backward and solve one of her mysteries… In post # 2, I had already alluded to Blood on the Dining-Room Floor: A Murder Mystery . Now it’s time to dive in.
In this famous photograph, Gertrude Stein sits with her massive back turned to the world, at her desk in Bilignin, in the southeast of France, writing about being unable to write. She reports what is happening in and around the deceptively dreamy little village while “it” — the writing — is “not happening.” Read the rest of this entry »
A hearty Happy Birthday to She Writes!
In “Alphabets and Birthdays” Gertrude suggests: “And you have to think of alphabets too, without an alphabet well without names where are you, and birthdays are very favorable too, otherwise who are you.” Read the rest of this entry »
“Why is Gertrude Stein So Important?” was the title of one panel at the American Literature Association last weekend, with an entire day of panels on Stein. I was invited to talk about her murder mystery “Blood on the Dining-Room Floor” which I had translated into German (“keine keiner. Ein Kriminalroman). You might be surprised — and Stein herself would have been surprised — that this was her maiden voyage into the ivory tour of the ALA. Yes, for the first time, Stein was “important” enough to get all those panels at the ALA. Read the rest of this entry »
The Story of the Safety Pin. Gertrude was the guest of honor at the Diane Middlebrook Salon in San Francisco, this past Sunday, May 23rd, and what a ball she had! Another heroine pioneer of her time, Amelia Earhardt, shared the spotlight — together with her biographer, Susan Wels. The two revolutionaries were impressed by the elegance of this gathering, hosted by She Writer Marilyn Yalom.”Books and food, food and books — both excellent things,” Gertrude cheerfully quoted herself as she beheld the luscious chocolate cake, the big bowl of cherries, Sancerre wine and many other delicacies served to enliven the conversation. Read the rest of this entry »
“I am writing for myself and strangers.” Quoting Stein leads to inevitable creativity. I enjoyed the comment to my last blog (# 44) that offered a Stein quote: “I am writing for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear Reader, are an afterthought.” This came from Germany, from She Writer Ginster Votteler who got it from Wilson Sherwin’s group “Favorite Quotes About Writing” contributed by She Writer Amy-Jo Sprague, who got it…? I wonder excitedly. Did she invent it? Does it sound like Stein? Read the rest of this entry »
There is a general consensus that there are two Gertrude Steins: one readable, the other not. One easily accessible, the other not. I found this to be true and not true. Even her earliest work in fairly simple story-telling prose — stories like “Melanctha” of Three Lives (1903-1906)– felt to me at first like rock-climbing because of her uniquely strange, perilous way of using narrative. Read the rest of this entry »
Gertrude has had a meeting with the Zeitgeist. I had just posted # 39, the attempt of Proust, Joyce and Pound to Twitter (quite in vain, of course) whereas Stein revealed herself as the naturally born Twitterwit: “Toasted Susie is my icecream”. The same day, a message came flying by from Berlin and London: “”Why Twitter is Gertrude Stein in 2010″. Lo and behold. Read the rest of this entry »
What it would be like if Proust, Pound, Joyce and Stein had to be “authorpreneurs” and polish their FaceBook Fan pages and emit daily tweets?
Are there other writers who are sometimes overcome, as I am, by the merry absurdity of our post-modern writers’ lives?
Think about it. And then let’s boldly go where none of them has gone before!
Here’s James Joyce on Twitter:
“Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual int” Oops, he got cut off. Just when it got interesting.
How about Ezra Pound?
“It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let t” Darn, he got cut off too. Poor Pound. The best part went missing.
Should we even bother with Marcel Proust (for whom an entire page was often not enough to fit one sentence)? Okay Proust, give it a try:
“The paradoxes of today are the prejudices of tomorrow, since the most benighted and the most deplorable prejudices have had their moment of novelty when fashion lent them” Yeah, that was predictable. Sorry, Proust. Try again.
Hi Gertrude Stein: how about a tweet today? (Could she do it? Would she do it? Gertie the perfect Twitterwit?)
“Toasted Susie is my icecream.”
Sure enough. A one-liner, the sexy sort. Why do something if it can be done.
This is a photographic appetizer of favorite pics of Gertrude Stein. Link
My blog continues at http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blog/list?user=1fxhrwbaix6wi
She is turning 136 this year in her very own ageless way.
And here is the mythical birth as told in the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas:
“Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. As I am an ardent californian and as she spent her youth there I have often begged her to be born in California but she has always remained firmly born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Read the rest of this entry »
A rose is a rose by any other name… When I researched Stein photographs and texts for my photobiography I happened upon the man who created this amazing rose tattoo — an homage to Gertrude Stein. He turned out to be not only a tattoo artist but a writer, had worked with Kinsey on his sexual studies, and… been an intimate friend of Gertrude and Alice. Read the rest of this entry »
I am relaunching my photobiography of Gertrude Stein with a blog on She Writes: “Why Do Something If It Can Be Done: Quoting Gertrude Stein”:
http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/why-do-something-if-it-can-be
“Who was Gertrude Stein? The social and artistic dominatrix of the lost generation? The literary founder of modernism? The sensual companion of Alice B. Toklas? A ‘dictator of art’ or an ‘infant prodigy’? Stein, whose freedom with the written word ‘liberated language from the nineteenth century,’ remains a heroine hard to grasp. Now Renate Stendhal’s Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures (Algonquin) takes a good look at the slippery genius. After an astonishing, playful essay, the book opens into a revelatory combination of quotes, clips, and 360 photos of Stein and her wildly brilliant circle. The subtle minimalism of Stein’s cool face, repeating page to page like her own rhythmic sentences, brings a nuanced embodiment to our imcomplete sense of her. From a serious, chin-in-air profile of ‘Gertie’ at age three to a chin-in-hands portrait taken at age seventy-two, the woman is ‘a rose is a rose is a rose.’” ELLE Magazine
