At the Women’s Memorial Labyrinth (Wiesbaden, May 2006)
This page is a potpourri of information and writing. The intention is to let you know about events (public appearances) and other News, and share Reviews, Reflections, Essays, and Lectures with you. I also want to link you to special people and sites. Please note the Gertrude Stein blog on the left side Categories.
A last filmed legacy of the great Pina Bausch shows her at work while she was still alive: Tanzträume: Jugendliche tanzen Kontakthof von Pina Bausch is based on Pina’s reprised masterpiece Kontakthof (Contact Zone) from 1978, this time danced by teenagers with no previous training in ballet or modern dance. The documentary by Anne Linsel and her camera man Rainer Hoffmann opened last March in Germany, after receiving enthusiastic reactions and rave reviews at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. The Yerba Buena Center of the Arts in San Francisco proudly offered a small series of older, well-known films on Pina Bausch in May, with the US premiere of Tanzträume as its peek.
Read the article and see an excerpt from the film at http://www.scene4.com/0710/renatestendhal0710.html
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 »
Read about the book exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco: French artist Linda Ellia shows “Notre Combat” (Our Struggle) — 450 pages of Hitler’s Mein Kampf deconstructed and reconstructed by artists and gathered into a new book. http://www.scene4.com/0510/renatestendhal0510.html
