“THE GOOD ANNA”

Anna Federner is a servant of “solid lower middle-class south german stock.” The story follows the rigid Anna through her happy days with Mathilda, as well as positions with Miss Mary Wadsworth and Dr. Shonjen. She prefers serving big women or men and dislikes pretty young girls, most often her subordinates. Her friend Mrs. Lehtmann is “the great romance in her life,” but she abandons this friendship when Mrs. Lehntmann adopts a baby without consulting Anna, ignoring what Anna sees as their almost familial, or even queer, bond. Anna dies at the end, still attached to Mathilda, who probably cares much less, exposing the bonds created by class (think Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, or Downton Abbey). The painful and dull cyclicality of much of the story’s language emphasizes Anna’s static life, as well as the nuances of its changes.

MELANCTHA

Melanctha is the second and longest story in the collection. It tells the tale of a light-skinned black woman who experiments with her sexuality and is eventually shunned by her best friend Rose because of it, a blow from which Melanctha cannot recover. She dies of “consumption.” Werner Sollers has claimed that Stein’s sympathetic portrayal of a black protagonist paved the way for the experiments of Black Modernism (Richard Wright admired it), while other critics take issue with her appropriation of that voice. The looping, trickster-cycle style of the narrative experiments with changing practices of writing, as well as society’s treatment of women and minorities. However, all three characters die and are not free like tricksters, but bound by their material conditions. As in her poetry and “The Good Anna,” repetition serves to expand meaning rather than to dull it (vs Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho).

The third and final story in the collection is called “The Gentle Lena,” about a “german” servant girl (like those who serve Anna) who bears four children and also dies at the story’s conclusion.

• Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
• A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
• The Phenomenology of Spirit by G.F. Hegel
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson
• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
• Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
• The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
• The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
• Women and Men by Joseph McElroy

The list has been put together by Emily Colette Wilkinson and Garth Risk Hallberg from the Millions, apparently after researching it for three years. As always with such lists, they immediately open up for debate and so the writer of the article, Alison Flood, speculates that she would probably have included Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and maybe The Waves by Virginia Woolf instead of To the Lighthouse.

It seems that every author is only allowed one book on the list – otherwise I think Ulysses by James Joyce also would qualify.

Now, I’ve read two of these (To the Lighthouse and Being and Time) and 70% of Clarissa as well as parts of The Phenomenology of Spirit. Most of the others I haven’t even heard of (except of course Finnegans Wake). Being and Time is definitely difficult – Heidegger talks about being and ontology and when he runs out of words, he invents them himself. It requires multiple readings and lots of thinking to get this book. The Phenomenology of Spirit is also a difficult book.

When I think of To the Lighthouse, I recall it as being very difficult and as a book I didn’t particularly like. However, when I go back and read my review, I can see I gave it 4 stars and were very impressed with the way she crafted the book – and that it made me think of Hegel! I think a lot of people find stream of consciousness difficult and that’s probably why this book is on the list, however, sometimes I think you just have to go with the flow and let the words wash over you … if that makes sense. I can see that I was very impressed with Woolf when reading this and wanted to read more books by her – and somehow I have forgotten this and have just been very intimidated by her. I need to read Woolf soon!

I don’t find Clarissa difficult – just very, very, very long, repetitive and boring at times. But not difficult.

A book I found difficult is Will Self’s How the Dead Live. I can see my review is only about 15 lines long and for everyone following this blog, you know that I don’t write short reviews! It confused me – but some parts of it has stayed with me and pop up in my thoughts from time to time so maybe I need to tackle Will Self again. His newest, Umbrella, is longlisted for the Booker so maybe now is a good time?

Now, how many of these have you read?

'Portrait of Gertrude Stein' by Pablo Picasso, 1906

I was first introduced to Gertrude Stein at a bistro on the Rue de Fleurus in 1927. Just kidding. I was first introduced to Gertrude Stein in a fiction writing workshop about three years ago. We read a few selections from Tender Buttons, and I was smitten with the unorthodox way she used words and word order.

I was so excited to read Tender Buttons in its entirety, which didn’t actually happen until about two years after that initial introduction. Instead I read Three Lives, perhaps Stein’s most well-known novel. (I say ‘perhaps’ because of Stein’s quasi-obscurity. To put it plainly, Gertrude Stein isn’t a household name unless you live with readers.) Stein’s word repetitions, which appeared in small doses in Tender Buttons, bored me and I didn’t finish it. I reminded myself, each writer is allowed one mistake.

And then I tried to read the 1,000+ page novel The Making of Americans. I got to page two and wanted to hurl it against the wall, and I would’ve if it weren’t so heavy. It was clear to me that her repetition technique was her most prized aspect and she was going to use it for 1,000+ pages. I cursed the heavens and fed the book to a monster that ate paper. (He thanked me before complaining of its bland taste.)

Gertrude and I didn’t speak for a while after that. And I was quite all right with that, having almost completely forgotten her until I came across her on the pages of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Her literary-holier-than-thou attitude amused me, considering my opinions of the last two books of hers I read. Still, something compelled me to contact her again. Granted, it was in a different, safer capacity: nonfiction.

After reading Hemingway’s take on 1920s Paris, I read Stein’s take, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and I was blown away. My love for Gertrude Stein was restored! In fact, my elation was so profound that I decided finally to return to Tender Buttons, perhaps in an effort to recreate the initial giddy happiness I felt at the start of the relationship. I read it through and, in an angry letter I composed and then stuck in the bottom drawer to fester, wrote: I am starting to worry that perhaps I don’t like you as much as I thought I did. I’m aware that it’s entirely possible I’ve missed the entire point of Tender Buttons, which makes me even angrier. Clearly I was upset, and clearly I have issues.

That was a year ago. I declared to myself and others that I was now more interested in Gertrude as a character from history than as a writer. I vowed never to read her books again.

I can't stay mad at you.

And then I came across a used copy of Paris France for $2. I bought it without hesitation. I justified it several ways. I love me a 1920s Parisian memoir. Plus I’m a forgiving person. Plus an Urchin can’t resist a cheap deal. Still, I opened the book cautiously. After completing the book, I took out that singeing letter, charred to black, and added this: Now I feel like I’m finally understanding you. Your repetition, when persevered, leaves a mark and makes your points clear. What initially appears as a meandering text reveals itself as a well-crafted albeit eccentric essay.

Gertrude Stein famously wrote the line: A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. Until next time, Gertrude, we’ll see.

“I make work about dancing and the intersection between dancing and other things that I care deeply about.” – Juliette Mapp

Drawing on Gertrude Stein’s visionary novel The Making of Americans, Juliette Mapp creates a powerful yet intimate new dance. The Making of Americans is an homage to Juliette’s mother’s family, immigrants from Albania, who settled in Gary, Indiana, home to the largest steel mill in the United States. The work also draws inspiration from Michael Jackson, a native of Gary, and other music born of the industrial Midwest.

The Making of Americans features video design by John Jesurun. The piece will be performed by Vanessa Anspaugh, Aretha Aoki, Levi Gonzalez, Molly Lieber, Kayvon Pourzar, Anna Sperber, Vicky Shick, and Mapp with lighting design by Jeff Nash and original music by Barbez.

Bessie Schonberg Theater
Dance Theater Workshop is located at 219 West 19th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in the Chelsea district of New York City.

Subway: 1/9 to 18th Street. 2/3, F, L and A/C/E to 14th Street.

dance theater workshop

Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing…” made sense, mainly because it was such a great track back in the mid-90s, right? Cage Against the Machine, the attempt to block/buy the No. 1 slot for a recording of John Cage’s 4’33” -a rigorously orchestrated slice of atmospheric sound, often described as silence- was always a bit too clever and so a bit too dumb to work, no?

Kenneth Silverman’s recent biography of Cage, Begin Again, is a pretty straight celebratory record of an entirely remarkable life [and not published in the UK!]. Cage spans [subverts?] or strides [meanders?] the 20th Century in very particular ways, making work from beginning to end nearly and constantly mining the same seam of inventive attempts.

Always beginning again, afresh, anew -so the thesis runs. KS makes an epigram of Gertrude Stein’s gorgeous line from The Making of Americans; “Beginning was all of living with him, in a beginning he was always as big in his feeling as all the world around him.” The way in which this actualises is exemplary even while it creates doubt in me too -as the book goes on dutifully detailing yet another I Ching derived whatever!

4’33” was achieved using a deck of tarot cards, which even Cage said “seems idiotic” but he composed each movement by joining up randomised periods of silence with precise measures which totalled four minutes and thirty three seconds. The point, one made more precise by his subsequent visit of Ryoanji and fuller acquaintance with Zen, was that the ‘silence’ is a pregnant one, like the stone garden’s potent ‘blankness’.

Two thoughts; one links directly to the gorgeous version of Feist’s song, There’s a Limit to Your Love, that James Blake put out a month ago. As you know, the track is a departure from his flurry of promising EPs released this year alone, including CMYK and Klavierwerke, for foregrounding his voice against a piano track redolent of Nina Simone and an electronic bassquake. Apart from just enjoying it and its arguably rather more local newness I was struck by the ‘silence’ it contains. Or near silence, in a world of encompoptainment, near silence is startling. So for one thing, the righteously Cowell-obsessed might have got behind Blake’s track in a similar spirit but freed of gimmickry and at least pointing forwards.

Blake has his first regular album-length CD out in early February. It includes Limit which is already propelling him to places/spaces that you can only hope he keeps passing through [perhaps in the way that the much older Antony [Hegarty] -who comes to mind during album tracks like Why Don’t You Call Me- seems to have]. The album is one of entirely  vocal tracks; songs! -some of which are wonderful-intriguing [Wilhelms Scream] and some bear marks of the journeys he’s taken so far, with promising grace [Measurements]. I’ll confine myself to the soundcloud audio file of Limit which also makes visible the way that ‘silence’ today is ever more relative. Also to the nice youtube vid, just for fun.

My other thought comes in the form of words from Francis Alÿs in an interview with Russell Ferguson from the Phaidon volume on his work [2007]. FA is referring to his chasing of tornadoes -as shown recently at the end of the brilliant retrospective at Tate Modern [brilliance which travels btw; at Wiels, Brussels until Jan 30th, then MOMA, NYC May 8 -August 1. Erm, hesitate?];

“I found in that pursuit the perfect image of fuite en avant, of fleeing forwards” which he links to his filming of mirages, A Story of Deception [2006], too. The mirage he describes as a mechanism, the opposite of the notion of an apparition; “While one approaches it, the mirage eternally escapes across the horizon line, always deceiving or eluding our progress, inevitably preceding our footsteps. It is a phenomenon of constant disappearance, a continuous experience of evasion. Without the movement of the observer, the mirage would be nothing more than an inert stain, an optical vibration in the landscape. It is our progression towards it that triggers its life … What interests me is the intent, the movement towards the mirage. For me, the emphasis is on the act of pursuing itself, in this escape forwards. I see the attempt as the real space of production…“

This is exactly right and chimes with my own thinking and writing about what I used to call a ‘dirty utopianism’; broken down but cobbled together. Indeed, nothing else interests me, either. Seems to me that in such a context, James Blake’s silence is actual, pregnant, potent. Just wish [well, hardly!] it had got to No. 1, although of course its very existence is a refusal of the deadliness of pop cult as it is currently manifest.

As Cage demonstrated over and over, there’s always some small apparently idiotic attempt to make… and in that making something very big continues to happen. The attempt is “the real space of production” and a dirty utopian gesture of unbounded potency in the second decade of the third millennium.

I would just like to say that I have enjoyed being in this class with funny, open-minded classmates, professor, and guest who gave me more insight into reading Stein, Dickinson, and Mullen (especially Mullen). ENG 476 forced me to add more input in class discussions, something that I’m not used to, because bigger class sizes intimidate me to speak up. The small class size definitely made it comfortable for me to speak my thoughts. This class also taught me to pay attention to the minute details and critically read to the tenth degree because I could have missed some information that would be important for my understanding of The Making of Americans. It was great hearing different perspectives from the literature that we have read. We were struggling at times, but we managed to help each other out in our circle and we understood even more. Well, we made it and I couldn’t have done it with a better group.

Enjoy your summer!

Thanks again,

Michelle

Later she went on being living and very often then she gave advice quite strongly enough to some one and she did not then think anything of that thing that he, that David Hersland had come then to be a dead one. She was quite enough going on being living then. She was quite enough needing then being one going on being living enough then” (899).

According to Professor McCallum, the David Hersland chapter is about relationships, and I can see that between the narrator and David because they want to be talked to and they want to be heard, but not everyone is going to do that (727 – 728). Moreover, in the last few pages in the chapter, David connects with the Dehnings to give them advice to people that he knows because he knows that they will listen to him, regardless if they take his advice or not. I picked these two paragraphs because I thought that in the last chapter, the narrator would add a little more detail about how Hortense grew up, but she did not. Also, I realized that the connection between Hortense and David is that they are the youngest siblings, like the narrator, so I thought that it would make sense that out of all the people David gave advice to, Hortense took it the most seriously because she ends up giving strong advice and following the footsteps of David Hersland.

It seems as though Hortense is asking for advice on being living because she is the youngest child in his family and it feels right to confide in him. I feel that Hortense is asking David about how he finds himself and become the person that he has become because it is important to her to figure this out, according to the words “quite” (5) and “enough” (5). The definitions for “quite” are: (1) completely, wholly, or entirely; (2) actually, really, or truly; and (3) to a considerable extent or degree. The words that “quite” are next to, like “quite needing” and “quite went,” emphasizes how sure she wants to seek advice for her being living and how she wants to act upon them. The definition for “enough” is: adequate for the want or need; sufficient for the purpose or to satisfy desire. When I think of “enough” in the book’s context, if Hortense really wants to find her being living, then how much does she want to find out about it? How far does she want to go to discover what kind of person she really is? It takes time to learn about people and ourselves, just like reading this book, and we will not understand it with just a glance.

Hortense is very determined to do this task because in the text it said, “she was then mentioning to him again.” It can mean that she is reporting her progress to him and/or asking for more advice and they are getting to know each other in the process at that time. I feel that David is like a mentor to Hortense because he has someone to look after and she has someone to look up to. Later on, she becomes confident in her ability to strongly giving advice to people and using what David taught her in order to do so. She knows that this is what she wants to do at the moment (“going on being living”) and when she finds out that David Hersland dies, I think that the tone changes because it shifts from “quite enough going” to “quite enough needing.” When I think of going, I think of someone starting something, but when I think of needing, I think of someone is obligated to do something. In this case, Hortense can feel obligated to pass on the legacy and giving strong advice to people because that can be something that David wanted her to do since she was determined to do it in the first place. In a way, it shows how David is living on through Hortense and throughout this book, we were talking about how life goes on because people remember things and pass on those memories to future generations.

That was mentioned in the last chapter and I am still unsure of what to make of that chapter, but what I got from it is that history repeats itself and people are living history books, photo albums, and any other reference that gathers family memories that are accessible to the generations to come. The dead live on just as long as they are remembered and the living people live on just as long as they seen doing things that they are doing.

That is all.

In class, we talked about how the David Hersland chapter is revolving around relating, considering the possibility that the narrator can relate to David Hersland more than anyone else in the book. This particular sentence is no exception. On the surface, it seems as though the narrator is repeating the same sentence over and over again with a few variations, like a children’s story, but there are some words that stuck out to me.

The first word is “things.” This word is repeated 28 times in the entire sentence. I was wondering about what the “things” were because at first glance, I thought that it meant the people’s daily routine, constantly doing and reminding “things” without a pause (there are no periods until the end of the sentence and only four commas). Then, I remembered the class discussion about how on p. 729,  the narrator wants to analyze being living by not getting into the specifics, but knowing the general basics. This is somewhat channeled into David by reading that he wants to know everything and the book mentions how he is certain about some things and not certain about other things. He seems confident that he is knowledgeable about some subjects, like the narrator. This chapter also talks about how some people do and do not listen to David and how some people do and do not talk to him. Not only does this relate to the narrator because she/he wanted to be heard throughout the text, but he seems to be an outcast – like the narrator. The reason why made this assumption is because of how the sentence is phrased. For example, “He was doing some things then and some others were doing some things then” could have been phrased into, “He and some others were doing some things then,” but since we are saying that the narrator can relate to David by being “loners”, the syntax can support that claim.

A couple of words also stuck out to me, “wanting” and “needing.” It was tough for me to find the definition of both of these words without both of the entries inside them, but want means “to have an inclination” and need means “to be necessary.” In the sentence’s context, there are variations of was/were wanting and was/were needing. They are in the past progressive tense, and it is usually used for: (1) action going on at a certain time in the past, (2) actions taking place at the same time, and (3) action taking place in the past that is interrupted by another action. The narrator (we do not know who she/he is) is talking about David’s life as it happened, so it did happen at a certain time in the past (In the book’s world). In the context of the paragraph, it talks about being young ones, so applying the childlike aspect of this chapter, the sentence can mean how David wanted to do so many things, kind of like how a child wants to be so many things when she/he grows up. Setting wise, it can mean that there are so many people at once (assuming at Gossols) who are doing their daily living and David wanted and needed to be doing some “things” (analyzing general basic being living), but he could not do it if there are so many people there. Another thing that I noticed about the “wanting” and “needing” is that there are more “needing” (4) than “wanting,” (3) so if I apply the outcast reading, then it can mean that both the narrator and David need a sense of belonging because they both want to be heard and seen. Using the childlike reading, I assume that this was David growing up and realizing that needs are more important than wants.

Even though the narrator is vanishing in this chapter, I see remnants of her/him in David Hersland because besides of the assumptions that I have already made, I can picture the narrator going through the same situation when she wrote this book. She was recording people’s lives in this book then and some others were doing some things then. It works both ways.

In this week’s reading, I realized that we are rereading topics that the narrator is constantly repeating (i.e. bottom nature, daily living, loving, etc.), but she/he is showing her/his growing knowledge about these subjects by giving us new examples and scenarios so we can understand what she/he talked about and what she/he understood in the observation process. I admit that the text is tough to read, but I feel that it is getting a little easier for me to follow because the narrator is explaining her intentions and feelings. As Kendall said in class, it is good to personally know her/him because it is easier to relate to her/him.

When I read this sentence, I immediately thought that it was Stein’s version of the quote, “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again,” but in class, Professor McCallum emphasized how important it is to figure out why the narrator phrased sentences the way she/he does, and not in simple and concise sentences. This is my attempt in doing so.

In this quote, I feel that the narrator is using repeating as a tool to learn from mistakes, and it is our choice to either fix the problem in order to transform the failure into a success or continue to the next task. In my previous post, I said that the narrator was a little doubtful about inspiriting life into characters into the text because she/he was worried that those people would end up like Alfred Hersland, a man without a solid bottom being. Even though she was stumped on trying to analyze Alfred, in the end she/he gave him a label and continued to conduct her/his observations and drawing conclusions about other people.

There are some words that are repeated in this quote, like “always,” and “discovering.” The emphasis on time words is important in this sentence. “Always” is repeated three times after present and progressive actions and I think that it shows that making a mistake can occur at any time and when it happens, we can determine whether it is important to us or not. “Discovering” is mentioned twice, and is a different word to use here because it usually has a positive connotation. When we discover something, we treasure it and share it with everyone else that we know. We do not typically do that with mistakes, and we usually cover them up and pretend that they did not happen. I feel that the narrator is telling us to treasure them because they help us to learn not to do them again.

When I interpreted the first part of the sentence, I tried to figure out what we are not succeeding from in the book’s context. I read it as every time we fail, it is our fault (“freshly from them”). I realized that she/he used fresh in the text and it is the first time seeing this word. I think “freshly” and “fresh” are used to emphasize the fact that “that one” does not know when she/he is going to fail while doing her/his daily living. This is also my first time seeing a semicolon in the text. Usually, a semicolon is used to connect two independent clauses or to serve as a super-comma. In this case, I think that the semi-colons are used to separate three options that a specific person (“that one”) has when she/he fails. I may be off track, but it can be an odd form of using ellipses because I noticed that I do not know when, where, why, or how it “comes freshly from them.” If that is the case, then I guess what the narrator is saying here is that people, in general, are aware of their mistakes and failures, it is just that we do not verbalize them.

In the second part of the sentence, the narrator is talking about “that one” repeating, I assume in failing without being aware of it. In the last two parts, however, they are separated by commas and I noticed that there is a contrast between them: a bright finding and not having any meaning. It seems that whenever this person is handling some kind of task, she/he fails and is aware of this, but does not know what it means to her/him.

Earlier in the paragraph, the narrator states, “Very many as I was saying are not learning about themselves in living. They are not learning about themselves from themselves in their living” (601). It appears that the narrator is comparing herself/himself from the unnamed person because as I stated before, the narrator is more revealing to her/his audience about her/his personal experiences and feels about certain topics. I feel that what she/he is showing through this person is that the errors that we make should not be ignored because we are supposed to learn from them, and we repeat the correct way of doing things so we will not repeat the same error twice or more. If that is the case, then the concise quote, “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again,” should be changed into this “Stein-like” (but understandable) version: “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again to make sure you do not make the same mistake, and if you do, then learn from them, and then you do succeed, repeat the correct way so you will not succeed in failing, if you do fail in succeeding then repeat.”

That is all.

The further that I read this book, the more complex it becomes as the narrator wants to continue and pursue this epic quest to categorize people based on kinds of living, people, bottom being, and things of that nature. My initial reaction of this particular passage is that the narrator is doing some self-reflection about why is she/he analyzing and telling stories about these named and nameless characters. The narrator is taking her/his readers along this maze of a journey to see if she/he can complete this goal, and I can see that she/he is very determined to do so. She/he mentions before that the characters that she/he describes are all parts of her/him, and she/he reaffirms herself/himself by saying that “every one is one of a kind in men and women” so it can possibly be “easier” to understand her/his characters.

As I read this sentence further, the narrator’s tone shifts from determined to a little hesitant and I see that through the three perhaps in this passage. It seems as though the narrator feels somewhat doubtful because it takes some time to analyze these characters and it is frustrating that it is not over and done with.  She/he is worried that if she/he “[is] hurrying and crowding,” then she/he might make a mistake by missing something that is important for her/his analyses. It reminds me of how we Americans want the quick fix of things since we are constantly hustling and bustling and we do not have time to take things in. Next, she/he “[is] wondering perhaps it is not completely an important thing” and I feel that each person knows what is important to them, regardless of what other people think of it. For the narrator, it is figuring out her/his various characters so she/he can feel a sense of completion and that is important for me as well so I can follow what is going on in the story and can feel her/him at ease.

“Inspiriting” is an oddball word that I spotted and it means: “To infuse spirit or life into; enliven.” I think the way this word fits into the context in not only this section, but also the text as a whole, is that as the narrator is introducing the characters, I feel as though she/he is breathing life into them so we can also observe their daily living, behavior, etc. in order to determine how each character that she/he gives life to are important to our overall understanding of the book. Results may vary.

Then, the narrator reassures herself/himself, “I am certain that this is an important thing in me” with positive affirmations after mostly and always (five in total) and variations of repeating “important thing in me.” She/he knows that this is what she/he wants to do, so why should anyone or anything (like doubt) stop her. She/he is aware that not all people are not the same, especially Alfred Hersland who is not stably grounded in the narrator’s terms, and I sense her/his confused and sombre feeling as if she/he does not know what to do. Sometimes she/he feels this way. However, since analyzing people is an important thing to her/him, and it brings pleasure and excitement to do it, then she/he should just put labels on them and move on and hope that she/he can do a better job with the next cast of characters. The readers will be following her/him along the way.

As I was analyzing this passage, it reminded me of this song. I hope you enjoy it!

The passage that I want to point out is a paragraph that I read in class. It is the second paragraph from pp. 463 – 464. A sentence that stuck out to me the most was, “Some then spend all their living struggling to adjust the being that slowly comes to active stirring in them to the aspirations they had in them, some want to create their aspirations from the being in them and they have not the courage in them” (463). Yesterday, Professor McCallum mentioned in class how the book’s temporality can take us to the present, so we can use MofA to see how much society has changed from “then” to now. I am sure that the readers can relate to the characters as they are looking for their “whole selves” because even today, everything that we do defines us for who we are. If we do the right things, then we are good and if we do the wrong things, then we are bad. That is how society works, and whether or not we know someone’s back story, we are judgmental people.

For example, when we were discussing about Miss Cora Dounor, she went from “completely intelligent, completely gentle being, completely understood desiring” (462) to this “detached” (435) being “who [is] genuinely unconscious of all this nervous memory” (439). In our discussion, Miss Dounor went from “nice” to “skank” in a matter of minutes, but Phillip Redfern was in the wrong as well and I do not recall what we called him, but we knew that he wrong for his actions. This can refer to the book’s temporality by creating the same double standards that society has to deal with today. When a man sleeps with another woman, he does not get called out as much as a woman would.

Earlier in the text, it states that marriage is not all about love and it is mostly influenced by an outside force. I think what the narrator is trying to do here is to give an example of what not to do when you get married because the book is called The Making of Americans, and this book’s discourse is like a guide that the characters (and possibly readers) have to follow in order to obtain and lead a successful “american” life. Phillip’s parents was an influence to him by giving two conflicting perspectives on how to treat a woman, whereas Martha did not have much interaction with her parents because she was not interesting to anyone in her family, and Miss Dounor had little to no influence since she is “an only child whose parents died just before she entered college and was equally detached by her nature from all affairs of the world” (435). The reason why Phillip and Martha broke up was because there was not much communication between them, even when John Davidson playfully placed his head on Martha’s lap, they both did not know how to react in that moment. As a result, Phillip thought that he married a woman with a “narrow eager mind” (434) and Martha was clueless.

Now I am going to backtrack to the quote that caught my attention. People try their best to do whatever it takes to reach to the goal that they want, but they are afraid to be judged, like Miss Dounor and especially Martha. Miss Dounor “never succeeded in really touching any human creature she knew” (435) until she had an affair with Phillip and detaches herself from Miss Charles because Phillip made her more complete than Miss Charles did. Martha tried to become a smarter person by learning, working, and traveling, hoping that Phillip will take notice so they can become together again, but that was not the case since he passed away at a young age. She also tried to provide for her father whose wife died, did not have his business, and he lost his fortune, but he was never satisfied at what she was trying to help him. We are trying to find a purpose in life so we can be known as something to other people. In a way, it is like how the narrator is using repetition in this story. Whenever someone in the family does something, it gets repeated through other people and it gets passed down to further generations. In other words, history lives through people.

Connecting this to the rest of the paragraph, the narrator makes a poignant point that “it takes very much courage to do anything connected with your being unless it is a very serious thing” (463). Even though Martha’s father found her uninteresting, she did not have to take care of him, but she did it anyway because it was a daughterly and familial thing to do, to provide for a family member when they are down and out. And regardless if we do not follow the trends by buying the wrong handkerchiefs and clocks, we follow our daily living in our own way. In the end, it is their decision that counts whether it betters us or not. We have to learn successes and failures for ourselves.

In the last paragraph on page 207 to the top of page 208, the narrator gives a brief biography about Mary’s american family and what they did for their daily living. A sentence that I had little difficulty transitioning into (and I thought that it could have been phrased better) was “Their name was changed for some in their american living” (207). I assume that some of Mary’s siblings (we do not know how many there are) got married, so that is why it was mentioned to emphasize what Americans do as a family: get married, work hard at any profession to provide for the children, the children help their parents, get married, and the cycle repeats. I believe that Mary did help out the family with the farming, but “she never liked farming, it was to her a dreary way of living” (208). At 16, she decides to move away from home to Gossols to make her own way of living. I noticed that there is not any educational background mentioned in this passage, so my take on this is what the narrator is trying to say here is that even though some rural families do not have formal education that does not mean that they are unable to achieve their life goals. Mary is trying to live and obtain the American dream, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, by working. At first, she took care of children for her living and she did not enjoy it, and a line that brought my attention was “She liked children, but she wanted freedom” (207). According to gender roles, it is the woman’s job to take care of the children, and I am sure at those times that they did not get much freedom until her children are married off and move away. Even then, a woman’s job is never done because she has to take care of her husband. Back on topic, I think Mary feels this way because she is young and she does not want to be weighed down with too much responsibility. One way to look at this is that when people are trying to find their daily living, if they are ambitious enough, it is every person for themselves. Usually, people find jobs because they know that they are good at it or they are supposed to be good at it. In Mary’s case, it is the latter because, once again, it is the woman’s role to always be the caretaker; however, for Mary it was a five-year temporary fix so she can save money to pursue what she really wants: her own business.

When she was between 21 and 25, it seems as though she was educating herself to perfect her craft in making articles of clothing, and dress-making is her best bet. It proves that as long as there are educational resources out there, people can learn at any point of their lives. When Mabel Linker partners up with Mary, Mabel learns dress-making from scratch and they were ready to make a business without a business plan at “Gossols where richer people were living” (208). Obviously, that did not work out well. They opened their establishment at the richer part of Gossols where the people are most likely going to buy well-known, name-brand clothing, and it was evident that they were not going to buy no-name brand clothing unless an A-list person went to their store and send praises for their store. It is hard to put out expertise in the market where people are always judging it by popular demand and well-known quality.

What I am trying to say in this blog entry is that women are usually bounded in their homes doing household duties and it is the men’s job to go out and financially provide for the family. The narrator is using Mary as an exception to the gender roles, and she debunks them by trying to be more independent and finding her own way of living. She is not married and does not have children, so she should pursue her goals while she has the “free” time to do so. Even today, we partake jobs that we do not want to take so we able to provide for ourselves, and when something better comes along, we take that opportunity and try to make the best of it. It is one of the many ways of American living and we can see that through Mary’s experiences.

In Wednesday’s class, we discussed how the narrator places so much emphasis on the “many millions of every kind” of things from types of living to people there are to classify the characters in the story, and one group of characters in particular is the Shillings. They are the Hersland’s neighbors that consist of the mother, Mrs. Shillings and daughters, Sophie and Pauline. The set of passages (pp. 77 – 84) caught my attention because the narrator places some kind of double standard on physical appearance. Sophie and Mrs. Shillings are “fatter” women, whereas Pauline is the outcast because she is thinner. It seems as though the narrator is pushing the message that “Bigger is better” because the text says, “There have been always many millions made just like the mother and the fatter sister Sophie Shilling but there have never been so many millions made together like the thinner sister Pauline Shilling” (Stein 81). I am uncertain about what constitutes as thin or fat in the book’s context, but since the narrator is speaking about passing down history to the next generations, I assume that the bigger women would have it easier giving birth, meaning that they were healthier than the thinner women. If this is the case, then it may pressure Pauline to become fatter so she can feel a sense of belonging in her family.

The text does not specify who the older sibling is, but regardless of age, Sophie shares their mother’s image, so it seems that she has more power over Pauline than the other way around. However, they are both insecure of each other to the point where you read their internal feelings and thoughts, but there is no dialogue anywhere. The narrator constantly repeats about the insides of people, and in Sophie and Pauline’s case, the fear of judgment is inside them. They are uncertain about what to say to each other’s appearance because they do not have any external contacts that judge them, and from what I read not even the mother judges them; therefore, their fears are rumbling in their insides. I realize that these women do not know how to express their emotions, but I am not sure how to make of this. I guess this instance is debunking the stereotype that women are supposed to be the very emotional sex, but their “conveyed” emotions are not revealed to each other.

I also noticed that the book distinguishes the gender difference of “fatness” for women and “bigness” for men. I am not sure what difference it makes, but my guess is that in a masculine standpoint, David Hersland’s “bigness” (his strength) is used as a security blanket in order to defend from people who irritate him; in a feminine standpoint, however, fatness proves how healthy the woman is so she is able to give birth. From what I have read so far, the narrator places emphasis on the woman’s appearance more than the men’s appearance because even earlier in the text, there is a woman that no one knows about her history, except that she had three children and her appearance was old and wooden, like a tree. The men, however, are described by their abilities and feelings more than anything else. It reminds me of how people today take on different trends and everyone judges each other internally and externally. I think that women have it worse though because products and services are constantly thrown at us in order to become beautiful. Men, not so much. The Shillings do not have a trend to follow, but they are still self-conscious about themselves. If their feelings about each other are not expressed, then their fear of judgment will constantly fill their insides and it will repeat day after day.

- Michelle

Composition as Explanation

Gertrude Stein 

First delivered by the author as a lecture at Cambridge and Oxford, this essay was first published by the Hogarth Press in London in 1926 and revived in the volume called What Are Masterpieces.

There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.

It is very likely that nearly every one has been very nearly certain that something that is interesting is interesting them. Can they and do they. It is very interesting that nothing inside in them, that is when you consider the very long history of how every one ever acted or has felt, it is very interesting that nothing inside in them in all of them makes it connectedly different. By this I mean this. The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything. This makes the thing we are looking at very different and this makes what those who describe it make of it, it makes a composition, it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen. Nothing changes from generation to generation except the thing seen and that makes a composition. Lord Grey remarked that when the generals before the war talked about the war they talked about it as a nineteenth century war although to be fought with twentieth century weapons. That is because war is a thing that decides how it is to be when it is to be done. It is prepared and to that degree it is like all academies it is not a thing made by being made it is a thing prepared. Writing and painting and all that, is like that, for those who occupy themselves with it and don’t make it as it is made. Now the few who make it as it is made, and it is to be remarked that the most decided of them usually are prepared just as the world around them is preparing, do it in this way and so I if you do not mind I will tell you how it happens. Naturally one does not know how it happened until it is well over beginning happening.

To come back to the part that the only thing that is different is what is seen when it seems to be being seen, in other words, composition and time-sense.

No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that  is contemporaries who also are creating their own time refuse to accept. And they refuse to accept it for a very simple reason and that is that they do not have to accept it for any reason. They themselves that is everybody in their entering the modern composition and they do enter it, if they do not enter it they are not so to speak in it they are out of it and so they do enter it; but in as you may say the non-competitive efforts where if you are not in it nothing is lost except nothing at all except what is not had, there are naturally all the refusals, and the things refused are only  important if unexpectedly somebody happens to need them. In the case of the arts it is very definite. Those who are creating the modern composition authentically are naturally only of importance when they are dead because by that time the modern composition having become past is classified and the description of it is classical. That is the reason why the creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic, there is hardly a moment in between and it is really too bad very much too bad naturally for the creator but also very much too bad for the enjoyer, they all really would enjoy the created so much better just after it has been made than when it is already a classic, but it is perfectly simple that there is no reason why the contemporaries should see, because it would not make any difference as they lead their lives in the new composition anyway, and as every one is naturally indolent why naturally they don’t see. For this reason as in quoting Lord Grey it is quite certain that nations not actively threatened are at least several generations behind themselves militarily so aesthetically they are more than several generations behind themselves and it is very much too bad, it is so very much more exciting and satisfactory for everybody if one can have contemporaries, if all one’s contemporaries could be one’s contemporaries.

There is almost not an interval.

For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling. Now the only difficulty with the volte-face concerning the arts is this. When the acceptance comes, by that acceptance the thing created becomes a classic. It is a natural phenomena a rather extraordinary natural phenomena that a thing accepted becomes a classic. And what is the characteristic quality of a classic. The characteristic quality of a classic is that it is beautiful. Now of course it is perfectly true that a more or less first rate work of art is beautiful but the trouble is that when that first rate work of art becomes a classic because it is accepted the only thing that is important from then on to the majority of the acceptors the enormous majority, the most intelligent majority of the acceptors is that it is so wonderfully beautiful. Of course it is wonderfully beautiful, only when it is still a thing irritating annoying stimulating then all quality of beauty is denied to it.

Of course it is beautiful but first all beauty in it is denied and then all the beauty of it is accepted. If every one were not so indolent they would realise that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic. Of course it is extremely difficult nothing more so than to remember back to its not being beautiful once it has become beautiful. This makes it so much more difficult to realise its beauty when the work is being refused and prevents every one from realising that they were convinced that beauty was denied, once the work is accepted. Automatically with the acceptance of the time-sense comes the recognition of the beauty and once the beauty is accepted the beauty never fails any one.

Beginning again and again is a natural thing even when there is a series.

Beginning again and again and again explaining composition and time is a natural thing.

It is understood by this time that everything is the same except composition and time, composition and the time of the composition and the time in the composition.

Everything is the same except composition and as the composition is different and always going to be different everything is not the same. Everything is not the same as the time when of the composition and the time in the composition is different. The composition is different, that is certain.

The composition is the thing seen by every one living in the living they are doing, they are the composing of the composition that at the time they are living in the composition of the time in which they are living. It is that that makes living a thing they are doing. Nothing else is different, of that almost any one can be certain. The time when and the time of and the time in that composition is the natural phenomena of that composition and of that perhaps every one can be certain.

No one thinks these things when they are making when they are creating what is the composition, naturally no one thinks, that is no one formulates until what is to be formulated has been made.

Composition is not there, it is going to be there and we are here. This is some time ago for us naturally.

The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything. This makes the thing we are looking at very different and this makes what those who describe it make of it, it makes a composition, it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen. Nothing changes from generation to generation except the thing seen and that makes a composition.

Now the few who make writing as it is made and it is to be remarked that the most decided of them are those that are prepared by preparing, are prepared just as the world around them is prepared and is preparing to do it in this way and so if you do not mind I will again tell you how it happens. Naturally one does not know how it happened until it is well over beginning happening.

Each period of living differs from any other period of living not in the way life is but in the way life is conducted and that authentically speaking is composition. After life has been conducted in a certain way everybody knows it but nobody knows it, little by little, nobody knows it as long as nobody knows it. Any one creating the composition in the arts does not know it either, they are conducting life and that makes their composition what it is, it makes their work compose as it does.

Their influence and their influences are the same as that of all of their contemporaries only it must always be remembered that the analogy is not obvious until as I say the composition of a time has become so pronounced that it is past and the artistic composition of it is a classic.

And now to begin as if to begin. Composition is not there, it is going to be there and we are here. This is some time ago for us naturally. There is something to be added afterwards.

Just how much my work is known to you I do not know. I feel that perhaps it would be just as well to tell the whole of it.

In beginning writing I wrote a book called Three Lives this was written in 1905. I wrote a negro story called Melanctha. In that there was a constant recurring and beginning there was a marked direction in the direction of being in the present although naturally I had been accustomed to past present and future, and why, because the composition forming around me was a prolonged present. A composition of a prolonged present is a natural composition in the world as it has been these thirty years it was more and more a prolonged present. I created then a prolonged present naturally I knew nothing of a continuous present but it came naturally to me to make one, it was simple it was clear to me and nobody knew why it was done like that I did not myself although naturally to me it was natural.

After that I did a book called The Making of Americans it is a long book about a thousand pages. 

Here again it was all so natural to me and more and more complicatedly a continuous present. A continuous present is a continuous present. I made almost a thousand pages of a continuous present.

Continuous present is one thing and beginning again and again is another thing. These are both things. And then there is using everything.

This brings us again to composition this the using everything. The using everything brings us to composition and to this composition. A continuous present and using everything and beginning again. In these two books there was elaboration of the complexities of using everything and of a continuous present and of beginning again and again and again.

In the first book there was a groping for a continuous present and for using everything by beginning again and again.

There was a groping for using everything and there was a groping for a continuous present and there was an inevitable beginning of beginning again and again and again.

Having naturally done this I naturally was a little troubled with it when I read it. I became then like the others who read it. One does, you know, excepting that when I reread it myself I lost myself in it again. Then I said to myself this time it will be different and I began. I did not begin again I just began.

In this beginning naturally since I at once went on and on very soon there were pages and pages and pages more and more elaborated creating a more and more continuous present including more and more using of everything and continuing more and more beginning and beginning and beginning.

I went on and on to a thousand pages of it.

The problem from this time on became more definite.

It was all so nearly alike it must be different and it is different, it is natural that if everything is used and there is a continuous present and a beginning again and again if it is all so alike it must be simply different and everything simply different was the natural way of creating it then.

In this natural way of creating it then that it was simply different everything being alike it was simply different, this kept on leading one to lists. Lists naturally for a while and by lists I mean a series. More and more in going back over what was done at this time I find that I naturally kept simply different as an intention. Whether there was or whether there was not a continuous present did not then any longer trouble me there was or there was not, and using everything no longer troubled me if everything is alike using everything could no longer trouble me and beginning again and again could no longer trouble me because if lists were inevitable if series were inevitable and the whole of it was inevitable beginning again and again could not trouble me so then with nothing to trouble me I very completely began naturally since everything is alike making it as simply different naturally as simply different as possible. I began doing natural phenomena what I call natural phenomena and natural phenomena naturally everything being alike natural phenomena are making things be naturally simply different. This found its culmination later, in the beginning it began in a center confused with lists with series with geography with returning portraits and with particularly often four and three and often with five and four. It is easy to see that in the beginning such a conception as everything being naturally different would be very inarticulate and very slowly it began to emerge and take form of anything, and then naturally if anything that is simply different is simply different what follows will follow.

So far then the progress of my conceptions was the natural progress entirely in accordance with my epoch as I am sure is to be quite easily realised if you think over the scene that was before us all from year to year.

As I said in the beginning, there is the long history of how every one ever acted or has felt and that nothing inside in them in all of them makes it connectedly different. By this I mean all this.

The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything.

It is understood by this time that everything is the same except composition and time, composition and the time of the composition and the time in the composition.

Everything is the same except composition and as the composition is different and always going to be different everything is not the same. So then I as a contemporary creating the composition in the beginning was groping toward a continuous present, a using everything a beginning again and again and then everything being alike then everything very simply everything was naturally simply different and so I as a contemporary was creating everything being alike was creating everything naturally being naturally simply different, everything being alike. This then was the period that brings me to the period of the beginning of 1914. Everything being alike everything naturally would be simply different and war came and everything being alike and everything being simply different brings everything being simply different brings it to romanticism.

Romanticism is then when everything being alike everything is naturally simply different, and romanticism.

Then for four years this was more and more different even though this was, was everything alike. Everything alike naturally everything was simply different and this is and was romanticism and this is and was war. Everything being alike everything naturally everything is different simply different naturally simply different.

And so there was the natural phenomena that was war, which had been, before war came, several generations behind the contemporary composition, because it became war and so completely needed to be contemporary became completely contemporary and so created the completed recognition of the contemporary composition. Every one but one may say every one became consciously became aware of the existence of the authenticity of the modern composition. This then the contemporary recognition, because of the academic thing known as war having been forced to become contemporary made every one not only contemporary in act not only contemporary in thought but contemporary in self-consciousness made every one contemporary with the modem composition. And so the art creation of the contemporary composition which would have been outlawed normally outlawed several generations more behind even than war, war having been brought so to speak up to date art so to speak was allowed not completely to be up to date, but nearly up to date, in other words we who created the expression of the modem composition were to be recognized before we were dead some of us even quite a long time before we were dead. And so war may be said to have advanced a general recognition of the expression of the contemporary composition by almost thirty years.

And now after that there is no more of that in other words there is peace and something comes then and it follows coming then.

And so now one finds oneself interesting oneself in an equilibration, that of course means words as well as things and distribution as well as between themselves between the words and themselves and the things and themselves, a distribution as distribution. This makes what follows what follows and now there is every reason why there should be an arrangement made. Distribution is interesting and equilibration is interesting when a continuous present and a beginning again and again and using everything and everything alike and everything naturally simply different has been done.

After all this, there is that, there has been that that there, is a composition and that nothing changes except composition the composition and the time of and the time in the composition.

The time of the composition is a natural thing and the time in the composition is a natural thing it is a natural thing and it is a contemporary thing.

The time of the composition is the time of the composition. It has been at times a present thing it has been at times a past thing it has been at times a future thing it has been at times an endeavour at parts or all of these things. In my beginning it was a continuous present a beginning again and again and again and again, it was a series it was a list it was a similarity and everything different it was a distribution and an equilibration. That is all of the time some of the time of the composition.

Now there is still something else the time-sense in the composition. This is what is always a fear a doubt and a judgement and a conviction. The quality in the creation of expression the quality in a composition that makes it go dead just after it has been made is very troublesome.

The time in the composition is a thing that is very troublesome. If the time in the composition is very troublesome it is because there must even if there is no time at all in the composition there must be time in the composition which is in its quality of distribution and equilibration. In the beginning there was the time in the composition that naturally was in the composition but time in the composition comes now and this is what is now troubling every one the time in the composition is now a part of distribution and equilibration. In the beginning there was confusion there was a continuous present and later there was romanticism which was not a confusion but an extrication and now there is either succeeding or failing there must be distribution and equilibration there must be time that is distributed and equilibrated. This is the thing that is at present the most troubling and if there is the time that is at present the most troublesome the time-sense that is at present the most troubling is the thing that makes the present the most troubling. There is at present there is distribution, by this I mean expression and time, and in this way at present composition is time that is the reason that at present the time-sense is troubling that is the reason why at present the time-sense in the composition is the composition that is making what there is in composition.

And afterwards.

Now that is all.

And after that what changes what changes after that, after that what changes and what changes after that and after that and what changes and after that and what changes after that.