Woke up in the middle of the night again (actually - first thing in the morning under Paris time) and wrote a bit and then started to read "Narration", the book that includes the four lectures Gertrude Stein gave in 1935 at the University ...of Chicago, during the trip that marked her first return to the States since her 1903 move to Paris. According to the back cover, these lectures cover her thoughts about the American people, literary form & modernism, the nature of history, and the "inventiveness of the English language." Knowing the nature of her writing and her life - I'm excited.
Also, this is the only Stein I didn't already own. Until I spotted it in Shakespeare and Company last week, I didn't know it existed.
Just into the introduction, I found some information that brought me to posting this status - apparently, Chicago was her favorite American City and she came back here four times! Also, she had her book signing at Marshall Fields, where it was so crowded that a Tribune reporter noted that she couldn't even get to the floor of the signing!
Know how many times I have walked by 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris where Gerturde lived with Alice b. Toklas? and now, there is the Chicago connection. Wow!!!i
I love her "Three Lives" and some day I may even be able to make sense out of "Tender Buttons", where she used words almost as a painter paints in the abstract - favoring verbs and prepositions over nouns, interested in the "melody and color" of the words as if doing a cubist painting with them (according to one description): examples: "Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke." a"Little eyelets that have hammer and a check with stripes between a lounge, in wit, in a rested development." (this last one is called "END OF SUMMER" would you believe).
Putting Tender Buttons right back on the Stein shelf. (There's a shop with that name by the way just north of the Loop. I think it actually sells buttons).
In the meantime, I'm reading her lectures. See More
Also, this is the only Stein I didn't already own. Until I spotted it in Shakespeare and Company last week, I didn't know it existed.
Just into the introduction, I found some information that brought me to posting this status - apparently, Chicago was her favorite American City and she came back here four times! Also, she had her book signing at Marshall Fields, where it was so crowded that a Tribune reporter noted that she couldn't even get to the floor of the signing!
Know how many times I have walked by 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris where Gerturde lived with Alice b. Toklas? and now, there is the Chicago connection. Wow!!!i
I love her "Three Lives" and some day I may even be able to make sense out of "Tender Buttons", where she used words almost as a painter paints in the abstract - favoring verbs and prepositions over nouns, interested in the "melody and color" of the words as if doing a cubist painting with them (according to one description): examples: "Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke." a"Little eyelets that have hammer and a check with stripes between a lounge, in wit, in a rested development." (this last one is called "END OF SUMMER" would you believe).
Putting Tender Buttons right back on the Stein shelf. (There's a shop with that name by the way just north of the Loop. I think it actually sells buttons).
In the meantime, I'm reading her lectures. See More
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