"The Making of Americans", Gertrude Stein

Biography

On February 3, 1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (USA), Gertrude Stein was born to upper-class Jewish parents, being the youngest of five children. In 1903, Stein moved to Paris, where she lived and wrote until the end of her days (July 27, 1946).

Initially, Gertrude Stein bought and kept a studio along with Leo, one of her brothers. Later on, she met her life partner, Alice B. Toklas. Pablo Picasso was also one of Stein’s greatest friends and influences.

In the USA, Stein studied under psychologist William James at Radcliffe College—an annex of Harvard University— and at Johns Hopkins, performing experiments on normal motor automatism, which yielded examples of writing that appeared to represent "stream of consciousness".

In fact, science itself, as well as some elements of naturalism, namely objectivity (or objectivity of abstraction[1]), a tendency for description and an interest for minorities and the marginalized (perhaps such as herself to some extent: a Jewish, immigrant-descendant, lesbian, feminist), seem to feature in some of Stein’s early works.

Writing Style

Following the 20^th century literary trend to reconstruct form and language, and trying to escape from the idea that everything must bear meaning, must have a beginning, a middle and an end, Gertrude Stein created a peculiar literary style. So peculiar and particular that it came to be known as Steinese.

Steinese is thought-provoking and open-ended, as it leaves it to the reader to decide on what to conclude from the writings. And Stein’s reader is indeed an active participant.

There are different phases to Steinese, but one of the most important characteristics of its initial phases is the fact it was meant to become the literary equivalent to cubism, as Stein tried to incorporate some plasticity to her writings. She aimed at creating movement and passing on the idea that getting to know and understanding something or someone is a process, one which takes times and requires repetition (or "insistence" to use her words).

This «gnomic, repetitive, illogical and sparsely punctuated»[2] style was used in works such as Tender Buttons and The Making of Americans (although these books represent different phases of Steinese):

Then also there is the important question of repetition and is there any such thing. Is there repetition or is there insistence. I am inclined to believe there is no such thing as repetition. And really how can there be.... once started expressing this thing, expressing anything there can be no repetition because the essence of that expression is insistence, and if you insist you must each time use emphasis and if you use emphasis it is not possible while anybody is alive that they should use exactly the same emphasis. (Gertrude Stein, “Portraits and Repetition”)

Her friendship with Picasso — and the influence of his cubist art, along with the previously mentioned experiments — played a vital role in Stein’s writing style and her being an “experimental” modernist.

Reading Steinese is much like viewing cubist art. Stein and Pablo Picasso were friends, and when Picasso introduced his cubist paintings around 1909, Stein began implementing cubist styles into her own work” | “In order to make any sense at all of her rambling writing style, her reader absolutely must be an active participant.” | “ln Stein's The Making of Americans, she got rid of nouns and adjectives as much as possible by the method of living in adverbs in verbs in pronouns in adverbial clauses written or implied and in conjunctions. (Nicole Williams and Amanda Morrish, “No Ordinary English: Gertrude Stein Defines Literacy”)

“A rose is a rose is a rose” is the perfect example of Steinese in action: only three different words are used in the sentence, repeated, but most likely not all of them are the same “rose”, so the reader is left with trying to interpret what Stein wanted to say with this, and “(…) what people loved they repeated, and what people repeated they loved”.

Language is plastic, but its plasticity must be informed and determined by the philosophy or, at least, by the information it conveys. In her earlier works, Gertrude Stein operated under this injunction naturally; but as she continued, her attraction to painting led her to wish for the same plastic freedom for literature were endowed with such freedom. ‘The painter,’ said Georges Braque, ‘knows things by sight; the writer, who knows them by name, profits by a prejudice in his favor.’ This was the profit Gertrude Stein threw away. (John Malcolm Brinnin, The Third Rose)

On The Making of Americans

This is the story, the history, and psychological development of the members of two fictional families: the Hersland and the Dehning.

In this novel, Stein includes frequent metafictional meditations—a part of which we tried to translate and analyze—on the process of writing. These meditations sometimes overtake the main narrative.

Essentially, The Making of Americans is the author’s attempt to describe every known type of human being, each one with their own essence and knowledge and the repetition that there is in them.

There is a history in all living beings, and Stein’s struggle seems to consist on slowly getting to know what is inside every one and hearing all the details and repetitions, to arrive at a completed understanding of the many different kinds of men and women that sometimes intertwine in a single human being. Her unusual use of the present participle is one of the most commonly noted features of the text.

As I was saying loving listening, hearing always all repeating, coming to completed understanding of each one is to some a natural way of being.

Como estava a dizer amar escutar, ouvir sempre e tudo repetir, chegar a um pleno entender de cada um é para alguns uma forma natural de ser.

Como dizia a adorar o que escutava, a ouvir sempre tudo quanto se repete, chegar a uma compreensão total de cada um é para alguns uma forma natural de ser.

Como ia dizendo amando escutando, ouvindo sempre tudo quanto se vai repetindo, chegar a um pleno entendimento de alguém é para alguns uma forma natural de ser.

 

Ana Catarina Brasil

João Lacerda Costa
 

Bibliography

Brinnin, John Malcom (1987). The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World. Radcliffe Biography Series.

Cecire, Natalie. Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge, 1880-1950. Retrieved from http://english.duke.edu/uploads/assets/cecire-stein.pdf (accessed on 07/12/2015).

Gopnik, Adam (2013, June 24). Understanding Steinese. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/understanding-steinese (accessed on 07/12/2015).

Secor, Cynthia. Gertrude Stein: Classroom Issues and Strategies. Retrieved from http://faculty.georgetown.edu/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/stein.html (accessed on 07/12/2015).

Stein, Gertrude (1971, September 8). Portraits and Repetition: an essay by Gertrude Stein (audio). Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/AM_1971_09_08_c2 (accessed on 07/12/2015).

Stein, Gertrude (1982) (introduction by F.W. Dupee) (edited by Carl Van Vechten). Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein. New York: Vintage Books - Random House.

Williams, Nicole and Morrish, Amanda (2006).  No Ordinary English: Gertrude Stein Defines Literacy. Undergraduate Review. Volume 2.  Article 5. Bridgewater State University. Retrieved from http://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev/vol2/iss1/5 (accessed on 07/12/2015).

 

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[1] Natalia Cecire, Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge, 1880-1950, retrieved from http://english.duke.edu/uploads/assets/cecire-stein.pdf

[2] F.W. Dupee, in introduction to The Selected Writings of Gretrude Stein (1972). New York: Vintage Books - Random House