Gertrude Stein

So, for my linguistics class I had to give a presentation last Wednesday, so was busy preparing for it...and now I'd like to share a few words about Gertrude Stein, who I had to read for class and present on. I really like Gertrude Stein (so far, from the little I have read of her). Her prose style is very repetitive (cyclical might be a better word here) and seems almost convoluted. But it really isn't. Instead, the lines have a really nice rhythm from the repetition, and the style of her writing (by which, I mostly mean that the specific words she chooses help the rhythm). For instance, this excerpt from The Superstitions of Fre Anneday, Annday, Anday:

A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and soem dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a different always just a little different and that is what a novel is.

Anyway, I highly recommending reading some Gertrude Stein. Her prose (nonfiction) and poetry are both very lyrical (to me), although they also kind of give me the impresson of something vague, but at the same time, I understand what Stein is saying.

Hmmmm........specificity in vagueness.....

.......universality.......