gertrude stein, how to write
Mar. 3rd, 2004 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321I have discovered a wonderful book. It is called How to Write, by Gertrude Stein, written 1927-31. It is a tonic against the usual how-to-write prescriptive mavens.
Extracts:
A Sentence is not emotional a paragraph is. ...
What are adverbs. ... An adverb is a change. ...
A sentence has a as an article the as an article an as an article. A sentence has also a pause before they go. ...
A narrative means telling about Jefferson Williamson and Henderson. This is the substance of a narrative. She met Williamson Jefferson and Henderson. She was interested in meeting Jefferson Henderson and Williamson. ...
I love what she says about sentences and paragraphs. It is a short, cryptic statement but it is like the tip of a huge iceberg of years of thinking and pondering. And it's written from someone who was a doer, who struggled with the nuts and bolts of writing herself every day, and what else are sentences and paragraphs but the nuts and bolts of writing? Here is more on sentences and paragraphs, taken from Stein's Lectures in America (1934):
I once said in How To Write a book I wrote about Sentences and Paragraphs, that paragraphs were emotional and sentences were not. Paragraphs are emotional nto because they express an emotion but because they register or limit an emotion. Compare paragraphs with sentences any paragraph or any sentence and you will see what I mean. ...
In a book I wrote called How To Write Imade a discovery which I considered fundamental, that sentences are not emotional and that paragraphs are. I found out about language that paragraphs are emotional and sentences are not and I found out something else about it. I found out that this difference was not a contradiction but a combination and that this combination causes one to think endlessly about sentences and paragraphs because the emotional paragraphs are made up of unemotional sentences. ...
Oh, how resonant that is: the emotional paragraphs that are made up of unemotional sentences! I'm not sure I know entirely what it means but it speaks to me, somehow, and seems to make sense in a weird way. I will think and think about and see if I can figure out what it might mean for me.
Arthur a grammar.
Questionaire in question.
What is a question.
Twenty questions.
A grammar is an astrakhan coat in black and other colors it is an obliging management of their requesting in indulgence made mainly as if in predicament as in occasion made plainly as if in serviceable does it shine.
A question and answer.
How do you like it.
Grammar can be contained on account of their providing medaling in a ground of allowing with or without meant because which made coupled become blanketed with a candidly increased just as if in predicting example of which without meant and coupled inclined as much without meant to be thought as if it were as ably rested too. Considerable as it counted heavily in part.
What is grammar when they make it round and round. As round as they are called.
ETA: And narrative means telling about Jefferson Williamson and Henderson. Well, if that isn't defining narrative as one big slashy threesome, I don't know what it is!!! She met Williamson Jefferson and Henderson. Yeah, and if that she isn't a Mary Sue, my name is Henderson.
*howls*
Extracts:
A Sentence is not emotional a paragraph is. ...
What are adverbs. ... An adverb is a change. ...
A sentence has a as an article the as an article an as an article. A sentence has also a pause before they go. ...
A narrative means telling about Jefferson Williamson and Henderson. This is the substance of a narrative. She met Williamson Jefferson and Henderson. She was interested in meeting Jefferson Henderson and Williamson. ...
I love what she says about sentences and paragraphs. It is a short, cryptic statement but it is like the tip of a huge iceberg of years of thinking and pondering. And it's written from someone who was a doer, who struggled with the nuts and bolts of writing herself every day, and what else are sentences and paragraphs but the nuts and bolts of writing? Here is more on sentences and paragraphs, taken from Stein's Lectures in America (1934):
I once said in How To Write a book I wrote about Sentences and Paragraphs, that paragraphs were emotional and sentences were not. Paragraphs are emotional nto because they express an emotion but because they register or limit an emotion. Compare paragraphs with sentences any paragraph or any sentence and you will see what I mean. ...
In a book I wrote called How To Write Imade a discovery which I considered fundamental, that sentences are not emotional and that paragraphs are. I found out about language that paragraphs are emotional and sentences are not and I found out something else about it. I found out that this difference was not a contradiction but a combination and that this combination causes one to think endlessly about sentences and paragraphs because the emotional paragraphs are made up of unemotional sentences. ...
Oh, how resonant that is: the emotional paragraphs that are made up of unemotional sentences! I'm not sure I know entirely what it means but it speaks to me, somehow, and seems to make sense in a weird way. I will think and think about and see if I can figure out what it might mean for me.
Arthur a grammar.
Questionaire in question.
What is a question.
Twenty questions.
A grammar is an astrakhan coat in black and other colors it is an obliging management of their requesting in indulgence made mainly as if in predicament as in occasion made plainly as if in serviceable does it shine.
A question and answer.
How do you like it.
Grammar can be contained on account of their providing medaling in a ground of allowing with or without meant because which made coupled become blanketed with a candidly increased just as if in predicting example of which without meant and coupled inclined as much without meant to be thought as if it were as ably rested too. Considerable as it counted heavily in part.
What is grammar when they make it round and round. As round as they are called.
ETA: And narrative means telling about Jefferson Williamson and Henderson. Well, if that isn't defining narrative as one big slashy threesome, I don't know what it is!!! She met Williamson Jefferson and Henderson. Yeah, and if that she isn't a Mary Sue, my name is Henderson.
*howls*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-03 06:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-03 11:14 pm (UTC)Yes. *laughs* Even though I keep hoping that if I stare at her sentences long enough, the sense will sink in osmotically.
It's sort of working.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-03 08:18 pm (UTC)But I will feel more kindly towards her because of J F W and their Mary Sue.
(Is there a single literary theorist you haven't read in the light of slash? Derridean debordement, anyone?)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-03 11:15 pm (UTC)Is there a single literary theorist you haven't read in the light of slash?
*bursts out laughing loudly*
Well, probably not. Only those ones whom I read before I discovered slash!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-03 11:17 pm (UTC)"Oh, Jacques, you take the risk of thinking so beautifully. Let me stroke your ample silver hair."
"Paws off, Michel, and don't keep stepping on my toes with your leather boots."
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-04 01:17 pm (UTC)Now imagining JD pillowtalk, as horribly full of tricksy coinages, parentheses and typographic innovations.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-04 07:59 pm (UTC)"Oh, shut up, Derrie, and stop trying to escape the Law of the Father. And by the by, that a of yours is still looking pretty petit and not as grand as my own big fat A, you path(etic) hommelette."