Gertrude Stein delights and perplexes – just when we need it most

... as we head into what promises to be an absurd week

For today’s Literary Ladies Lite Sunday edition, I thought it would be good to bring some literary levity to the table. No matter the outcome of the election, half of this vast country is going to be unhappy. So let’s distract ourselves, even for a few minutes.

I think that Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946), sometimes known as “the godmother of the Lost Generation” is under-appreciated. Many people have heard the phrase “a rose is a rose is a rose,” or of her doting partner, Alice B. Toklas, who claimed not to have noticed that a recipe for hashish brownies had somehow slipped into her second cookbook.

In addition to poetry and novels, Stein also wrote plays, operas, and gave many lectures. Her experiments in prose, which may have originated with automatic writings, were highly influential. Some were considered “cubism in literature.”

Though some have described her writing as incoherent (was she punking the literary world with Tender Buttons?), others view it as a singular voice that had never seen the likes before or since.

Here’s a more serious quote, apropos to today’s zeitgeist:

“The one thing that everybody wants is to be free ... not to be managed, threatened, directed, restrained, obliged, fearful, administered, they want none of these things they all want to feel free … The only thing that any one wants now is to be free, to be let alone, to live their life as they can, but not to be watched, controlled, and scared, no no, not.” (September, 1943)

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Following is a selection of Gertrude Stein quotes, offering a window into her mind — some perplex, others delight, and some are a marriage of both.