"I am all unhappy in this writing. I know very much of the meaning of the being in men and women. I know it and feel it and I am always learning more of it and now I am telling it and I am nervous and driving and unhappy in it. Sometimes I will be all happy in it." p348This is not the novel I thought it was. At least, I chose to read it as other. This is the voice of uncertainty, of isolation and confusion, of a desperate attempt to understand through categorisation. The narrator is caught between a desire to map out the "kinds" in people, to delineate and "tell" the arrangement of discrete pieces which comprise Being, and the recognition that this is impossible. " Alas, I say then, alas, I will perhaps not ever really ever be knowing all the repeating coming out of each one….I am desolate because I am certainly not hearing all repeating." There is a mania here. And a despair. "It makes me a little unhappy that everything is a little funny. It makes me a little unhappy that many things are funny and peculiar and strange to me. It makes me a little unhappy that everything and everyone is sometime a little queer to me. It makes me a little unhappy that every one seems sometime almost a little crazy. It does make me a little unhappy that every one sometime is a queer one to me. It does make me sometime a little uncertain, it does sometimes make me very uncertain about everything and always then it is perplexing what is certain what is not certain, who is a queer one, what is a funny thing for some one to be wanting or not wanting or doing or not doing or thinking or not thinking or believing or not believing. " She has always already failed in her self-appointed task. At times I thought of "Not I" by Beckett. The voice here is certainly a speaking one. Hearing it in my head as I read made the process much more bearable."Always repeating is all of living, everything that is being is always repeating, more and more listening to repeating gives to me completed understanding. Each one then slowly comes to be a whole one to me, each one slowly comes to be a whole one in me, slowly it sounds louder and louder and louder inside me through my ears and eyes and feelings and the talking there is always in me, the repeating that is the whole of each one I come to know around, and each one of them then comes to be a whole one to me, comes to be a whole one in me. Loving repeating is one way of being. This is now a description of such being." She is a finder of patterns, a watcher and a recorder. She is separate. She is alone. There is much anguish here, a fact which those who accuse her of arrogance or superiority simply fail to understand. This is a text of madness. A text of genius, yes, but not one in full control of itself. What does it mean for someone without a family to write so extensively about the familial? Remember Stein's mother died when she was 14, her father when she was 17. As a lesbian, of course, in 1900, she was severely isolated from "ordinary" men and women. Her preoccupation with death, with "dead ones" at the end of the novel is surely no coincidence. "Perhaps no one ever will know the complete history of every one. This is a sad thing. Perhaps no one will ever have as a complete thing the history of any one. This is a very sad thing....This is very discouraging thinking. I am very sad now in this feeling." And we are always in the moment in the melancholy, all these present participles, passive verbs, and intransitives means that this Being is always a doing, an extension out into time. We are in the midst of a failing, we are listening to a failing and a breaking: "Every one has experiencing in being one being living. I am saddening with not feeling each one being experiencing as each one is having that living. I am saddening with this thing. There are so many being in living and there are so many that I am knowing by seeing and hearing being in living and each one of these is experiencing in being living and I cannot be feeling what way each one is experiencing, I who am suffering and suffering because of this thing. I am in desolation and my eyes are large with needing weeping and I have a flush from feverish feeling and I am not knowing what way each one is experiencing in being living and about some I am knowing in a general way and I could be knowing in a more complete way if I could be living more with that one and I never will live more with every one, I certainly cannot ever live with each one in their being one being living, in my being one being living. I tell you I cannot bear it this thing that I cannot be realising experiencing in reach one being living, I say it again and again I cannot let myself be really resting in believing this thing, it is in me now as when I am realising being a dead one, a one being dying and I can do this thing and I do this thing and I am filled then with complete desolation and I am doing this thing again and again and I am now again and again certain that I will not ever be realising experiencing in each one of the very many men and very many women…" ********************This was the hardest book I have ever read. And, to put it in context, this means she is competing with Finnegans Wake, Miss Macintosh, Being and Time and the complete works of William Gaddis and Joseph McElroy.Its difficulty comes not from the language really, and certainly not the words (which are short and simple) but from the shear SLOG of the whole thing. I was, at times, bored with it. This may well be my fault. It is a great work of art, for sure, and one I am very glad I read, but certainly not one I will be traveling through for a second time...That is fails is part of the point, as should be clear from the quotes above, but at times it is simply too much to take... Regarding all the repetition (as this is probably the most commented upon factor), it is useful to note her own comments here: From Stein's lecture On the Making of the Making of Americans: "I then began again to think about the bottom nature in people, I began to get enormously interested in hearing how everybody said the same thing over and over again with infinite variations but over and over again until finally if you listened with great intensity you could hear it rise and fall and tell all that that there was inside them, not so much by the actual words they said or the thoughts they had but the movement of their thoughts and words endlessly the same and endlessly different...... When I was up against the difficulty of putting down the complete conception that I had of an individual, the complete rhythm of a personality that I had gradually acquired by listening seeing feeling and experience, I was faced by the trouble that I had acquired all this knowledge gradually but when I had it I had it completely at one time. Now that may never have been a trouble to you but it was a terrible trouble to me. And a great deal of The Making of Americans was a struggle to do this thing, to make a whole present of something that it had taken a great deal of time to find out, but it was a whole there then within me and as such it had to be said" ***********From page 343 - an example of the difficulty and the beauty and the psychology/philosophy: "The way I feel natures in men and women is this way then. To begin then with one general kind of them, this a resisting earthy slow kind of them, anything entering into them as a sensation must emerge again from through the slow resisting bottom of them to be an emotion in them. This is a kind of them. This bottom in them then in some can be solid, in some frozen, in some dried and cracked, in some muddy and engulfing, in some thicker, in some thinner, slimier, drier, very dry and not so dry and in some a stimulation entering into the surface that is them to make an emotion does not get into it, the mass then that is them, to be swallowed up in it to be emerging, in some it is swallowed up and never then is emerging. Now all these kinds of ways of being are existing and sometime there will be examples of all these ways of being, now all these ways of being have it in common that there is not in them a quick and poignant reaction, it must be an entering and then an emerging mostly taking some time in the doing, the quickest of these then are such of them where the mud is dry and almost wooden, where the mud has become dry and almost wooden, or metallic in them and it is a surface denting a stimulation gives to them or else there is a surface that is not dry and the rest is dry and it is only the surface of the whole mass that is that one of which there has been any penetrating, and in some in whom the whole mass of the being is taking part in the reaction in some of such of them habit, mind strongly acting can make it go quicker and quicker the deep sinking and emerging. This is then a kind of them, the resisting kind of them, and there are many kinds of that kind of them. This is a very sure way of grouping kinds in men and women. I know it and I see men and women by it. Mostly to any one new it means nothing. I will begin again then this explaining. "**********************There is also, as one would expect, some good gender politics in here too, and some excellent analysis of certain kinds of male-ness. From page 87: "A woman to content him could never be outside him, she could never be an ideal to him, she could never have in her a real power for him. With men, outside him, there was for him a need in him to fight with them. A woman could never be for him anything outside him, unless as one who could in a practical way be useful to him as his sister Martha had always been and now she had been useful to him and made a marriage for him, had found a wife for him who was pleasing to him, who had come out with him to Gossols to content him. Such a woman as his sister was for him, was like any other object in the world around him, a thing useful to him or not existing for him, like a chair in his house to sit in or the engine that drew the train in the direction in which he needed just then to be going. Such a woman as his sister Martha, as a woman could never be interesting to him, nor any other woman who remained outside him, either when she could be to him an ideal for him or a power in any way over him, not that some women with power in them were not attractive to him, but with such a kind of woman, and he met them often in his living and they had power with him, such a woman always did it for him by entering into him by brilliant seductive managing and so she was a part of him, even though she was apart from him, and so she had power with him. Such a one until he would be an old man and the strength in him was weakening and the things he had in him did not make inside him a completely tight filling and so things outside him could a little more enter into him, until he would come to be an old man and the need in him would come to be more a senile feeling, an old man's need of something to complete him, such a one could never come to be a wife to him, could never be a woman to be his wife and content him. He needed such a woman as his sister Martha had found for him, a woman who was to him, inside him and appealing, whose power over him was never more than a joke to him, who sometimes when a sense for beauty stirred in him was a flower to him, whom he often could forget that she was existing, who never in any big way was resisting, and so she never needed fighting, was always to himself a part of him and inside in him, and so in every kind of way she was contenting to him. " ****************In summary, if the quotes above have interested you, I would certainly suggest giving it a try - it seems that either she clicks with a reader or she does not...But I certainly do not think her work should be ignored or casually dismissed.
This book is ostensibly a history of three generations of two wealthy families (and everyone they ever knew or knew them), but anyone expecting a Buddenbrooks type novel should be forewarned. Among other things, The Making of Americans is a philosophical and poetic meditation on identity, on what it means to be human living an everyday, mundane life.The narrator utilizes an ever growing list of categories to be able to understand all kinds of men and women, to someday write a history of all types of men and women. These categories are mostly abstract, sometimes bordering on incomprehensibility. For example hundreds of pages are devoted to describing independent dependent/attacking vs. dependent independent/resisting being, the meaning of which can be intuitive at times but never adequately explained. Dozens of different kinds of being are explored in the 900+ pages. Adjectives don’t really apply in this universe. Everything is recast into a state of being. For example, characters are not sweet or sad or angry, they have sweetness in them, are sad ones, or have angry feeling.Repetition, or rather repeating – always there is a focus on the present tense – forms the basis of the narrator’s knowledge. Every one always is repeating the whole of them . And again: always repeating is all of living, everything in a being is always repeating, more and more listening to repeating gives to me completed understanding.Not only does one repeat oneself in all one’s actions throughout life, all individuals essentially repeat others: So it goes on always in living, every one is always remembering some one who is resembling to the one at whom they are then looking. So they go on repeating, every one is themselves inside them and every one is resembling to others. This focus on repetition calls into question the very concept of individuality so central to American mythology.Repetition, of course, is the key aesthetic device. As other reviewers have mentioned, the book can sometimes be infuriatingly repetitive, nonsensical, tedious, at times appearing to be hundreds of pages too long (although by the same logic perhaps hundreds of pages too short). Despite the size, this book probably contains fewer unique words than most books a fraction of its size. Stein explains her radical method:To be using a new word in my writing is to me a very difficult thing. Every word I am ever using in writing has for me very existing being. Using a word I have not yet been using in my writing is to me very difficult and a peculiar feeling. Sometimes I am using a new one, sometimes I feel new meanings in an old one, sometimes I like one I am very fond of that one one that has many meanings many ways of being used to make different meanings to every one. Sometimes I like it, almost always I like it when I am feeling many ways of using one word in writing. Sometimes I like it that different ways of emphasizing can make very different meanings in a phrase or sentence I have made and am rereading.While this was a tough read, I was completely entranced for most of the book. It’s like sitting through one extremely long Morton Feldman piece –limited sound palette, no real development to speak of, but with small changes, outbreaks of tremendous beauty. On a superficial level it sounds static, but when listening closely to the detail, everything sounds brand new. The book starts off concretely and slowly becomes more and more abstract until the end where the language is pure music.Surely this book should sit alongside Moby-Dick as a classic of American literature.
What do You think about The Making Of Americans (1995)?
Yes, this book really struck a chord with me. And perhaps it did so because I don’t see any of my Goodreads friends having read it yet, which is a problem I have connecting individually with a book when I see what others already thought about it- or even that they did think about it first. All I can then think of is someone else understanding it more, enjoying it more- or in the case that I’m enjoying it more, the imaginary reader tears the book apart with their superior intellect, and I’m an idiot for connecting with something so superficial and “done better by someone else”. But this is no other reader’s fault, this is simply my own inadequacy.Anyway! Taking The Tunnel from the shelf and reading a page or two while making a cup of tea, I get it! It’s not meant to be inaccessible- ‘If you’re not in the present, where the hell are you?’ says Gass somewhere in there. This is Stein’s argument and my argument too!Re-reading my favourite section from Infinite Jest (which is the second section of the book about the guy waiting for the female weed dealer- yeah for me it’s pretty much downhill from there) I get it! While Stein creates the encyclopaedic present, the idyllic present we should all be living in where every thing and every one is in tune, Wallace creates the horrific present through repetition- because that’s the kind of guy he was. Proust creates an impressionistic present that it is a joy to live in (so I’m told- I’m not yet convinced, but Stein has armed me with new eyes- Proust would approve). This is how a book becomes an experience and not a story. Halfway through In Search of Lost Time, I get it! Does the title not mean trying to re-create that history, that past, that “lost time” and re-live it as if you were fully there, every detail and sense fully realised and experienced? Gaddis pointed this out in The Recognitions...Is this maybe why everyone’s enjoying Karl Ove so much?Thanks so much Ms Stein!The Making of Americans is the experience of (I hear this, I really do) a Joycean synechdoche- in his case the argument that in the city of Dublin was the infinite, in Stein’s case the idea that one family can represent all families, that one person can represent the entirety of people. But this is not a book so much about insight or progression, it is an experience. You will not find the same wealth of literary tricks that Ulysses contains, or the same depth of character: this is about simplicity, concentration, understanding. So perhaps it was a mistake of Stein’s to compare this to Ulysses or In Search of Lost Time in that there is no relation in how these books carry out their argument.And I love the accessibility of the language: it is never a chore to read, as it is about developing a mindset and not presenting the reader with new words or sudden events or important snippets of dialogue, just about full concentration, which requires no distractions. Stein still wants to impress you in the immature way that most writers inevitably do, but she goes about it differently. She goes about it through demonstration of her own endurance and her test of yours.Her choice of tense is very careful: she was clearly aware of the effects outlined in this article. Language and tense can affect your perception of time- in this case, as much as we might wish to stray, we are brought back always to the present. This is the experience of being in tune with the world, being in the present. I see I’m doing it too.Now, I didn’t read every page: I would only be trying to prove something if I did. Similar to how I managed to perform my fave Marina Abramovic’s separating rice from sesame seeds for only 2 hours instead of the 2 days she recommends, I think ‘Well, that would take some practice, and I have enough of a flavour of your message to carry with me in everyday life.’ The same happens here: Skipping 200 pages I felt almost cheated in that I could barely recognise the difference between the pages! But that’s the thing: it’s about the experience of being purely in the present and in tune with all things, for which we use the present participle- not always as part of the present continuous tense, but we try not to stray- to convey this current thing that isn’t a routine like the present simple, but what’s happening right now: a connection to everyone, every thing, every family and every person that ever is or was, the set of all people that ever have been or will be: Stein understands people, and has achieved and immortalised this, and that’s beautiful, but it takes practice if you want to take part. As DFW put it: ‘this is unimaginably hard to do’. But for a busy life, a flavour of it is good enough and highly recommended.Not to say that it isn’t quotable (imagine these a hundred pages apart and you get the idea), and for those with the time (??) the whole book begs to be read out loud. Maybe try it out with these!‘Men in their living have many things inside them, they have in them, each one of them has it in him, his own way of feeling himself important inside in him, they have in them all of them their own way of beginning, their own way ending, their own way of working, their own way of having loving inside them and loving come out from them, their own way of having anger inside them and letting their anger come out from inside them, their own way of eating, their own way of drinking, their own way of sleeping, their own way of doctoring. They have each one of them their own way of fighting, they have in them all of them their own way of having fear in them. They have all of them in them their own way of believing, their own way of being important inside them, their own way of showing to others around them the important feeling inside in them.’‘Every one then has in their living repeating, repeating of every kind of thing in them, repeating of the kind of impatient feeling they have in them, of the anxious feeling almost every one has more or less always in them.’‘To very many, to, sometimes any one would think, mostly every one some one’s way of loving, some other one’s way of keeping somethings and not other things, of throwing away some things and not other things, some one’s way of buying some things and not buying other things is a foolish one. Mostly every one finds that things other ones are wanting are very foolish things for any one to be wanting, for that one to be wanting, to be buying, to be keeping. Each one has in him a very certain feeling of things any one having any sense in them should be wanting to have in living. It is very hard for mostly every one to understand why another one has that way of loving, that way of being angry in them that they have in them. Some try to understand the other one’s way of doing these things but mostly every one finds it very puzzling. What can any one want with buying, keeping, wanting any such thing each one says of something someone has been wanting, buying, keeping. This is very common. Very many could forgive some one anything excepting the way that one has angry feeling or injured feeling in them. Some could let anything pass excepting the kind of way some one has of loving. That gives them an angry feeling, that is all there is about it to them. It is very common that some one could forgive anybody anything excepting the way they have of having angry or injured feeling in them. This is very very common. Some can never understand the queer ways in another one. Mr Hersland always was saying to his three children that the ways they had in them were only habits, there was no need they should have these ways in them. He had ways in him, they were him to him, the ways his children had in them were habits and it was not at all necessary that they should have any such habits in them. Many think that some one, some others could do the work they are doing in some other way from the way these are doing their working. As I am saying it is very, very common that some one could forgive some one anything excepting the way they have angry feeling, or injured feeling or loving feeling in them.’‘Perhaps no one ever will know the complete history of every one. This is a sad thing. Perhaps no one will ever have as a complete thing the history of any one. This is a very sad thing.’I like this quote, because it’s always been my theory of the biography or autobiography, and a reason I think a lot of people are sad is that they think they can control their own story, or even that their life is a story, a singular linear pathway of interesting things that happened to them that everyone would agree was their story. That there are so many biographies and autobiographies, we can forget to question the very idea of them, of how we could completely record what a person does, who they were, that there would be some single idea or record of this. Only the very lucky, I guess, get more than one biographer, and those biographers often spend their lives puzzled… If you ever think ‘I don’t wanna end up like her, like him’ it’s as if your life is a progression from past to future towards a happy or sad ending, and not just a series of beings in the present. Or if I’m approached by a certain type of person at a party, I get a little song and dance of stuff they do and things that happened to them geared up to impress me, and who can blame anyone for doing so? Only what I think is interesting about me might not be what’s interesting about me to them and vice versa: it’s something we have to feel out of each other, so the song and dance rarely lasts more than an opening pitch- and if it does, it’s received by this face -_- ‘So me and my cousin right’ -_- ‘We got this motorbike right’ -_- or my song and dance receives the same face: ‘So I read this book right’ -_- ‘So I wrote this book right’ -_- ‘So people suck right’ -_-‘It is hard to know it of any one whether they are enjoying anything, whether they are feeling something, whether they are knowing they are giving pain to some one, whether they were planning that thing.’
—Leo Robertson
Take it from the only person in the world who's probably ever actually read the entire 925pp: consider yrself lucky to've not finished it!: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/4...
—Johnathan
Over the weekend I saw a play based on A Geographical History of America, which was... well look, I'm just glad I saw it alone, because if I'd had any of my friends exchange dollars for the entertainment offered, I'd likely have lost a finger or two in the ensuing fracas. The play wasn't bad, really, just kooky, which obviously was the only way it could have been, being based on a Gertrude Stein book and all. Anyway, whew, I haven't tried to read her in years and years, and since I already have this book on my shelf, maybe I'll poke around in it some.
—Oriana
