Thursday, March 1, 2018

Cubist literature: Gertrude Stein


Imagine a piece of literature by Gertrude Stein as a song, or a poem you listen to in the background as you work (are there any existing recordings of Stein saying her lines?
It happens very often that a man has it in him, that a man does something, that he does it very often that he does many things, when he is a young man when he is an old man, when he is an older man. One of such of these kind of them had a little boy and this one, the little son wanted to make a collection of butterflies and beetles and it was all exciting to him and it was all arranged then and then the father said to the son you are certain this is not a cruel thing that you are wanting to be doing, killing things to make collections of them, and the son was very disturbed then and they talked about it together the two of them and more and more they talked about it then and then at last the boy was convinced it was a cruel thing and he said he would not do it and his father said the little boy was a noble boy to give up pleasure when it was a cruel one. -- Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans.
Stein was definitely a rapper. Don't you think?