Literacy, Inc.

#2: Gertrude Stein

Reading Packet
11 March 2012

Read Aloud 1








ROASTBEEF.

In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is
reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there
is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is
resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is
resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is
recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. All the
standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and
all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling.
This makes sand.


Read Aloud 2








I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what
an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell
what a book is until you type it or proof-read it.


Read Aloud 3







You see I tried to convey the idea of each part of a
composition being as important as the whole. It was the first time
in any language that anyone had used that idea of composition in
literature. Henry James had a slight inkling of it and was in some
senses a forerunner, while in my case I made it stay on the page
quite composed. You see he made it sort of like an atmosphere,
and it was not solely the realism of the characters but the realism
of the composition which was the important thing, the realism of
the composition of my thoughts.
After all, to me one human being is as important as
another human being, and you might say that the landscape has
the same values, a blade of grass has the same value as a tree.


Read Aloud 4









CHAPTER LI

Three to four men and a woman. A house and houses and trees.
As likely to be placed where they are within reach of those of
these of their places and described by it. They looked up at it as if
it was to be nearer than it was when it was actually in sight. How
many ladies have their hats and how many are with them.
Fascinating.


Read Aloud 5








I became more and more excited about how words which were
the words that made whatever I looked at look like itself were not
the words that had in them any quality of description. This
excited me very much at that time.
And the thing that excited me so very much at that time
and still does is that the word or words that make what I looked at
be itself were always words that to me very exactly related
themselves to that thing the thing at which I was looking, but as
often as not had as I say nothing whatever to do with what any
words would do that described that thing.


Read Aloud 6








As I say a noun is a name of a thing and therefore slowly if you
feel what is inside that thing you do not call it by the name by
which it is known. Everybody knows that by the way they do
when they are in love and a writer should always have that
intensity of emotion about whatever is the object about which he
writes. And therefore and I say it again more and more one does
not use nouns.

Read Aloud 7








Some one in knowing everything is knowing that some
one is something. Someone is something and is succeeding is
succeeding in hoping that thing. He is suffering.
He is succeeding in hoping and he is succeeding in saying
that that is something. He is suffering, he is suffering and
succeeding in hoping that in succeeding in saying that he is
succeeding in hoping is something.
He is suffering, he is hoping, he is succeeding in saying
that anything is something. He is suffering, he is hoping, he is
succeeding in saying that something is something. He is hoping
that he is succeeding in hoping that something is something. He is
hoping that he is succeeding in saying that he is succeeding in
hoping that something is something. He is hoping that he is
succeeding in saying that something is something.


Read Aloud 8









I felt that if a play was exactly like a landscape then there
would be no difficulty about the emotion of the person looking on
at the play being behind or ahead of the play because the
landscape does not have to make acquaintance.


Read Aloud 9








No matter how complicated anything is, if it is not mixed
up with remembering there is no confusion, but and that is the
trouble with a great many so called intelligent people they mix up
remembering with talking and listening, and as a result they have
theories about anything but as remembering is repetition and
confusion, and being existing that is listening and talking is action
and not repetition intelligent people although they talk as if they
know something are really confusing, because they are so to speak
keeping two times going at once, the repetition time of
remembering and the actual time of talking but, as they are rarely
talking and listening, that is the talking being listening and the
listening being talking, although they are clearly saying
something they are not clearly creating something, because they
are because they always are remembering, they are not at the
same time talking and listening. Do you understand. Do you any
or all of you understand. Anyway that is the way it is. And you
hear it even if you do not say it in the way say it as I hear it and
say it.


Read Aloud 10









When I first really realized the inevitable repetition in human
expression that was not repetition but insistence when I first
began to be really conscious of it was when at about seventeen
years of age, I left the more or less internal and solitary and
concentrated life I led in California and came to Baltimore and
lived with a lot of my relations and principally with a whole
group of very lively aunts who had to know anything If they
had to know anything and anybody does they naturally had to
say and hear it often, anybody does, and as there were ten and
eleven of them they did have to say and hear said whatever was
said and any one not hearing what it was they said had to come in
to hear what had been said, that inevitably made everything said
often. I began then to consciously listen to what anybody was
saying and what they did say while they were saying what they
were saying. This was not yet the beginning of writing but it was
the beginning of knowing what there was that made there be no
repetition. No matter how often what happened had happened
any time any one told anything there was no repetition. This is
what William James calls the Will to Live.

And it is what here I am going to risk calling happiness.


Read Aloud 11








When I first knew Gertrude Stein in Paris I was surprised never to
see a french book on her table, although there were always plenty
of english ones, there were even no french newspapers. But do
you never read french, I as well as many other people asked her.
No, she replied, you see I feel with my eyes and it does not make
any difference to me what language I hear, I dont hear a
language, I hear tones of voices and rhythms, but with my eyes I
see words and sentences and there is for me only one language
and that is english. One of these things I have liked all these years
is to be surrounded by people who know no english. It has left me
more intensely alone with my eyes and my english. I do not know
if it would have been possible to have english be so all in all to me
otherwise. And they none of them could read a word that I wrote,
most of them did not even know that I did write. No, I like being
with so very many people and being all alone with english and
myself.



Read Aloud 12









The World is Round

Once upon a time the world was round and you could go
on it around and around.
Everywhere there was somewhere and everywhere there
they were men women children dogs cows wild pigs little rabbits
cats lizards and animals. That is the way it was. And everybody
dogs cats sheep rabbits and lizards and children all wanted to tell
everybody all about it and they wanted to tell all about
themselves.
And then there was Rose.
Rose was her name and would she have been Rose if her
name had not been Rose. She used to think and then she used to
think again.
Would she have been Rose if her name had not been Rose
and would she have been Rose if she had been a twin.
Rose was her name all the same and her fathers name was
Bob and her mothers name was Kate and her uncles name was
William and her aunts name was Gloria and her grandmothers
name was Lucy. They all had names and her name was Rose, but
would she have been she used to cry about it would she have been
Rose if her name had not been Rose.
I tell you at this time the world was round and you could
go on it around and around.



Read Aloud 13









plunged into a vortex of words, burning words, cleansing
words, liberating words, feeling words, and the words were all
ours and it was enough that we held them in our hands to play
with them; whatever you can play with is yours.



Read Aloud 14







Anybody with a human mind can say I mean and they can say I
forgot and mean that. Fighting is not an action of the human mind
neither is remembering if it had to do with the human mind then
the human mind would concern itself with age but it does not,
therefore any nature can mean or not mean what they do they can
forget or remember what they do but the human mind no the
human mind has nothing to do with age.
As I say so tears come into my eyes.