39. Reconsidering Stein: Composition as Explanation

Fewer readers imagine they can create their own Stein; many feel she is beyond their capacity to understand. Maybe this is because she has been claimed as the sine qua non of the avant-garde. But she aligned herself with her time. Being part of the “contemporary composition” was central to her work, a point she made in her trenchant essay (originally a lecture) “Composition as Explanation”: “The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything.” Here, Stein wielded the novelty and surprise of her prose partly to explain how novelty and surprise surface from generation to generation, and theorized why the new in art and writing may first be thought ugly, then later beautiful or classic. In that same essay, she declared: “No one is ahead of his time.” (Andy Warhol, who like Stein is both adored and mocked, once said, “I’m very much a part of my times, of my culture, as much a part of it as rockets and television.” There are other parallels between Warhol and Stein, including their renown as aphorists. Stein: “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” Warhol: “In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” But people have called Warhol a jackass, and everything else.) / Lynne Tillman, New York Times 29.1.

IDA
By Gertrude Stein. Edited by Logan Esdale.
Illustrated. 348 pp. Yale University Press. Paper, $18.

STANZAS IN MEDITATION
The Corrected Edition
By Gertrude Stein. Edited by Susannah Hollister and Emily Setina.
Illustrated. 379 pp. Yale University Press. Paper, $22.

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