In 1934, Gertrude Stein returned to America after thirty-one years abroad, to lecture across the country on art and writing. Two weeks after she arrived she flew from New York to Chicago on her first plane ride. The Chicago Daily Tribune reported that Carl Van Vechten — photographer of celebrities, novelist, popularizer of the Harlem Renaissance, old friend of Stein’s and, not least, old hand at flying — had found it “the bumpiest ride I ever had.” Stein was not at all fazed: “No, there is no sense of height or danger,” she observed, “the air seems solid.”
This was generally Stein’s tone during the entire six-month lecture tour, that of seeing things for the first time, wide-eyed, the way a child can be but an adult is expected to have outgrown. In her own mind she perceived the tour as her great opportunity to persuade Americans to read the daunting pieces of writing she had been producing for the preceding thirty years. If only they would let her writing surprise them, as she let their America surprise her, they would have just as good a time as she was having.
That the tour of America was such an astounding success was perhaps the only thing that did not astonish Stein. It did astonish the newspapermen and women and the pundits who piqued everyone else’s curiosity by their mystification. Thus Gladys Baker reported to her readers in the Birmingham News-Age-Herald: “For the first time in my experience as a New York newspaper correspondent a celebrity has come to America whose right to fame defies analysis . . . . she has created as great a sensation as would the combined appearance, in their heyday, of Charles Lindbergh, Gene Tunney and ‘Peaches’ Browning.”
“To hear Miss Stein read her own work,” another journalist wrote, “is to understand it — I speak for myself — for the first time . . . . you see why she writes as she does; you see how from sentence to sentence, which seem so much alike, she introduces differences of tone, or perhaps of accent. And then when you think she has been saying the same thing four or five times, you suddenly know that she has carefully, link by link, been leading you to a new thing.”
Stein did not limit her propaganda campaign to the lectures. She freely trespassed on the journalists’ own terrain. To the New York Herald Tribune she contributed a series of newspaper articles in the spring of 1935 on American states and cities, food and houses, education, crimes and even American newspapers. (Stein knew how to keep the press interested: in an article in the Springfield [Massachusetts] Union headlined “Miss Stein Pays Her First Visit to Newspaper Office,” the caption under a photograph of Stein examining some Associated Press dispatches adds: “ … and is fascinated by the equipment of a city daily.”) But most unusual perhaps were Stein’s forays into the new media — new at least for her — of radio broadcasting and talking pictures.
What follows is an interview, never before published, with NBC reporter William Lundell, which was conducted on November 12, 1934 on WJZ and NET radio. Stein’s responses, like the questions she was asked, were written out prior to the broadcast.
—Stephen Meyer
INTERVIEWER
Coming back to the United States for the first time in thirty-one years, Miss Stein, is there anything in particular which has seized your interest?
STEIN
Coming back to the United States after thirty-one years everything seizes my interest and seizes it very hard. The buildings in the air and the people on the street they are all exciting and they are and I know it seems a funny thing to say but that is the way they appear to me, they are so gentle, so friendly, so simply direct and so sweet. I feel that way about the people on the street and I feel that way about the buildings in the air. By the way what I feel most about the buildings is the way they come down into the earth more than the way they go up into the air and they do it all so naturally and so simply. But the people on the street never could I have imagined the friendly personal simple direct considerate contact that I have with all of them. They all seem to know me and they all speak to me and I who am easily frightened by anything unexpected find this spontaneous considerate contact with all and any New Yorker touching and pleasing and I am deeply moved and awfully happy in it. I could tell so many incidents but charming as are the incidents it is the unreality of it the gentle pleasant unreality of it that makes my moving about in the street just a pleasure.
INTERVIEWER
Just yesterday Mr. Cerf told me a story in that connection, Miss Stein. After the party given in your honor by Random House and the Modern Library, Mr. Cerf was going down in the elevator and he talked with the elevator boy. The boy said, “You had a big party.” Mr. Cerf replied “Yes, we had a lot of celebrities there. How did it strike you?” The boy said, “Well, I only recognized two of them … Miss Stein and Miriam Hopkins, the movie actress.”
STEIN
Well, you see the sweet part of that was that we liked each other and asked each other’s advice without really knowing who each other was. But in a way that is a joke because what is extraordinary is that in this the largest city in the world everybody knows me and I feel that I know everybody it is just exactly like the village in France where I spend my summers and where there are 20 families and they all know me and I know all of them. Why even at the football game a little boy came up to me and bowed and said please Miss Stein may I have an autograph. I said how old are you and he said twelve and we were both pleased, then everybody handed me their programs and it was perfectly charming, simply charming. Why when I first arrived off the boat the first evening I took a walk and I wanted an apple and I went into a little fruit store on Sixth Avenue to buy it, and the clerk said how do you do Miss Stein did you have a pleasant trip over.
INTERVIEWER
Your coming to the United States to lecture, Miss Stein, seems to me to imply that there are many people who will be able to comprehend your ideas. The current impression of your work, however, among American people, is founded largely upon the tremendous publicity attained by Four Saints in Three Acts, and although it may seem absurd in them, many American people doubt your ability to speak intelligibly. Just where, then, does Four Saints in Three Acts fit into your scheme of lecturing, which, if it is to be successful, must be at least understandable … which is more than most of us can say for your opera.
STEIN
Look here, being intelligible is not what it seems, after all all these things are a matter of habit. Take what the newspapers say about what you call the New Deal. If you just know ordinary English you do not have the slightest idea what the newspapers are talking about everybody has their own English and it is only a matter of anybody getting used to an English anybody’s English and then it is all right. After all when you say they do not understand Four Saints what do you mean, of course they understand or they would not listen to it. You mean by understanding that you can talk about it in the way that you have the habit of talking … putting it in other words … but I mean by understanding enjoyment. If you go to a football game you don’t have to understand it in any way except the football way and all you have to do with Four Saints is to enjoy it in the Four Saints way which is the way I am, otherwise I would not have written it in that way. Don’t you see what I mean? If you enjoy it you understand it, and lots of people have enjoyed it so lots of people have understood it. You see that is what my lectures are to be. They are to be a simple way of telling everybody this thing, that if you enjoy it you understand it and so if I am telling them this about why my punctuation is, why my so-called repetition is, what my prose is and what my poetry is and what my plays are and what my English literature is and what my pictures are and I am telling them all this simply as I tell everything you will see, they will understand it because they enjoy it.
INTERVIEWER
Well I think I understand . . . . Your life has been amazingly full of interest, it would seem, Miss Stein, judging from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
STEIN
Yes, my life has been and is full of interest because I like it all it is all wonderful to me and one is not more wonderful than the other anybody anybody meets is wonderful and that is all there is to it and if you are wonderful and they are wonderful the world is full of interest and that is natural enough. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas I told all this one way, in Portraits and Prayers the book that is coming out and I am so pleased that it is coming out just as I am here I have told what it is in another way. You see in Portraits and Prayers are collected together all the portraits that I have made of anyone over all these years and what I mean by a portrait is this. When I know anybody well they are all something to me each one is. That is natural but then there has to come a moment when I know all I can know about anyone and I know it all at once and then I try to put it down to put down on paper all that I know of anyone their ways the sound of their voice the accent of their voice their other movements their character all what they do and to do it all at once is very difficult. Just anybody try to do it and you will see what I mean and in this book Portraits and Prayers I have tried to do it and I have done it in a great many ways and sometimes I have felt that I have done it. And you must not think that you do not understand because you cannot say it to yourself in other words. If you have something happen in you when you read these portraits you do understand no matter what you say to yourself and others about not understanding. Really and truly that is really and truly true.
INTERVIEWER
As you look back. Miss Stein, over these friends of whom you have done portraits, do any Americans stand out from among those told about in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and in your latest book, Portraits and Prayers?
STEIN
Yes, there are Americans in this book. There is everybody in this book everybody that has been in my life because after anybody has become very well known to me I have tried to make a portrait of them well I might almost say in order to get rid of them inside in me. Otherwise I would have got too full up inside me with what I had inside me of anyone. Do you see what I mean? Yes, there are lots of Americans in Portraits and Prayers and some of my favorite portraits in it are Americans, there is the second portrait of Carl Van Vechten, and there is one of Sherwood Anderson which I consider perhaps the best portrait I ever did and there is a little one of Hemingway and some of Americans you do not know and another one of an American I loved very much Mildred Aldrich of the Hilltop on the Marne which is there as Mildred Aldrich Saturday.
INTERVIEWER
Going back for a moment to your opera to be sung, Four Saints in Three Acts — I should like to ask if you sincerely believe that English literature can in any way be improved by such experimentation as you, Miss Stein, have made in Four Saints in Three Acts?
STEIN
There is no question of improving English literature, Lundell, there is only a question of English literature going on and now American literature going on and I do think that my work and Four Saints in Three Acts is an important part of it, is an important very important element in English literature’s going on and naturally anybody who wants anything wants it to go on and my writing is part of its going on that is the way I feel about it.
INTERVIEWER
I’d like you to speak perfectly frankly, Miss Stein. What do you think of the writing now being done in the United States?
STEIN
The writing in the United States is going on and the young ones send me lots of manuscripts and a good many of them really know what writing is but you see what is necessary is that they should go on writing. Horace Greeley said about the resumption of specie payments after the Civil War that the only way to resume is to resume and that is the way with writing. The only way to go on writing is to go on writing and if you have anything in you it will be something but if you have not it will not but as there is undoubtedly a great deal in America that stirs me a lot coming here there will undoubtedly be a great deal in future American writing.
INTERVIEWER
While reading The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Miss Stein, I had an unusual reading experience because of your peculiar style, the words seemed to fly before my eyes. I read page after page with a kind of breathless haste. Just what in your style is responsible for this swiftness?
STEIN
The style of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is not peculiar at all. The only peculiar thing is that I wrote it myself. I suggested to my secretary Alice B. Toklas that she write her life story and she kept putting it off and finally to encourage her one day I sat down in the garden and wrote a chapter then it seized me so I kept on writing and writing sitting in the garden writing and I wrote the whole Autobiography in six weeks.
INTERVIEWER
And you didn’t go over it to correct it at all?
STEIN
No, I didn’t — I, I, just wrote it.
INTERVIEWER
But, Miss Stein, why did you omit capital letters so frequently and question marks?
STEIN
Well, because you see, Lundell, capital letters and question marks are useless. They are hangovers from the days when people didn’t read very well, that all goes into the whole question of the life and death of punctuation marks, if you don't know that a question is a question without a question mark being there what is the use of writing the question.
INTERVIEWER
Not much. You mean that question marks and capital letters are crutches for the mentally crippled?
STEIN
That is it exactly they are a help to some people but the average reading mind does not need them.
INTERVIEWER
But in addition to punctuation you seem to have very definite opinions about nouns and adjectives.
STEIN
I do, nouns are pretty dead and adjectives which are related to nouns which are practically dead are even more dead.
INTERVIEWER
But where is the life then in writing. In the verb?
STEIN
In the verbs there is life in the prepositions and adverbs too and very much in the conjunctions. As an example the most vigorous expression in American speech is that composed of two words — “And how.” It is full of emotion and it says everything that needs to be said.
INTERVIEWER
But your study in these slang phrases, it would seem to me, must be rather limited. In your literary circles you don’t meet much new and vigorous slang.
STEIN
Oh, don’t I. How do you know I do not. And what makes you think I only talk to literary circles. I talk to and listen to anybody. Whom did I talk to during the war? And everyday I talk to my cab drivers and my publishers.
INTERVIEWER
You apparently find American speech very vigorous then?
STEIN
Oh, yes. American speech is very vigorous, more vigorous than English. English speech is dead and if the speech of the people is dead then the literature is dead. When a country is in transition and growing its speech is vigorous and its literature is vigorous and alive. In the Elizabethan days in England that was a most lively period and the language was growing and the language was vigorous.
INTERVIEWER
Would that then mean, Miss Stein, that because of the vigor of Greek life in the days of Sophocles and of Roman life in the days of the Caesars that Greek and Latin are not dead languages but very much alive?
STEIN
Certainly they are alive. The literature of any language that was once alive is never dead but the English of modern writers is not in a state of vitality. Since the death of Swinburne, Browning and Meredith there have been no first rate writers in English, just second and third rate and that isn’t anybody’s fault but England’s it has lost its vitality.
INTERVIEWER
But what of our younger American writers?
STEIN
Young writers are young writers, you can’t judge a writer until all of his work is behind him.
INTERVIEWER
But then how are we to know what books to buy and what is the value of a book reviewer if we can’t judge an author’s value until his work is finished?
STEIN
The function of a book reviewer is to review and that is alright.
INTERVIEWER
Well, then, to get back to your own writing again, Miss Stein. Will you explain the passage from Four Saints in Three Acts about the pigeons on the grass which begins, “Pigeons on the grass alas. Pigeons on the grass alas. Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass,” and ends up, “Lily Lily Lily let Lily Lucy Lucy let Lily. Let Lucy Lily.”
STEIN
That is simple I was walking in the gardens of the Luxembourg in Paris it was the end of summer the grass was yellow I was sorry that it was the end of summer and I saw the big fat pigeons in the yellow grass and I said to myself, pigeons on the yellow grass, alas, and I kept on writing pigeons on the grass, alas, short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass pigeons large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass, alas pigeons on the grass, and I kept on writing until I had emptied myself of the emotion. If a mother is full of her emotion toward a child in the bath the mother will talk and talk and talk until the emotion is over and that’s the way a writer is about an emotion.
INTERVIEWER
But how is the reader supposed to know what you are thinking about?
STEIN
The reader does know because he enjoys it. If you enjoy you understand if you understand you enjoy. What you mean by understanding is being able to turn it into other words but that is not necessary. As I said before, to like a football game is to understand it in the football way.
INTERVIEWER
You saw the Yale-Dartmouth game a week ago Saturday, didn’t you? Did you understand that in the American way or the football way or how?
STEIN
In the American way. The thing that interested me was that the Modern American in his movements and his actions in a football game so resembled the red Indian dance and it proves that the physical country that made the one made the other and that the red Indian is still with us. They just put their heads down solemnly together and then double over, while on the side lines the substitutes move in a jiggly way just like Indians . . . . Then they all get down on all fours just like Indians.
INTERVIEWER
But those jiggles are warming-up exercises.
STEIN
It doesn’t make any difference what they are doing it for, they are just doing it, like the way the Indian jiggles in the Indian dance and then there is that little brown ball they all bend down and worship.
INTERVIEWER
But the idea in that is to get the ball across the goal line.
STEIN
But don’t you suppose I know that, and don’t you suppose the Indians had just as much reason and enjoyed their dancing just as much?
INTERVIEWER
Perhaps so. But permit me, Miss Stein, to ask you to explain the lines entitled A Portrait of Carl Van Vechten. I don’t understand them. Will you read them?
STEIN
“If it and as if it, if it or as if it, if it is as if it, and it is as if it and as if it. Or as if it. More as if it. As more. As more as if it. And if it. And for and as if it.” That is a portrait of Carl Van Vechten. He is just like that sometimes this way sometimes that way he is sometimes very real and then very unreal sometimes alive sometimes not alive.
INTERVIEWER
But what about this fifth paragraph?
STEIN
“Tied and untied and that is all there is about it. And as tied and as beside, and as beside and tied. Tied and untied and beside and as beside and as untied and as tied and as untied and as beside.” Well, just look at these words, the words look like Carl Van Vechten, anybody can know that beside they mean Carl Van Vechten anybody can know that.
INTERVIEWER
Well, that’s rather hard for us normal Americans to see.
STEIN
What is a normal American, there are lots quite normal who do see. And how. But after all you must enjoy my writing and if you enjoy it you understand it. If you did not enjoy it why do you make a fuss about it? There is the real answer.
—interviewed by William Lundell
