Gertrude stein's silly — and stilted — 'to do'

Wfae

Gertrude stein's silly — and stilted — 'to do'"


Play all audios:

Loading...

Literary wags love to point out the blunders of short-sighted editors of yore who, failing to recognize genius, took a pass on such later-acknowledged masterpieces as James Joyce's


_Ulysses, _Dr. Seuss' _And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street _and John Kennedy Toole's _A Confederacy of Dunces_. What we hear less about are the initially — and perhaps


deservedly — rejected manuscripts that later ride into print on the coattails of their author's renown. Gertrude Stein's _To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays_ falls squarely


into this group. Stein wrote _To Do_ in 1940 after the success of her first children's book, _The World is Round _(1938). Following a year of rejections, it found a willing publisher in


1942, but the project was tabled during the war. In 1957, Yale University Press published a text-only version in its seventh volume of Stein's unpublished writings. Now, more than 70


years after Stein wrote it, it has taken _To Do_ off its to-do list by producing the first illustrated edition. Thanks in large part to Giselle Potter's whimsical and wondrous


illustrations, but also to Yale's exquisite book design,_ To Do _is a beautiful volume to behold. But even with the boost of Porter's fabulous zebra-striped landscape for the


letter Z and typewriters strolling along an _allee _of cauliflowers on the H page, _To Do_ is more intriguing literary artifact than delightful read. As Timothy Young, curator of modern


books and manuscripts at Yale's Beinecke Library, notes in his illuminating introduction, "children are not the core audience for this book." He cites as hurdles the


text's "challenging linguistic exercises" and "recurrent sense of menace" — though in fact the stories are no grimmer than Grimm and no gorier than Gorey. Young


acknowledges that adult readers, too, may find the abstract text demanding. He suggests reading the book aloud, and, "If you have any trouble, read faster and faster until you


don't." To complain that Stein — the woman best known for her pronouncement that "a rose is a rose is a rose" — is repetitive is akin to griping that the pope is


Catholic. That said, one quickly understands why the long-winded _To Do_ had difficulty finding a publisher. Although there is wit and whimsy and an absurdist sensibility that's a


precursor to Maira Kalman's work, it's buried in dense pages of run-on prose. For each letter of the alphabet, Stein calls up four names — often based on real-life friends — for


which she spins circular tales filled with internal rhymes about mutable birthdays and fortunes: "This is the sad story of Leslie-Lily./Lily who always found everything


hilly./Leslie's little Lily's last birthday." There are riches: passages about war, about writer's block, about multiple births and about a self-immolating giant rabbit.


There's even a passage that expresses our impatience: "And Mr. House said nothing more, because he was not a bore and he would have been of course he would have been if he had said


anything more./More More More./Shut oh shut the door." My advice: Sample a few pages at a time — no more — or read it from cover to cover and snore. Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more,


visit https://www.npr.org.


Trending News

Use of pectin in gel electrophoresis

ABSTRACT ELECTROPHORESIS of protein mixtures in agar gels has been described by Gordon _et al._ 1. It has been developed...

Modeling electrochemical oxide film growth—passive and transpassive behavior of iron electrodes in halide-free solution

ABSTRACT The phenomenon of passivity is crucial for many areas of our technological and metal-based civilization. Nevert...

Designing your future - think like an artist

And walking meditation, says Dr. Andrew Weil, founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, “has ...

Insights into catalysis and regulation of non-canonical ubiquitination and deubiquitination by bacterial deamidase effectors

ABSTRACT The bacterial effector MavC catalyzes non-canonical ubiquitination of host E2 enzyme UBE2N without engaging any...

A muralist reminisces about the magical towns he has painted

The Guadalajara Chamber of Commerce has put on display a collection of 44 watercolors celebrating Mexico’s Pueblos Mágic...

Latests News

Gertrude stein's silly — and stilted — 'to do'

Literary wags love to point out the blunders of short-sighted editors of yore who, failing to recognize genius, took a p...

35 writers from across canada longlisted for 2020 cbc nonfiction prize | cbc books

Thirty-five writers from across Canada have made the longlist for the 2020 CBC Nonfiction Prize. The complete longlist i...

404 error

MPs vote to end France's ZFE low-emission zones despite government opposition Cross-party majority introduces amendment ...

The page you were looking for doesn't exist.

You may have mistyped the address or the page may have moved.By proceeding, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and our ...

Columbus neighborhoods | best of the west | season 8 | episode 6

>>> A COUPLE OF GREAT PLACES ON THE SIDE OF COLUMBUS. NEW YORK STEAKHOUSE STARTED AS A CHAIN RESTAURANT CONCEPT...

Top