Stein Masterpost Part 1

No matter how much I read Stein, I never seem to get used to her style of writing. Every time I wade into the depths of her books, I feel unsteady and uncertain. There may be no right way to read A Geographical History of America, or any other Stein novel, but I constantly feel that I’m doing it wrong. And I think that’s partially the point of Stein’s work. Language, like many things, is ever-changing and unsteady. It can be manipulated and played with. Like Stein says, “how slowly nervousness is everything” (393). In other words, the things we can’t control and the things that make us uncertain are the things we are most nervous about.

Like Anzaldua, Stein risks ambiguity. She uses language that English speakers know and understand, but in a way that makes us question our own understanding of that language. Similarly, our translations of Stein’s work can take on many variations and may not always hit the mark. I wrote in my entry about Anzaldua: “And then, of course, there’s the idea of creating your own language, of language (and the text, according to Maso) being a living thing that changes constantly. Most books tend to ignore that change, never vary from Standard English/Spanish/Etc. In a way, Anzaldua’s text moves in motion with the languages that she is comfortable with. She even describes her text as, “acts encapsulated in time, ‘enacted’ every time they are spoken aloud or read silently. I like to think of them as performances and not as inert and ‘dead’ objects.” Stein’s Geographical History does something similar in the sense that her English, though understandable at a base level (or at the level of the word, I guess), deviates completely from standard English in its use. For example, she puts relational content together in a way that is similar to Cha. Although on the surface they may not seem to relate, closer inspection can reveal meanings and understandings that weren’t previously obvious.

When Stein writes, “I am I because my little dog knows me,” is she talking about an actual little dog? Or is the little dog just a different representation of the audience? Or, to take it further, could the little dog be just another play on words? Could “my little dog” be an affectionate name for a lover…such as “my pet” or some other kind of pet-name? Furthermore, this section can be related to Butler’s stance that “I” cannot exist without “you” and exists in relation to “you.” And that our relations to the self and the other are “mediated” through various sources (propaganda and government, in stein’s case?).

I have a bit more to say but I think I’m going to cut it off here and make a second Stein post later…