Gertrude Stein - "Blood on the Dining-Room Floor"

Att läsa om Gertrude Stein är intressantare än att läsa Gertrude Stein.

"That is the way to see a thing, see it from the outside. That makes it clear that nobody is dead yet [---] Did you hear me say that none of them knew any more about this. Just think how they do not know anything more about this. They look worn but not with work but perhaps yes it is with work. Our work". (Stein, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, s. 5, 62)

"In the novel these deaths float among other half-crimes, near crimes, odd coincidences and possible motives in a soup of anxiety that had very much to do with Gertrude Stein's sudden unease about what was normal or reliable, and what was only apprently so. None of these events was ever adequatley explained by the local authorities". (Janet Hobhouse, "Introduction", Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, s. xi)

Att läsa Gertude Stein är att inte läsa Gertrude Stein.

"Every day and every day she had to see that everything came out from where it was put away and that everything again was put away. That was their way. That had always been their way. Any way was that way. Any way, she came that way to be that way. In that way she passed each day and each day passed away which was a night too. Everybody knows that a night is not a day." (Stein, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, s. 8-9)

"Rather than trying to master the movements of language, to discover the perfect match of word and meaning through image, metaphor, and symbol, Stein began by careful observation of linguistic nuance and submitted herself to the rhythms and sounds of language, listening carefully to the speech around her, allowing herself to be educated by language. She did what no other writer has had quite the courage to do: to reliquish the right to make language submit to the writer's will. [---] Stein admittedly paid a high price for continuing a linguistic venture so open to misunderstanding." (Shari Benstock, Women on the Left Bank, s. 159-160)