The Enigma of Gertrude Stein

Awakened

It is almost a cliché to emphasize the difficulty of Gertrude Stein’s work, but it’s true nonetheless: Her writing remains imposing in both its style and sheer volume., Striking out from conventional narrative and often even the conventional meanings of words, Stein wrote in a way like no other. As Stein herself observed: “Repeating is the whole of living, and by repeating comes understanding, and understanding is to some the most important part of living.” Reviewing Francesca Wade’s new biography, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, for Books & the Arts, David Schurman Wallace finds that Wade, by examining the pleasure and profundity of Stein’s modernism, illustrates how “Stein’s work staked out the boundaries of what was possible for writers to do with language in the 20th century.” It awakened its readers to the great mystery that is life—“that everything is strange and nothing is strange too, and that if we sit down and let the words overtake us, we might wonder for a long time.” “Our idea of the literary avant-garde,” Wallace concludes, “is unthinkable without her.” Read “The Enigma of Gertrude Stein”

Doorways

Ruth Asawa believed that her efforts at home and in her neighborhood were as important as the art pieces she made for museums. “My need to be an artist does not exceed my desire to be a parent, and also part of a community,” she wrote. “Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective” honors the artist by taking those ambitions seriously. Visiting the exhibition when it was at the Museum of Modern Art, Quinn Moreland discovered a vision of the artist that is less known to the public—as one who found in the common world haunting possibilities and prospects. Her work reminds us that “even the simplest doorway can be rich with symbolism, suggesting transition, possibility, decision, or revelation.” Read “Communing With Ruth Asawa”