Gertrude Stein and the Rhythmic ReWorking of Words

ABSTRACT: Like a number of other monuments of Modernism, books often more revered than read, Gertrude Stein’s "The Making of Americans" (1925) is known to be a sprawling account of two families—the Dehnings and the Herslands—in a story that has its formal origins in a 19th century novelistic narration of an American household, of family members interacting and interjecting, of everyday situations arising out of domestic growth and conflict. But, once begun, from such nearly conventional beginnings—of scenes being set up, believable characters being created—one can almost chart the moment, moving along in the reading, where there’s a kind of unraveling of the writing, not just of that narrated family, but of the telling of their tale, as the language of their creation gradually, and then often abruptly, digresses, or metamorphoses, into an over-exposed self-awareness of the very materials by which the story itself is being told.

Clark Lunberry is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of North Florida, in Jacksonville, Florida (USA). Along with ​his interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching, Lunberry is a visual artist and poet. At the 2017 Power of the Word Conference V at Oxford University, Lunberry created a site-specific art project, “Image | Mirage,” a large-scale “writing on water” installation, at Oxford University’s Lazanbee’s Ground Walk. http://www.clarklunberry.com/