An interview with Gertrude Stein

An interview with Gertrude Stein
Via
::wood s lot::

Q: "How do you do."

A: "Very well I thank you."

Q: Would you care to make a statement?

A: Gladly. "If we say, Do not share, he will not bestow they can reiterate, I am going to do so, we have organised an irregular commonplace and we have made excess return to rambling."

Q: You will not mind if 1 ask what an irregular commonplace is?

A: Not at all, since the answer is anything. That is, anything is the answer. Or anything is an answer. But to back to the question. Anything is at once typical and unique. And so anything is what "everybody knows and nobody knows," an irregular commonplace, and Miss Stein was always writing the portrait of that, and of anything.

Q: Do go on.

A: I always do. It is just as well to ramble on about it after all. Anything, as I was saying, that comes before the normal mind in the normal life can be identified by name, and that aspect of it which has to do with our habitual practical purposes is obviously and clearly seen. But that same anything contains or involves a great many other aspects and qualities that everybody knows are there, even though everybody keeps his mind pretty well fixed on the single practical aspect and is only vaguely aware of the others, and strictly speaking does not know them.