Status Updates From Blood on the Dining-Room Floor

Gertrude Stein makes me want to *** ** ****.

‘In every day there was a day in the way. Do you think she tried. No she did not try because it always happened that way that the day was all day’

This is like reading an English language book translated into 5 different languages and then back to English. It’s difficult and annoying and pretentious.. but some lines (like above) make it almost worthwhile?

“How can she die if it is not right to die. In some countries nobody can die if it is not right to be dead. And if it happens in a country where nobody dies if it is not right to die, it is a dishonor, that if she is dead, she died.”

Ehm, yes, to all this so far.

'...Then some one went out to start a car. The owner of it naturally. It did not start. Then some one else went out to start another car. Once more naturally the owner of that one. The car did not start.'

Totally unreadable, unless you are a diehard Stein fan!

And now he had to go out. Think of it not only he but he had to go out and sometimes even to be out. Out is not out. Some in that place can always be coming in and going out from staying in, but he not at all not at all not at all.

And as he never had gone out now he had to go out, he had to go out, he had to go out, to his dead wife, he had to go out, to his mother, she was not dead yet, he had to go out to his son the second son, he was not dead yet. He had to go out, he had not gone out because he had never done any other thing than stay in.

Those who do or those who do and do not do do not of course do not have it said of them that they do that they did do it. Which, walk in their sleep for example.

Which one.

Which one oh which one. Walk in their sleep for example. For not at all. Usual is disuse.

I know Stein is a great writer, but this was impossible to get through. Her unwillingness to use anything but pronouns makes it impossible to keep track of who is who. Perhaps that's the point in a whodunnit, but it made my head hurt, and not in a good way.