Ida a Novel (38 page)

“ABSTRACT PROSE”

Most readers require of prose that it make concrete sense as they think sense should be made. So Gertrude Stein, who uses prose to build a series of abstractions, either infuriates most readers or elicits defensive jeers. But readers who are willing to read words as they are willing to listen to notes in music—as things without an explicit message—can get from her work a rare pleasure. The three stories in her earliest (1909) book,
Three Lives
, being anchored to sense, are good ones to start on. Her latest book,
Ida
, much more abstract, is a good one to go on with.

The heroine of
Ida
is purportedly modeled on the Duchess of Windsor. That fact need trouble no one, short of a tenth reading or so. Ida is a woman who likes to rest, to talk to herself, to move around. In the course of her lifetime she has several dogs, marries several men (mostly Army officers), lives in several of the 48 States. She seems at times to be some sort of dim, potent symbol or half-goddess, sometimes a plain case of schizophrenia, sometimes a stooge for Miss Stein. In the long run, after several icily beautiful pages of suspense, she appears to settle down with a man named Andrew.

How much or how little sense Ida makes as a story is not important. The words in which it is told are stripped of normal logic, and totally cleansed of emotion. The result is something as intricately clean as a fugue or a quadratic equation.

For those who wish to make the effort, the following suggestions:

•  Read it with care, but require no sense of it that it does not yield.

•  Read it aloud.

• Read it as poetry must be read or music listened to: several times.

•  Read it for pleasure only. If it displeases you, quit.

Gertrude Stein says of Ida: “Ida decided that she was just going to talk to herself. Anybody could stand around and listen but as for her she was just going to talk to herself.”

Time
37.7 (Feb. 17, 1941): 99–100

W. H. AUDEN, “ALL ABOUT IDA”

IDA
is not about
IDA
, but about Dear Ida. Who is Dear Ida? Why, everybody knows Dear Ida, but not everybody knows whom they know. Most people call the Dear Ida they know
IDA
, but most people do not know
IDA
. Then who is Dear Ida whom everybody knows? Miss Stein knows who Dear Ida is. Dear Ida lives from day to day, but a day is not really all day to Dear Ida because she does not need all day. She does not need all day because, of course, she is mostly sitting and resting and being there. Resting is what she likes best and sitting is what she does best. That is being natural, and, of course, being natural does not take all day. That is why she can only use the part of the day and night that she chooses to sit in. She stays there as long as she can, then she goes walking. Dear Ida walks in the afternoon when she is not resting. Everything happens to Dear Ida, funny things happen, husbands happen, going away happens, and Dear Ida does not know whether they are happening slowly or not. It might be slowly, it might be not. Dear Ida does not know because she does not begin, no, never, because, as Miss Stein says, if you begin, nothing happens to you. You happen. Dear Ida does not happen, Dear Ida is not funny. The only funny thing about Dear Ida is her dislike of doors. Otherwise Dear Ida is very well, very well indeed. Does Dear Ida know
IDA
? No, she does not know
IDA
, she only knows that
IDA
is beside her. She cannot know
IDA
because she thinks
IDA
is like what she thinks Dear Ida is like. Dear Ida does not even know Dear Ida. Only once in her life does she know Dear Ida. That is the only time Dear Ida cries. Knowing
IDA
beside her, and not knowing Dear Ida, like the Dear Ida she is, she thinks that
IDA
is Dear Ida, my twin, my twin Winnie who is winning everything and will never make me cry. When she tries to think of
IDA
, she can only think of her twin Winnie. When she tries to think of Dear Ida, she can only think a dog is a dog because it is always there. If Dear Ida does not know Dear Ida, who does?
IDA
knows.
IDA
is funny and is always beginning. Nothing happens to
IDA
.
IDA
does not call Dear Ida dear Ida. But Poor Ida, Lazy Ida, Bad Ida, why do you let such funny things happen to you, why don’t you begin, why don’t you cry? Dear Ida, you are wrong. The first of everything is not a sign of anything. Anything can be the first of everything. Perhaps ten can be a sign of something. Yes, perhaps everything after ten is a sign. I am not your twin Winnie, Dear Ida, I am
IDA
. If you knew this, you would not be resting. Perhaps you would be crying, but you would know
IDA
, and that would be as well. Most novels are Dear Ida writing about her twin Winnie, but they do not say so. O dear no, they say this is
IDA
writing about
IDA
. But it is only Dear Ida writing, and what does Dear Ida know about Ida as she sits, Dear Ida, and lets funny things happen and does not cry. When she writes
IDA
she only says, My twin Winnie who is always winning, always counting, never sitting but always crying. There is too much winning, too much counting, too much crying, too much of not resting altogether. Ida is not Dear Ida writing about her twin Winnie. Ida is
IDA
writing about Dear Ida. There is not too much of anything, only one hundred and fifty pages, and Dear Ida only cries once.
IDA
does not pretend that Dear Ida is not resting and not thinking about her twin Winnie. Dear Ida writes very often but I do not like what she writes because it is neither about
IDA
nor Dear Ida, only about her twin Winnie, and that is too much. I like
IDA
best when she writes about
IDA
but she does not write about her very often. Next to
IDA
writing about
IDA
, I like
IDA
writing about Dear Ida.

This is what Ida is. I like Ida.

Saturday Review of Literature
23 (Feb. 22, 1941): 8

AUBREY L. THOMAS

Gertrude Stein’s first novel in the last 11 years,
Ida
(Random House, $2), makes its appearance today, the first of her work to be published first in the United States. That sounds somewhat like the repetitious Miss Stein herself, doesn’t it?

Nevertheless, these are facts and susceptible to demonstration and proof. But frankly, that was about all we could understand about Miss Stein’s creation. The rest of it, except that it is about a gal named Ida—or was she Ida-Ida?—is completely beyond our comprehension.

We even made use of a key which the publisher of a children’s book by Miss Stein two years dared to say would unlock the door to an understanding of her prose. This key went something like this:

“Don’t bother about the commas which aren’t there, read the words. Don’t worry about the sense that is there, read the words faster. If you have any trouble, read faster and faster until you don’t.”

But it didn’t work and the door is still locked. Nevertheless, we felt somewhat better when we read the blurb on the jacket of
Ida
. Here Bennett A. Cerf, president of the firm publishing the novel, says:

“That Gertrude Stein should have been one of the first to emerge from the chaos, living relatively undisturbed with Alice Toklas in her beloved villa in Belignin, was no surprise whatever to American friends who knew of her indomitable spirit and uncanny ability to get just exactly what she wants out of life. War and disaster surrounded her on every side, but she went calmly about her business of finishing her first novel in eleven years. (
Lucy Church Amiably
was her last one, written in 1930, and never published in America.)
Ida
was the name she chose for the new one, and here it is, presented faithfully to you by a publisher who rarely has the faintest idea of what Miss Stein is talking about, but who admires her from the bottom of his heart for her courage and for her abounding love of humanity and freedom.”

True, we haven’t said anything about the plot of the novel but then, we don’t know what it is. Maybe you will have better luck.

Book of the Day, [Feb. 1941?] (YCAL 28.553)

J. E. MOLLOY, “IDA, DEAR IDA, AND THE FUNNY THINGS SHE DID: AN INSIGHT INTO STEIN-WAYS WILL HELP THE LAUGHS”

This is the story of Ida, dear Ida. “There was nothing funny about Ida, but funny things did happen to Ida,” and this is the story of the funny things that kept happening to Ida. And that, dear reader, is putting it mildly.

Ida really was a little funny herself. The funny thing she did best was resting. “Whenever anybody needed Ida, Ida was resting,” very busy resting. She was especially good at sitting. And the funny thing Ida did easiest was changing places. She always “liked to change places, otherwise she had nothing to do all day.” If she wasn’t living with her great-aunt (who wasn’t sweet and gentle), she was staying with her sweet and gentle grandfather, or with a woman named Eleanor Angle in California, or with a cousin of her uncle, or with a cousin of the doctor’s wife.

But all that was before she began to get married. For the funny things Ida had most of were husbands. There was Frank Arthur, and Benjamin Williams, and Frederick, and Andrew Hamilton, and at long last Andrew, who was Andrew the first, and even after he wasn’t Andrew the first, Andrew was still his name. And of course “Ida was good friends with all her husbands, she was always good friends with all her husbands.” Ida was that kind of girl.

Then there was Tuesday. “She was very careful about Tuesday. She always just had to have Tuesday. Tuesday was Tuesday to her.” And the dogs. “She always had a dog, at every address she had a dog and the dog always had a name. . . .” There were thirteen dogs in all, one, a Chinese dog, named William.

Now, whether or not Ida is really one Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (as has been rumored, but nowhere claimed in this book),
Ida
is the funniest thing that has happened to Gertrude Stein since that last funny thing she wrote and called a novel in 1930.

[Feb. 1941?] (YCAL 28.553)

ROBERT LITTELL

I began reading Gertrude Stein’s
Ida
in the back seat of an automobile on a long, cold, foggy ride. The first few pages slid over the surface of my consciousness without making a scratch. The fog settled down more thickly on the landscape; another kind of fog, curiously ordered and patterned, rose from the pages of the book. Nothing meant anything, but all of it was meant to mean something quite definite. A purpose was hidden there, like those shapeless shapes I saw through the car’s window which might have been trees, or might just as well have been only thicker places in the fog. I was aware of no deliberate attempt to mystify the reader; it all sounded far too serious for a joke at my expense. I reread again from the beginning, and was overcome by the helpless despair of those who are going under ether. The more I reread, the less it meant, and the more certain I was that there was something there eager to be unlocked if only I had the key. These gropings were rudely interrupted by an accident. The left front wheel of the car came off, state troopers came to the rescue; finally, we were towed through the fog with the nose of the car ignominiously hoisted into the air. I regard this as an omen of some kind, and have abandoned my search for the key to what may very well be the door beyond which lies the future of American literature.

Outstanding Novels,
Yale Review
30.3 (Mar. 1941): xiv

E. C. S., “GERTRUDE STEIN AS NOVELIST”

If you wish to find out whether you can approach a novel without prejudice, try
Ida
. You will learn how much store you set on a command of grammar and rhetoric as a basis for writing. Gertrude Stein writes without regard for any of the supposed rudiments of literary expression, so if Macaulay and Lindley Murray are your mentors you may not have much fun trying to read
Ida
. You have to keep your attention on Miss Stein’s words or you will get nowhere. She doesn’t approach the reader with any of the ordinary aids of commas, question marks, or quotation marks. There are sometimes two or three commas on a page but they seem so lonesome and so overburdened with the work of the 20 or 30 commas that one might expect to find there that they count hardly at all.