Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (38 page)

I knew while I was writing The Making of Americans that it was possible to describe every kind there is of men and women.

I began to wonder if it was possible to describe the way every possible kind of human being acted and felt in relation with any other kind of human being and I thought if this could be done it would make A Long Gay Book. It is naturally gayer describing what any one feels acts and does in relation to any other one than to describe what they just are what they are inside them.

And as I naturally found it livelier, I myself was becoming livelier just then. One does you know, when one has come to the conclusion that what is inside every one is not all there is of any one. I was, there is no doubt about it, I was coming to be livelier in relation to myself inside me and in relation to any one inside in them. This being livelier inside me kept on
increasing and so you see it was a natural thing that as the Long Gay Book began, it did not go on. If it were to be really lively would it go on. Does one if one is really lively and I was really very lively then does one go on and does one if one is really very lively does one content oneself with describing what is going on inside in one and going on inside in every one in any one.

At any rate what happened is this and every one reading these things, A Long Gay Book, Many Many Women and G.M.P. will see, that it changed, it kept on changing, until at last it led to something entirely different something very short and lively to the Portrait of Mabel Dodge and the little book called Tender Buttons but all that I will talk about later. To go back to The Making of Americans and A Long Gay Book.

One must not forget that although life seems long it is very short, that although civilization seems long it is not so very long. If you think about how many generations, granting that your grandfather to you make a hundred years, if you think about that, it is extraordinary how very short is the history of the world in which we live, the world which is the world where there is a world for us. It is like the generations in the Bible, they really do not take so very long. Now when you are beginning realizing everything, this is a thing that is not confusing but is a thing that as you might say is at one time very long and at the same time not at all long. Twenty-five years roll around so quickly and in writing they can do one of two things, they can either roll around more or they can roll around less quickly.

In writing The Making of Americans they rolled around less quickly. In writing A Long Gay Book, they did not roll around at all, and therefore it did not go on it led to Tender Buttons and many other things. It may even have led to war but that is of no importance.

The Making of Americans rolled around very slowly, it was only three years but they rolled around slowly and that is inevitable when one conceives everything as being there inside in one. Of course everything is always inside in one, that anybody knows but the kind of a one that one is is all inside in
one or it is partly not all inside in one. When one is beginning to know everything, and that happens as it does happen, you all know that, when one is beginning to know everything inside in one description strengthens it being all inside in one. That was for me the whole of The Making of Americans, it was the strengthening the prolonging of the existing of everything being inside in one. You may call that being younger you may not just as you feel about it but what is important about it is, that if everything is all inside in one then it takes longer to know it than when it is not so completely inside in one.

Therefore it takes longer to know everything when everything is all inside one than when it is not. Call it being young if you like, or call it not including anything that is not everything. It does not make any difference whether you are young or younger or older or very much older. That does not make any difference because after all as I say civilization is not very old if you think about it by hundreds of years and realize that your grandfather to you can very much more than make a hundred years if it happens right.

And so I say and I saw that a complete description of every kind of human being that ever could or would be living is not such a very extensive thing because after all it can be all contained inside in any one and finally it can be done.

So then in writing The Making of Americans it was to me an enormously long thing to do to describe every one and slowly it was not an enormously long thing to do to describe every one. Because after all as I say civilization is not a very long thing, twenty-five years roll around so quickly and four times twenty-five years make a hundred years and that makes a grandfather to a granddaughter. Everybody is interested when that happens to any one, because it makes it long and it makes it short. And so and this is the thing that made the change a necessary change from The Making of Americans to A Long Gay Book and then to Tender Buttons.

I will read you some few little things that will show this thing. A few things out of A Long Gay Book that show how it changed, changed from Making of Americans to Tender Buttons.

When I was working with William James I completely learned one thing, that science is continuously busy with the complete description of something, with ultimately the complete description of anything with ultimately the complete description of everything. If this can really be done the complete description of everything then what else is there to do. We may well say nothing, but and this is the thing that makes everything continue to be anything, that after all what does happen is that as relatively few people spend all their time describing anything and they stop and so in the meantime as everything goes on somebody else can always commence and go on. And so description is really unending. When I began The Making of Americans I knew I really did know that a complete description was a possible thing, and certainly a complete description is a possible thing. But as it
is a possible thing one can stop continuing to describe this everything. That is where philosophy comes in, it begins when one stops continuing describing everything.

And so this was the history of the writing of The Making of Americans and why I began A Long Gay Book. I said I would go on describing everything in A Long Gay Book, but as inevitably indeed really one does stop describing everything being at last really convinced that a description of everything is possible it was inevitable that I gradually stopped describing everything in A Long Gay Book.

Nevertheless it would be nice to really have described every kind there is of men and women, and it really would not be very hard to do but it would inevitably not be a Long Gay Book, but it would be a Making of Americans.

But I do not want to begin again or go on with what was begun because after all I know I really do know that it can be done and if it can be done why do it, particularly as I say one does know that civilization has after all not existed such a very long time if you count it by a hundred years, and each time there has been civilization it has not lasted such a long time if you count it by a hundred years, which makes a period that can connect you with some other one.

I hope you like what I say.

And so The Making of Americans has been done. It must be remembered that whether they are Chinamen or Americans there are the same kinds in men and women and one can describe all the kinds of them. This I might have done.

And so then I began The Long Gay Book. As soon as I began the Long Gay Book I knew inevitably it would not go on to continue what The Making of Americans had begun. And why not. Because as my life was my life inside me but I was realizing beginning realizing that everything described would not do any more than tell all I knew about anything why should I tell all I knew about anything since after all I did know all I knew about anything.

So then I said I would begin again. I would not know what I knew about everything what I knew about anything.

And so the Long Gay Book little by little changed from a description of any one of any one and everything there there
was to be known about any one, to what if not was not not to be not known about any one about anything. And so it was necessary to let come what would happen to come because after all knowledge is what you know but what is happening is inevitably what is happening to come.

And so this brings us to other things.

In describing English literature I have explained that the twentieth century was the century not of sentences as was the eighteenth not of phrases as was the nineteenth but of paragraphs. And as I explained paragraphs were inevitable because as the nineteenth century came to its ending, phrases were no longer full of any meaning and the time had come when a whole thing was all there was of anything. Series immediately before and after made everybody clearly understand this thing. And so it was natural that in writing The Making of Americans I had proceeded to enlarge my paragraphs so as to include everything. What else could I do. In fact inevitably I made my sentences and my paragraphs do the same thing, made them be one and the same thing. This was inevitably because the nineteenth century having lived by phrases really had lost the feeling of sentences, and before this in English literature paragraphs had never been an end in themselves and now in the beginning of the twentieth century a whole thing, being what was assembled from its parts was a whole thing and so it was a paragraph. You will see that in The Making of Americans I did this thing, I made a paragraph so much a whole thing that it included in itself as a whole thing a whole sentence. That makes something clear to you does it not.

And this is what The Making of Americans was. Slowly it was not enough to satisfy myself with a whole thing as a paragraph as a whole thing and I will tell very much more about how that came about but The Making of Americans really carried it as far as it could be carried so I think the making a whole paragraph a whole thing.

Then at the same time is the question of time. The assembling of a thing to make a whole thing and each one of these whole things is one of a series, but beside this there is the important thing and the very American thing that
everybody knows who is an American just how many seconds minutes or hours it is going to take to do a whole thing. It is singularly a sense for combination within a conception of the existence of a given space of time that makes the American thing the American thing, and the sense of this space of time must be within the whole thing as well as in the completed whole thing.

I felt this thing, I am an American and I felt this thing, and I made a continuous effort to create this thing in every paragraph that I made in The Making of Americans. And that is why after all this book is an American book an essentially American book, because this thing is an essentially American thing this sense of a space of time and what is to be done within this space of time not in any way excepting in the way that it is inevitable that there is this space of time and anybody who is an American feels what is inside this space of time and so well they do what they do within this space of time, and so ultimately it is a thing contained within. I wonder if I at all convey to you what I mean by this thing. I will try to tell it in every way I can as I have in all the writing that I have ever done. I am always trying to tell this thing that a space of time is a natural thing for an American to always have inside them as something in which they are continuously moving. Think of anything, of cowboys, of movies, of detective stories, of anybody who goes anywhere or stays at home and is an American and you will realize that it is something strictly American to conceive a space that is filled with moving, a space of time that is filled always filled with moving and my first real effort to express this thing which is an American thing began in writing The Making of Americans.