The Stein which is represented by [Tender Buttons and Geography and Plays] is essentially the comedian. That Gertrude Stein would probably not agree with this estimation is nothing to the point. When we consider artistic accomplishments, we can ignore the intentions of the artist, which may have been in direct contradiction with what was actually accomplished. In all likelihood, Miss Stein began her career as an iconoclast, like so many of her "lost generation." She wrote with her tongue in her cheek and an ambition to épater le bourgeois. But whether such was her intention or no, we may assert that it is what her books reveal, and thus it is all we need be occupied with considering. Fortunately or unfortunately for the artist, works of art once delivered to the public are public property, and there are many who are more equipped to assign them their proper place than the artist himself. Thus we are justified in calling Miss Stein a comedian provided only that we can show wherein the comedy lies….

One joke and one alone underlies the Stein writings, although there are many implications. The juxtaposition of words in sentence form, which tantalizingly sound as though they had a meaning when they have none, in an effort to ridicule meaning itself, is the formula. It is a subtle variety of the comedy of meaninglessness. In one kind of writing it relies upon sheer monotony.

"The same examples are the same and just the same and always the same and the same examples are just the same and are the same and are always the same. The same examples are just the same and they are very sorry for it" [Stein, Useful Knowledge]. The monotony becomes, unbearable, whereupon we are presented with a bewildering kind of half-truth which we may or may not be expected to take seriously; this is the familiar trick which is employed over and over. It can of course be equally effective if reversed:

"Supposing no one asked a question. What would be the answer.

"Supposing no one hurried four how many would there be if the difference was known" [Useful Knowledge]. These passages are characteristic. Fragments of meaning are found, distorted, broken, and utterly simple; but we can make nothing of them. The gamut of meaninglessness is run, all the way from pages of unbearable repetition, such as the following:

"Yes and yes and more and yes and why and yes and yes and why and yes. A new better and best and yes and yes and better and most and yes and yes and better and best and yes and yes and more and best and most and yes and yes" [Useful Knowledge]. And so on, to passages of beauty which are almost intelligible poems, such as this, for example:

If you hear her snore
It is not before you love her
You love her so that to be her beau is very lovely
She is sweetly there and her curly hair is very lovely
She is sweetly here and I am very near and that is very lovely.
She is my tender sweet and her little feet are stretching out well
which is a treat and very lovely
Her little tender nose is between her little eyes which close and
are very lovely.
She is very lovely and mine which is very lovely.
[Useful Knowledge]

The trick of putting together ideas which do not belong together because they are not on the same level of analysis, used so often by Miss Stein, is an old one but always effective, because it ridicules the commonest error of bad thinking. Tender Buttons, Geography and Plays: the pointed meaninglessness is so effective that it could hardly have been accidental. The practice of considering together ideas which do not belong together, and of making fun of them thereby, has been noted by other theorists of comedy as well as by other comedians. It is what Freud calls "the comic of speech or of words," [Sigmund Freud, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious] but it is rather the comedy of erroneous logical analysis. Freud quotes two examples of this kind of comedy: "'With a fork and with effort, his mother pulled him out of the mess,' is only comical, but Heine's verse about the four castes of the population of Gôttingen: 'Professors, students, Philistines, and cattle' is exquisitely witty."

Another variety of comedy employed by Stein is the use of platitudes in a way which is capable of restoring their original powerful meaning. We have … seen this take superb form at the hands of a master, as when used by Joyce, but Miss Stein's method is slightly different. She falls back more upon meaninglessness of an orthodox nature. The phrase "before the flowers of friendship faded" is so trite and disgustingly sentimental an expression that nobody would think of taking it seriously. Gertrude Stein uses it with her trick of repetition, and it is funny. "Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded." Again meaning aggravatingly looks out and we are almost tempted to avail ourselves of a serious reading.

There is an aspect of Stein's writings which leads us to the assumption that she is attempting to work only through the connotation of words, avoiding any real detonation. Her close connection with the magazine, Transition, and with its editor, Eugene Jolas' "revolution of the word" would convict her of aiming at the deepest kind of irrationalism. The group of writers in Paris which centred about this periodical flirted with all the Chthonic deities. Various methods of writing, such as Joyce's stream of consciousness, automatic writing, and "the language of night," have doubtless had their effect upon Stein.

Yet, as we have pointed out before, it is not what she may have set out to do but what she did that matters. In poker it is not the betting but the cards which count. Over against the influences we have mentioned it should also be noted that Stein studied under William James, and she has been friendly with Alfred North Whitehead. However, these direct rationalists (we can count James a rationalist in so far as he was a philosopher at all) seem to have exercised no influence upon her. There can be little doubt that Stein considers herself a proponent of irrationalism. Actually, her work itself has little to do with irrationalism or the Chthonic deities. What she may be said to have demonstrated is that irrationalism will not work; that the extreme irrationalist position is untenable. Thus she is a comedian in the deepest sense of the word, and this because she accomplished the opposite of what she set out to do. She really succeeded in defending reason; she has reaffirmed by implication the infinite and necessary relatedness of all things in a certain order, and thus refuted the nominalism with which she started.

Stein's comedy of meaninglessness has been very useful. It has served as an instrument of liberation. She has freed modern literature from the sterile formalism and Victorian smugness and outworn pretence with which it was encumbered when she first appeared upon the contemporary scene. This was a task which very much needed doing. Her books have helped to reacquaint us with the naked sound of our language, hitherto only available to foreigners, and allowed us to examine its connotations in isolation.

It is hard to forgive her, though, simply because she does not know what she does. Her ignorance of her own function is illustrated by the two meaningful autobiographies in which she talks chiefly about herself and in high seriousness. We are at last allowed to see the meaning, we are taken behind the scenes and permitted to hear Miss Stein talk in a normal tone of voice. It is quite an exposé, because we learn for the first time, and after much puzzlement, that there is no meaning at all. And we are angry with ourselves for not having guessed as much. Having nothing else to talk about, after years with gibberish, she talks about herself: her own life and her genius. And we long for the gibberish again, for that at least was selfcontained. It is like looking inside a balloon after having for some time admired its shining surface, only to learn that there is nothing to it but surface. What a clever trick it was after all, and how amusing. For Miss Stein is a comedian and nothing else, and her words have a meaning only when she is talking nonsense.