The Review of Contemporary Fiction

How to Write by Gertrude Stein
Bruce Campbell

Gertrude Stein. How to Write. Sun & Moon. 1995. 428 pp. Paper: $12.95

This book is part of one of the more important projects of our day: the getting into print (again) of Gertrude Stein. How to Write (first published in 1931) is composed in eight sections, the sections having been separately written, the earliest in 1927. Of course, it is hardly a composition textbook. Comparing How to Write with any guide to writing would hardly seem profitable, although it might highlight one of the factors of Stein’s book; for How to Write exemplifies what it examines—a way of writing. How to Write is not so much about “how to write” as it is being “how to write.” The distance that allows us to talk about something no longer pertains. Thus: “Grammar unites parts and praises. In just this way.”

Stein’s approach is basically antipsychological “There is no use in finding out what is in anybody’s mind.” Writing must be pitched at the “complete actual present” without forethought, which is one way to understand Stein’s comment that “Whenever words come before the mind there is a mistake.” (A further sense of presence might be registered in John Cage’s later suggestion that there is no mistake: whatever is there in the work is literally there, whether the author had intended it or not.)

Not a psychologist, Stein declares herself a grammarian: “I am a grammarian. I think of the differences there are.” Although Stein highlights grammar over rhetoric (in contrast, say, to Paul de Man), her resonant use of difference is in keeping with our poststructuralist milieu. Compare Gregory Bateson’s definition of information (i.e., information is any difference that makes a difference). In Stein’s hands, however, difference cannot be thought separate from practice: “What is the difference between vocabulary and thought. He thought.” Differences are exemplified—indeed, are enacted—through practice. It is this which makes Stein’s book so provocatively free of summary. [Bruce Campbell]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction How to Write by Gertrude Stein Bruce Campbell Gertrude Stein. How to Write. Sun & Moon. 1995. 428 pp. Paper: $12.95 This book is part of one of the more important projects of our day: the getting into print (again) of Gertrude Stein. How to Write (first published in 1931) is composed in eight sections, the sections having been separately written, the earliest in 1927. Of course, it is hardly a composition textbook. Comparing How to Write with any guide to writing would hardly seem profitable, although it might highlight one of the factors of Stein’s book; for How to Write exemplifies what it examines—a way of writing. How to Write is not so much about “how to write” as it is being “how to write.” The distance that allows us to talk about something no longer pertains. Thus: “Grammar unites parts and praises. In just this way.” Stein’s approach is basically antipsychological “There is no use in finding out what is in anybody’s mind.” Writing must be pitched at the “complete actual present” without forethought, which is one way to understand Stein’s comment that “Whenever words come before the mind there is a mistake.” (A further sense of presence might be registered in John Cage’s later suggestion that there is no mistake: whatever is there in the work is literally there, whether the author had intended it or not.) Not a psychologist, Stein declares herself a grammarian: “I am a grammarian. I think of the differences there are.” Although Stein highlights grammar over rhetoric (in contrast, say, to Paul de Man), her resonant use of difference is in keeping with our poststructuralist milieu. Compare Gregory Bateson’s definition of information (i.e., information is any difference that makes a difference). In Stein’s hands, however, difference cannot be thought separate from practice: “What is the difference between vocabulary and thought. He thought.” Differences are exemplified—indeed, are enacted—through practice. It is this which makes Stein’s book so provocatively free of summary. [Bruce Campbell]

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