The Review of Contemporary Fiction

To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays by Gertrude Stein
David Andrews

Gertrude Stein. To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays. Green Integer, 2001. 144 pp. Paper: $9.95.

Gertrude Stein intended to publish To Do as a children’s book, but because it seemed to lack narrative interest, it remained unpublished until 1957. I believe children would love the sonically mesmerizing To Do were it recited in short doses. The book lends itself to such partitioning. Modeled after the alphabet, it divides into twenty-six sections. That this also signals Stein’s modernist concern for the plasticity of language is neither surprising nor paradoxical. F.W. Dupee has called Stein “a Mother Goose with a mind,” and her innovation evokes comparison with authors as disparate as James Joyce, e. e. cummings, and Theodor Geisel. Further, To Do suggests that Stein’s detractors have a misguided view of her methods. Kenneth Burke has called her writing “art by subtraction,” and Edmund Wilson has insinuated that her obsession with “purifying” words of their signifying function results in monotonous, meaningless artifacts. But if To Do betrays a fascination with reiteration and radical juxtaposition, the book’s celebration of the melodic and irrational hardly entails any reduction in its power. Without illusionism, how could the story of Pearl, a girl who eats a certain Mr. Pancake, charm and amuse? And how could the investigation of birthdays, which the characters adjust, borrow, steal, misplace, and simply lack, seem absurd yet profound? Stein deconstructs the manifold power of the word even as she remystifies it. Hence To Do offers plenty to delight ear and intellect, child and adult. If anything makes the book unsuitable, it is the violence and melancholia that haunt and unify the whole: people are sad and hungry. A brave boy drowns. A vicious cannibal rabbit bursts into flame. A misanthropic youth fantasizes about dogs that depopulate the world at his command. Still, if the young can survive the Brothers Grimm, they will have no trouble surviving Stein. [David Andrews]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays by Gertrude Stein David Andrews Gertrude Stein. To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays. Green Integer, 2001. 144 pp. Paper: $9.95. Gertrude Stein intended to publish To Do as a children’s book, but because it seemed to lack narrative interest, it remained unpublished until 1957. I believe children would love the sonically mesmerizing To Do were it recited in short doses. The book lends itself to such partitioning. Modeled after the alphabet, it divides into twenty-six sections. That this also signals Stein’s modernist concern for the plasticity of language is neither surprising nor paradoxical. F.W. Dupee has called Stein “a Mother Goose with a mind,” and her innovation evokes comparison with authors as disparate as James Joyce, e. e. cummings, and Theodor Geisel. Further, To Do suggests that Stein’s detractors have a misguided view of her methods. Kenneth Burke has called her writing “art by subtraction,” and Edmund Wilson has insinuated that her obsession with “purifying” words of their signifying function results in monotonous, meaningless artifacts. But if To Do betrays a fascination with reiteration and radical juxtaposition, the book’s celebration of the melodic and irrational hardly entails any reduction in its power. Without illusionism, how could the story of Pearl, a girl who eats a certain Mr. Pancake, charm and amuse? And how could the investigation of birthdays, which the characters adjust, borrow, steal, misplace, and simply lack, seem absurd yet profound? Stein deconstructs the manifold power of the word even as she remystifies it. Hence To Do offers plenty to delight ear and intellect, child and adult. If anything makes the book unsuitable, it is the violence and melancholia that haunt and unify the whole: people are sad and hungry. A brave boy drowns. A vicious cannibal rabbit bursts into flame. A misanthropic youth fantasizes about dogs that depopulate the world at his command. Still, if the young can survive the Brothers Grimm, they will have no trouble surviving Stein. [David Andrews]

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