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AUTOBIOGRAPHY CONTI NUED
WARs I
HAvE SEEN.
By
Gertrude Stein. Random House.
$2.50.
I
T IS a great deal of trouble learning how to be a genius and teaching
Hemingway and Picasso how to be a genius particularly for thirty or
forty years if it is going to turn out that one is a charming writer, a
genius can be a charming writer but not vulgar not at all vulgar and not.
middleclass, Gertrude Stein is not vulgar she is charming. There are
two kinds of precocious children, one is nice and the other well they both
listen they listen to the grownups and they sometimes draw caricatures
but the one that is nice draws nice caricatures, nice children are not am–
bitious no not at all ambitious to be grown up they are ambitious to be
told they are nice and very ambitious to be told that they draw portraits.
Braque and Matisse and some other people didn't like the portraits that
Gertrude Stein wrote even though they were very nice and so they called
her a literary whore but she is not a whore. To be a whore you have to
take something from somebody and you have to give something even
if it is an imitation give and take, there has to be some give and take
to be a grownup whore. To be a precocious child a nice precocious child
or even a saint you do not need to give and take you only need to listen
and you do not need feelings, some feelings are not nice, ambition is a
feeling and ambition is not not oh nasty not nice.
If
you arc a nice precocious child and also the youngest in the
family naturally you have privileges the privilege of being petted the
privilege of being youngest, there you are you are privileged and no–
body can do anything but take care of you, nobody for the rest. of your
life. You listen to word-feelings and feeling-words you listen to words
and they sound like feelings, not many feelings are nice most feelings are
no no not feelings . Words are nice reading eating things are nice,
feeling-words are nicest. There are many words for saying there are
words for not saying there are many words for not saying, there are many
many words for not saying many many many words.
What Gertrude Stein likes most about this war more than other
wars. This war killed the nineteenth century, Hitler killed the nineteenth
century which Gertrude Stein was always also helping to kill. To be in
the last war you believed in evolution it was still the nineteenth century
you believed in progress, but to be in this war you only need a point of
view. And there are so many points of view oh dear there are so many
points of view in one person. There is Petain and there is Bernard Fay
he is very nice and there are soldiers collaborators people, people say
the Mayor is a collaborator but is he oh dear me, and there is food.
Food is important more important food is the most important thing than
money, money wa the nineteenth century and now we have the twen–
tieth century.
There is also Whitehead.
