NEIL SCHMITZ
Pain soup, suppose it is ques tion , suppose it is butter, real is,
rea l is onl y, onl y excreate, onl y excreate a no since.
A no, a no since, a no since when , a no since when since, a no
since when since a no since when since, a no since, a no since when
since, a no since, a no , a no since a no since, a no since, a no since.
577
In th a t sin gsong of "no since when since," Gertrude Stein effectively
breaks the spell o f nos ta lg ia tha t enU'ances Huckspeech as a myth of
presence, and a t the large ri sk of being thought a literary nuisance,
nonsensica l, admits into the empty forms o f writing the amplitude of a
ma ture, speaking consciousness . Speech no longer exists outside
writing as a resource, as an ori gin , but is instead the very field in which
writing, p roperl y a ttuned , occurs. Yet the text of
T ender Buttons,
like
Mary Jane Reed 's miss pell ed no te, a ffri ghts our psychi c equilibrium as
readers. At once promiscuo us and playful , Huckish , it is also as hard as
Heidegger. "Orange In " th e heading of thi s particu lar entry states, and
so pres umab ly the orange goes into the sauce, simply enough, and yet
orange-in beguil es us with the reson ance o f origin , the or ig inal orange
to whi ch o range-in murki ly refers.
T ender Bu ttons
is a vio la tion of the
pac t we all signed ear ly in life when , having already learned wha t to
ea t, how to spoon pain soup , we next learned how to write right.
"The
first
comprehensive presentation
of the vast structuralist panorama:'*
THE AGE OF
STRUCTURALISM
Levi-Strauss to Foucault
Edith Kurzweil
porary France:'- Eugene Good–
hear t.
Boston University
'This va luable and wide- ranging
survey...stands out for being critical
as well as sympathetic. lucid as well
as thoughtful:'- Morris Dickstein.
Queens College
'"An important cont ribution to con–
temporary intellectual and social
histcrY:'- *Kurtz H. Wolff.
Brandeis
University
"Provides succinct summaries of the
ideas of Claude Levi-Strauss. Roland
Barthes. Jacques Lacan. Michel Fou–
cau lt. and Paul Ricoeur. among oth–
ers....Unlike most commentators on
structuralism. who are mainly con–
cerned with its conceptua l coher–
ence or lack of it. Edith Ku rzweil
makes t he welcome attempt to link
the varieties of structuralism and
the reactions against them to the
particular circumstances of contem-
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