An Exercise in Reading Gertrude Stein

or

PRACTICAL PUDENDUM

 How does Gertrude Stein, in her limitless capacity to confound the reader, imbue her texts with the philosophies of William James?

 Although this essay centers on a tiny excerpt from “Objects” from Tender Buttons, I believe that an attentive reader can extrapolate characteristics of William James that resonate throughout the entirety of Tender Buttons.

            "All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one .... Genre is a minimum-security prison."-- David Shields, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, 2010

            What do we want from life? Houses are nice, and so are BMWs, but material things have proven to last only so long before succumbing to the fate that befalls everything tangible. Flowers wither, bugs get smushed, the pages of books turn yellow and humans enter the realm of the dust from which they came—in short, we better enjoy life while it lasts.

Dr. Gregory House looks like a terrible role model.  Despite this, in the popular television serial House, M.D., he is one of the most captivating modern characters on air.  Dr. House is many things, and while he is a jerk, he is also a brilliant doctor.  In nearly every episode, he manages to save a life with his unique type of thinking.  So, we must ask ourselves, should we be more like House, minus the drug problem and cynical attitude?  Is he a good teacher, and can we learn from his thought patterns?  Should we even be learning from a television series that is often unrealistic, even dreamlike at times?  The answers to these questions are almost as complex as House himself.

Isn't life just a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?

-Andy Warhol

           When you look at this image, what do you see? A grotesque picture with contrasting pink and blue hues insisting on a violent exchange between man and beast? Now look at the next image. 

For this paper, I chose to represent William James and two other persons from our discussion in comics. Comics bring a different, more humorous, mentality to “reading” James. Working with this paper gave me more respect for cartoonists; comics are, in some ways, easy to think up—the tricky part is translating what’s visually in my head to the paper. They also take a significant amount of time to draw. 

“Metaphors for Sale”

            Serials have become a regular part of most American’s lives, in the form of episodic television programs, such as House MD, Gossip Girl, and Grey’s Anatomy.