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Gertrude Stein, All Courage And Will, Is A Soldier Of Minimalism. Her Work, Unlike The Resonating Silences In The Art Of Samuel Beckett, Embodies In Its Loquacity And Verbosity The Curious Paradox Of The Minimalist Form. This Art Of The Nuance In Repetition And Placement She Shares With The Orchestral Compositions Of Philip Glass.

-Elizabeth Hardwick

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Gertrude Stein, All Courage

Elizabeth Hardwick

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Gertrude Stein, All Courage And Will, Is A Soldier Of Minimalism. Her Work, Unlike The Resonating Silences In The Art Of Samuel Beckett, Embodies In Its Loquacity And Verbosity The Curious Paradox Of The Minimalist Form. This Art Of The Nuance In Repetition And Placement She Shares With The Orchestral Compositions Of Philip Glass.

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A Letter Is Not A Dialogue Or Even An Omniscient Exposition. It Is A Fabric Of Surfaces, A Mask, A Form As Well Suited To Affectations As To The Affections. The Letter Is, By Its Natural Shape, Self-justifying; It Is One's Own Evidence, Deposition, A Self-serving Testimony. In A Letter The Writer Holds All The Cards, Controls Everything About Himself And About Those Assertions He Wishes To Make Concerning Events Or The Worth Of Others. For Completely Self-centered Characters, The Letter Form Is A Complex And Rewarding Activity.

Mothers Born On Relief Have Their Babies On Relief. Nothingness, Truly, Seems To Be The Condition Of These New York People. They Are Nomads Going From One Rooming House To Another, Looking For A Toilet That Functions.

Adversity Is A Great Teacher, But This Teacher Makes Us Pay Dearly For Its Instruction; And Often The Profit We Derive, Is Not Worth The Price We Paid.

I Have Come To The Belief That There Is Not Merely An Accidental Relationship Between Bad Writing And Routine Sociological Research, But A Wonderfully Pure, Integral Relationship; The Awkwardness Is Necessary And Inevitable.

Gossip, Or, As We Gossips Like To Say, Character Analysis.

Writing Is Not "the Establishment Of A Professional Reputation" As If One Were A Doctor Or Lawyer; It Is Not Properly In The Sentence With Creation Of A Family And The Purchase Of A Home.

When You Travel Your First Discovery Is That You Do Not Exist.

Art Is A Profession, Not A Shrine.

The Fifties - They Seem To Have Taken Place On A Sunny Afternoon That Asked Nothing Of You Except A Drifting Belief In The Moment And Its Power To Satisfy.

Sunny Afternoon

Gertrude Stein, All Courage And Will, Is A Soldier Of Minimalism. Her Work, Unlike The Resonating Silences In The Art Of Samuel Beckett, Embodies In Its Loquacity And Verbosity The Curious Paradox Of The Minimalist Form. This Art Of The Nuance In Repetition And Placement She Shares With The Orchestral Compositions Of Philip Glass.

The Great Is Seldom A Deterrent To The Mediocre

The Private And Serious Drama Of Guilt Is Not Often A Useful One For Fiction Today And Its Disappearance, Following Perhaps The Disappearance From Life, Appears As A Natural, Almost Unnoticed Relief, Like Some Of The Challenging Illnesses Wiped Out By Drug And Vaccines.

Since Films And Television Have Staged Everything Imaginable Before It Happens, A True Event, Taking Place In The Real World, Brings To Mind The Landscape Of Films.

Biographers, The Quick In Pursuit Of The Dead, Research, Organize, Fill In, Contradict, And Make In This Way A Sort Of Completed Picture Puzzle With All The Scramble Turned Into A Blue Eye And The Parts Of The Right Leg Fitted Together.

It Is June. This Is What I Have Decided To Do With My Life Just Now. I Will Do This Work And Lead This Life, The One I Am Leading Today. Each Morning The Blue Clock And The Crocheted Bedspread, The Table With The Phone, The Books And Magazines, The Times At The Door.

The Greatest Gift Is A Passion For Reading. It Is Cheap, It Consoles, It Distracts, It Excites, It Gives You Knowledge Of The World And Experience Of A Wide Kind. It Is A Moral Illumination.

Sentences In Which I Have Tried For A Certain Light Tone -- Many Of Those Have To Do With Events, Upheavals, Destructions That Caused Me To Weep Like A Child.

Many People Believe Letters The Most Personal And Revealing Form Of Communication. In Them, We Expect To Find The Charmer At His Nap, Slumped, Open-mouthed, Profoundly Himself Without Thought For Appearances. Yet, This Is Not Quite True. Letters Are Above All Useful As A Means Of Expressing The Ideal Self; And No Other Method Of Communication Is Quite So Good For This Purpose. In Conversation, Those Uneasy Eyes Upon You, Those Lips Ready With An Emendation Before You Have Begun To Speak, Are A Powerful Deterrent To Unreality, Even To Hope.

Memory - The Very Skin Of Life.

The Laughter Of Adults Was Always Very Different From The Laughter Of Children. The Former Indicated A Recognition Of The Familiar, But In Children It Came From The Shock Of The New.

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Harvard (across The River In Cambridge) And Boston Are Two Ends Of One Mustache. ... Without The Faculty, The Visitors, The Events That Harvard Brings To The Life Here, Boston Would Be Intolerable To Anyone Except Genealogists, Antique Dealers, And Those Who Find Repletion In A Closed Local Society.

Here In The City The Worst Thing That Can Happen To A Nation Has Happened: We Are A People Afraid Of Its Youth.

Boston - Wrinkled, Spindly-legged, Depleted Of Nearly All Her Spiritual And Cutaneous Oils, Provincial, Self-esteeming - Has Gone On Spending And Spending Her Inflated Bills Of Pure Reputation, Decade After Decade.

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In The Long Run Wives Are To Be Paid In A Peculiar Coin — Consideration For Their Feelings. As It Usually Turns Out This Is An Enormous, Unthinkable Inflation Few Men Will Remit, Or If They Will, Only With A Sense Of Being Overcharged.

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