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Novels and Novelists

‘Some New Thing’

page 273

Some New Thing

Three Lives — By Gertrude Stein

Miss Gertrude Stein has discovered a new way of writing stories. It is just to keep right on writing them. Don't mind how often you go back to the beginning, don't hesitate to say the same thing over and over again—people are always repeating themselves—don't be put off if the words sound funny at times: just keep right on, and by the time you've done writing you'll have produced your effect. Take, for instance, the first story of the good Anna who managed the whole little house for Miss Matilda and the three dogs and the underservant as well. For five years Anna managed the little house for Miss Matilda. In those five years there were four under-servants. ‘The one that came first….’ She was succeeded by Molly; and when Molly left, old Katy came in every day to help Anna with her work. When Miss Matilda went away this summer ‘old Katy was so sorry, and on the day that Miss Matilda went, old Katy cried hard for many hours…. When Miss Matilda early in the fall came to her house again old Katy was not there.’ At last Anna heard of Sally.

If the reader has by this time settled himself, folded his hands, composed his countenance and decided to stay, we can assure him that Miss Gertrude Stein will not disappoint him. She will treat him to the whole of the good Anna's life from her arrival in America until her death, and to the whole of the gentle Lena's life from when her kind but managing aunt, Mrs. Haydon, brought her to Bridgepoint until her death also—and in between these patient, hard-working, simple German lives there is the life of the negress Melanctha. Now that simple German way of telling about those simple German women may be very soothing—very pleasant—but let the reader go warily, warily with Melanctha. We confess we read a page 274 good page or two before we realized what was happening. Then the dreadful fact dawned. We discovered ourselves reading in syncopated time. Gradually we heard in the distance, and then coming uncomfortably near, the sound of banjos, drums, bones, cymbals and voices. The page began to rock. To our horror we found ourselves silently singing:

Was it true what Melanctha had said that night to him? Was it true he was the one who had made all this trouble for them? Was it true he was the only one who always had had wrong ways in him? Waking or sleeping, Jeff now always had this torment….

Those who have heard the Southern Orchestra sing ‘It's me—it's me—it's me’ or ‘I got a robe’ will understand what we mean. ‘Melanctha’ is negro music with all its maddening monotony done into prose; it is writing in real rag-time. Heaven forbid Miss Stein should become a fashion!

(October 15, 1920).