"She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting."
Gertrude Stein, writing about herself in the 3rd person.
Part 2 in a continuing series of blog posts made from passages I marked in books I read long ago.
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When Isabel Paterson was told that Gertrude Stein was giving a lecture on "The History of English Literature as I Understand it" Paterson remarked that it "should be a short lecture."
"She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting."
Usually a sign of drug-enhanced proofreading.
True. The normal is complicated and very hard to capture. It also is not as "interesting" to the lazy as the outre. This explains nine tenths of modern art.
She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.
Kind of reminds me of Orwell's (perhaps intentionally self-deprecating) passage in his Politics and the English Language (1946).
Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.
To wit,
Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.
I suspect the influence of Alice Toklas in this mis-mash but perhaps I read too much into it... or not enough.
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