A Vocabulary of Thinking: Gertrude Stein and Contemporary North American Women's Innnovative Writing

1. Starting with Stein: Three Vocabularies of Thinking

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . one Starting with Stein Three Vocabularies of Thinking It is true that it can be transfigured all the same. Begin now.—Gertrude Stein, “Finally George a Vocabulary of Thinking” There is a very great difference between a vocabulary a dictionary. . . . This is what a vocabulary is. —Gertrude Stein, “Finally George a Vocabulary of Thinking” I n“FinallyGeorgeaVocabularyof Thinking,” published in the 1931 volume How to Write, Gertrude Stein begins with what seems to be a fairly straightforward set of definitions for thenameGeorge(as“thenameofGeorgeLynesGeorge,GeorgesBracque,” and so on) and the difference between a bay and a gulf. Then she moves on to take aim at the very fixity of the definitions she seems to have begun the essay with: “Probable probably is the most that they can say.” Even the opening discussion of the name George suggests a kind of playful challenge to the entire enterprise of definition: “George is the name of George Lynes George, Georges Bracque, George Ullman, George Joinville, George Williams and will with it and George Middleton. This makes it recognisable as thenameGeorge”(273).Inthispassage,Steinunhingesapropernounfrom its meaning by pointing to the ways in which that noun is always already polysemous. “George” is finally multiple and can only be “recognisable as the name George” (emphasis added), not as the marker for any particular George. Stein goes on to suggest, It is very much needed exchange changing this for that. George shines out one two three four about it. (275) The Georges—and the “Allans Pauls Christians and Virgils” (279) as well as the “Pauls Christians Virgils and Williams and even Franks and  . . . Starting with Stein Michaels and James and pleasures”—“can be united in resemblance and acquaintance” (289), linked by the common “s” ending, but linked also by play and association. Ulla Dydo points out that first names are “free,” whereas last names are governed by “rule-bound, hierarchical structure. The many decentered Georges are free of family rules, as friends are free of family strictures. Within families, however, movement is regulated and words are connected by the prescriptions of family grammar” (Gertrude Stein 218–219).1 Thus Stein begins to consider a distinction between the polysemy of some words and the rigid specificity of others. Stein connects this interest in naming to a distinction she seeks to make throughout the work: “There is a very great difference between a vocabulary a dictionary. . . . This is what a vocabulary is” (382). Stein hasn’t exactly given us any definition of a vocabulary; instead, she’s given us a vocabulary in lieu of definitions. As a concept, “vocabulary” emphasizes breadth; many words may be subsumed under the umbrella of a “vocabulary.” As such, a vocabulary has the potential to function as a kind of tool of empowerment. The person in possession of a vocabulary is in possession of a great deal of power, the power to pick and choose, the power to draw from a range of options. Definitionemphasizesconstraint ,demandingnarrownessandspecificity.There isn’t much space for a reader to act in response to a definition—decisions have already been made, and language settles into rigidity. Vocabularies are capacious enough to allow for both collectivity and individuality; we might share a language with others, but we also have our unique sets of associations , neologisms, and favorite words. Vocabularies expand and contract, changing with the specific needs of the individual. Definition, by contrast, requires a kind of stasis—the dictionary is the same for each of us, and its lexicon and definitions change at a glacial pace. Stein wants choice, the full range of “great difference between a vocabulary a dictionary.” In the end, she is not emphasizing binary difference (either a vocabulary or a dictio­ nary) but rather a kind of differential continuum, one that allows for both the steadiness of definition and the play of vocabulary. It is this continuum that Stein offers to contemporary North American women experimentalists. “When they say I will be as much liked as ever are they pronouncing themselves to have been in presence of an arrangement which they have left to them to need it before and after[?]” Stein wonders (276). We might think of Stein’s work as “an arrangement” that is needed “before and after,” which is to say that Stein offers both writers and readers a vocabulary for thinking about (and writing about) feminist experimen- Three Vocabularies of Thinking . . .  talism that challenges the contours of literary history...