Once you get past the silliness of American exceptionalism (in short: the English just like being, whereas Americans like doing shit and shit), there are some decent points made here, and Stein's attention to actual words, rather than character/plot/psychology/structure is a nice corrective to most discussion about narrative. I'll continue to think about her distinction between poetry and prose, in particular: poetry as continual naming, prose as a kind of reflection on mediation ("prose was more and more telling and by sentences balancing and then by paragraphing prose was more and more telling how anything happened if any one had anything to say about what happened how anything was known if anyone had anything to say about how anything was known..."). Since 'literature' is predominantly subjective, our problem is to make what is 'outside' 'inside,' that is, to make the objective world subjectively interesting.

Fair enough. Stein's arguments here are in some ways typically modernist, and in other ways more interesting than academics usually make modernism seem. But the real draw is Stein's style; the quote above is entirely representative. She doesn't use many words, but the ones she does use are very common, and the ones she does use she sure does use a lot. Not too many people could get away with that. ( )