Scene4 Magazine | letters to the editor

Thank you Catherine Conway Honig for an inspiring view of hope that is alive and well in Cuba.

Marta Mediz Siverman

read Catherine Conway Honig's article

There's going to be a new saying now-"Do A Charlie Sheen". It means "bomb" in any backwater jerk- town like Detroit.

PatT.

read Les Marcott's column

As an admirer of Gertrude Stein I feel I have to come to her aid by pointing out a few misunderstandings in my estimated colleague's interesting article. There is no indication anywhere that Stein didn't finish her murder mystery. The story ends very nicely, in fact, with a little "Thank you"-bow, an ironic finishing arabesque, and the word "Finis.", True, in his afterword to the 1982 reedition of the book, John Herbert Gill states, "'Blood on the Dining-Room Floor' comes to an end, but, as Gertrude Stein herself said of it, is has no ending." What that means, however, is, no ending in the traditional sense of what is expected in a murder mystery: the mystery solved, the murderer found. None of this, of course, in Stein's detective novel. The mystery of "Blood on the Dining-Room Floor" is that of Stein's identity. Who was she, now that she was suddenly famous? "I am I because my little dog knows me."  And here we come to  another   misunderstanding. I believe nobody and nothing ever "forced" Gertrude Stein into writing anything. She was not the kind. What she wanted at all cost was being famous, a "lion." If there were suggestions, from a publisher, for example, they were only stating the obvious: a compulsive author nearing age 60 would necessarily think of autobiographical writing. Doing it in the voice of her lover, as the pretend "Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," is such a sly, playful move - even Stein couldn't have been that brilliant under any kind of pressure!

Renate Stendhal

read Karren Alenier's article  

Gertrude Stein would love that 65 years after her death, she can still stir people about her accomplishments. I respect what Renate Stendhal has to say about Stein's Blood on the Dining Room Floor and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Lots of scholars argue over what Stein meant and did. Diana Souhami in Gertrude and Alice, her biography of the famous pair wrote this: "Gertrude tried, but failed, to write about the strange events of the summer in a book called Blood on the Dining Room Floor. 'It was very bothersome. I thought I would try but to try is to die and so I did not really try. I was not doing any writing.'" Stein based Blood on the Dining Room Floor on some events local to her summer home in Bilignin. There was a dead woman but what happened was unclear as is whether Stein left Blood on the Dining Room Floor a cliffhanger or a neatly tied up literary package.
As for The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, there is no doubt that the writing of this work caused Stein incredible stress. Some people argue (not convincingly to my way of thinking however) that Alice Toklas wrote the work.

Karren Alenier