#11

Gertrude Stein's Geographical History of America is easily one of the most frustrating texts I have ever had to read.  No matter how much we discuss it, I absolutely cannot wrap my head around what this book is supposed to be about.  Every time I start to feel like I see a through line, I realize that there's another dimension to the text that knocks that idea out of the sky.  It's structured in a way that just drives me up the wall, and I can't seem to reconcile certain contradictions that are in there.

Firstly, there's the way one is supposed to analyze this book.  because each sentence is a riddle, you have to analyze each little paragraph or sentence for a good 20 minutes before you start to get a solid idea of what she is saying.  I feel like once you actually have all of the themes in this written down in front of you (human mind, human nature, nature of war, nature of piece.  nature of reading, writing, language, and even the point of sentience vs non sentience, etc), you could figure out what the common theme was.  On the other hand, because of how the analysis is so time consuming, I feel like almost NO human would ever spend that much time decoding this book.  It's just so incredibly tedious.  That;s what I can't tear myself away from.  This book is just so outrageously tedious, I must imagine that somehow, the difficulty is in service of the book's main theme.  No matter how I approach this though, I inevitably fail and end up stuck on the tedium again.

Worse, I am starting to feel like that's part of the point of the book, but at the same time, almost EVERY COMPLAINT that has been brought up in class has also been said to probably be "part of the point of the book," which only further raises my skepticism.  I...feel like I'm fighting myself when I read this.  Is that the point?  I just don't know anymore...

I'm sure she ultimately has something very interesting to say about the Human Condition.  I really do.  It's obvious that whatever she's saying, it relates to the habits thoughts and skills that we humans learn early on without thinking about, and she's trying to draw attention to them so that we DO think about them.  Exactly what habits, thoughts, or skills she is referring to, of course, is the challenging part that she's encoded so well, and I can respect the skill it took to do so.  There is clearly a MASSIVE amount of time and effort put into this piece, and the language is absolutely beautiful.  I completely respect her and her writing style, and it's obviously FAR more advanced than mine.  I think I might just be starting to burn out on experimental writing and challenging contemporary art in general... I probably need to step back and watch some superhero cartoons for a while.  But since the class is almost done, I'll give it my all this weekend to try and dig in and latch onto something in this book that pertains to our class.  I promise!