[Wgcp-whc] Ulla Dydo visit--10/28

[richard.deming at yale.edu]

All­

As you know, we are very fortunate to have Gertrude Stein scholar Ulla Dydo
joining the Working Group in Contemporary Poetics for a special session at
the Beinecke Library at 3pm on October 28 in room 38 on the court level.
Special thanks to the Beinecke for making this possible. The number of
attendees will have to be limited to 18 with priority going to regular WGCP
members. Please RSVP directly to
<mailto:nancy.kuhl at yale.edu>nancy.kuhl at yale.edu if you plan to attend.
Among other things, Dydo will likely talk a bit about The Autobiography of
Alice B. Toklas (she mentioned the very first section, “Before I Came to
Paris”). Dydo’s critical book, Gertrude Stein: The Language That Rises,
deals with The Autobiography in chapter 10 (especially pages 535 – 543).

The following comes directly from Ulla Dydo concerning readings for the
October 28 WGCP meeting at the Beinecke Library:

Please follow your own inclinations in reading Stein.  You may already have
Stein pieces or volumes of your own with favorites you wish to reread, or
you may want to read around and explore new texts. Some of the pieces in A
Stein Reader, with their short headnotes, may be helpful.

Here is a paragraph from my book that may be useful since in a single
phrase it suggests both the difficulty and the wonder that the reader of
Stein’s work faces.

             Since Stein "used everything" in writing, it is not surprising
that  precipitates
             of actuality appear in these works. Though they are not
"about" Stein's life and
             are not autobiographical in design, they absorb the vocabulary
of her experience.
             Reading the referential details makes it possible to follow,
in a raw state, what
             was happening to Stein, what she did and what she thought.
Reading rhetorically
             follows the evolving construction of the words into completed
texts. The two
             processes are not separate, though they can be considered
separately. (83)

Ulla Dydo


Nancy Kuhl
Assistant Curator, The Yale Collection of American Literature
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University
121 Wall Street
P.O. Box 208240
New Haven, CT 06520-8240
Phone: 203.432.2966
Fax: 203.432.4047

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