Ida a Novel (37 page)

A rumor circulating a couple of months ago hinted that Gertrude Stein’s new novel,
Ida
, was really about the Duchess of Windsor. Now that I have tottered through
Ida
, I find I cannot categorically deny the rumor. It is certainly as much about the Duchess of Windsor as it is about anything or anyone else. If it is not about the Duchess of Windsor, what is it about? Don’t look at me; I’m not your man.

Ida
is Miss Stein’s first novel in eleven years. “It is presented faithfully to you,” says the amiable Mr. Bennett Cerf, “by a publisher who rarely has the faintest idea of what Miss Stein is talking about, but who admires her from the bottom of his heart for her courage and for her abounding love of humanity and freedom.” This statement would seem to mark an interesting departure in editorial policy. Doubtless we shall soon be reading the works of authors who cannot tell a lie, are kind to their younger brothers, or have contributed heavily to the Salvation Army.

Out of her abounding love for humanity, Miss Stein gives us an elusive creature named Ida. The story of Ida is divided, like a football game, into two halves, called, for purposes of ready reference, First Half and Second Half. The printer and binder have ingeniously arranged to make Second Half follow First Half, so quite an effect of sequence and coherence is produced. It’s never made quite clear whether Ida (who dominates both halves) is on her own or whether she is twins. On page 43 we have this: “Ida decided that she was just going to talk to herself. Anybody could stand around and listen but as for her she was just going to talk to herself. She no longer even needed a twin.” This seems a forthright statement, but at other points the twin situation is not as lucid as one would wish. On page 52, however, Ida is definitely not a twin. Fifty-two is my favorite page.

Ida (or her twin) has certain quirks: she is very careful about Tuesday, she always hesitates before eating, and she rests a good deal during and between marriages. I should inform you that Ida is the marrying type. Among her various husbands is a man named Frank Arthur, and why not? We do not learn much about her marital habits, but we are told that “she was always good friends with all her husbands.”

This goodness of Ida’s also extends to other matters. “She was kind to politics while she was in Washington very kind. She told politics that it was very nice of them to have her be kind to them.” No record exists of politics’ reply.

Furthermore, there is a man in the book named Philip. “Philip was the kind that said everything out loud.” This sentence about Philip appears on page 40, and he is never mentioned again. Philip is my favorite character.

I have a theory about Miss Stein’s novel which—give me just a second—I should like to outline for you. My notion is that Miss Stein has set herself to solve, and has succeeded in solving, the most difficult problem in prose composition—to write something that will not arrest the attention in any way, manner, shape, or form. If you think this easy, try it. I know of no one except Miss Stein who can roll out this completely non-resistant prose, prose that puts you at once in a condition resembling the early stages of grippe—the eyes and legs heavy, the top of the skull wandering around in an uncertain and independent manner, the heart ponderously, tiredly beating. Take a sentence at random: “Ida instead of going on the way she was going went back the way she had come.” Repeat it slowly once or twice and you will find that your head has fallen to one side and your eyelids are a little sandy. Try this: “Ida woke up. After a while she got up. Then she stood up. Then she ate something. After that she sat down. That was Ida.”

See what I mean? Sleep tight.

New Yorker
(Feb. 15, 1941): 78.

LEWIS GANNETT

Bennett Cerf, who, under the corporate pseudonym of Random House, publishes the works of Gertrude Stein, says of her new “novel,”
Ida
(Random House, $2), that he rarely has the faintest idea what Miss Stein is talking about but that he admires her from the bottom of his heart.

So do I. Mr. Cerf adds, however, that he admires Miss Stein “for her courage and for her abounding love of humanity and freedom.” That’s well enough, but it is hardly the impression I get from reading
Ida
. I admire Miss Stein, and enjoy reading her “novel,” much as I used to enjoy reading the works of the eleven-year-olds at a certain progressive school on West Twelfth Street, particularly a story written by my daughter Ruth, which concerned the somewhat incomprehensible quarrels of Mrs. Babbitt and Mrs. Dutch Cleanser.

You will hardly read
Ida
for its plot, though careful study might reveal quite a lot of plot. Ida was a twin, and then she wasn’t, which seldom happens in novels published by Doubleday or Macmillan. Her life never began again because it was always there, which is so different from life in the works of the life-reborn school. Ida liked sitting. She did not hear what they said. She just sat and everything was hers without her asking for it, and when she was ready she went away in an automobile by airplane. She was very fond of dogs, and quite a lot of marrying happened to her.

First there was Arthur, who had slept too often under a bridge to care about fishing; they were married and they went to live in Ohio, but Ida did not love anybody in Ohio. She loved apples. Then in Washington Frederick came to see Ida; they were there together; everything just happened in those days; Ida did not remember how many years she was with Frederick and in Ohio and in Texas because in those days she did not count. The third time it was Andrew and he came from Boston, and it is very usual of them, Gertrude Stein says, when they come from Boston to be selfish, very usual indeed. It was not exciting, it was what they did. They did get married.

. . . It is rather like modern poetry, this novel of Gertrude Stein’s, except that it has somewhat more rhythm and a great deal more charm. Miss Stein conveys, as do the progressive school children, a sense that she really enjoys writing, and doesn’t care a bit whether you, or her publisher, know what she is talking about or not.

Books and Things,
New York Herald Tribune
(Feb. 15, 1941)

HARRY HANSEN

When I first began reviewing books a veteran editor, who had been reviewing Gertrude Stein’s works for a generation or two, explained the traditional way of reviewing her books. “You take a slice out of them for a sample,” said he. “Nobody can understand any of it, anyhow.”

But I find that parts of
Ida
, Miss Stein’s “first novel in 11 years,” do seem to make sense, although I can’t get interested in Ida herself. The passages that seem to be written in English run like these, about Ida and the dogs:

“So one changed to two and two changed to five and the next dog was also not a big one, his name was Lillieman and he was black and a French bull and not welcome. He was that kind of a dog he just was not welcome.

“When he came he was not welcome and he came very often. He was good-looking, he was not old, he did finally die and was buried under a white lilac tree in a garden but he just was not welcome.

“He had his little ways, he always wanted to see something that was just too high or too low for him to reach and so everything was sure to get broken. He did not break it but it did just get broken. Nobody could blame him but of course he was not welcome.”

The French bull may not have been welcome, but the French poodle named Dick was. “Dick was the first poodle I ever knew and he was always welcome, round roly-poly and old and gray and lively and pleasant, he was always welcome,” writes Miss Stein.

“He had only one fault. He stole eggs, he could indeed steal a whole basket of them and then break them and eat them, the cook would hit him with a broom when she caught him but nothing could stop him, when he saw a basket of eggs he had to steal them and break them and eat them. He only liked eggs raw, he never stole cooked eggs, whether he liked breaking them, or the looks of them or just, well anyway it was the only fault he had. Perhaps because he was a black dog and eggs are white and then yellow, well anyway he could steal a whole basket of them and break them and eat them, not the shells of course just the egg.”

Dick came to a cruel end—at the age of 14 he ran off to see a distant lady dog and on the way was run over and, “alas poor Dick he was never buried anywhere.”

Miss Stein concludes: “Dogs are dogs, you sometimes think that they are not but they are. And they always are here there and everywhere.”

Bennett Cerf, president of Random House, signs a statement on the jacket saying he “rarely has the faintest idea of what Miss Stein is talking about, but admires her from the bottom of his heart for her courage and for her abounding love of humanity and freedom.” We can inform Bennett that in the above extract Miss Stein is talking about two dogs, of which one was not welcome and the other liked raw eggs. As for her abounding love of humanity and freedom, we take that for granted. We always knew Miss Stein must have some redeeming qualities; surely people didn’t continue to publish her just because she made words stand on end.

The rest of
Ida
will cost you $2, but this much is free.

The First Reader,
New York World-Telegram
(Feb. 15, 1941)

MARIANNE HAUSER, “MISS STEIN’S
IDA 
”

On the flap of this novel Bennett Cerf states somewhat evasively that though he admires Miss Stein “from the bottom of his heart,” he rarely has the faintest idea of what she is talking about. This statement, we feel, does not do full justice to Gertrude Stein. Whenever she talks about something, and she oftentimes does, her thoughts are neither very complex nor enigmatic. More often, however, she does not talk about anything in particular, but just talks, putting words together rhythmically and for their own sake. To look for an underlying idea in those instances seems as futile as to look for apples in an orange tree.

Ida
, Miss Stein’s first new novel in eleven years, is not her most eccentric work, though it surely is a queer enough book. One might call it a short novel, a long poem, or a modern fairy tale; or a painting in words, reminding of a Dali rather than of a Picasso.

The plot itself, simple and essentially satirical, leaves little to guess. Ida was born in America, of “sweet and gentle” parents. She grew up, fond of resting, also fond of changing places, doing nothing at all. She was nobody, but she was everybody because she was Ida. She traveled all over the country, doing nothing. She won in a beauty contest, and she owned a blind dog, called Love, and dozens of other dogs, one after the other. She said “well,” and “how do you do,” and “how nice of you. Come again.” There was no one for her but Ida, except for her twin Ida, a double whom she had created to have some one to talk to. Thus equipped with beauty, conversational charm, and herself, she was to advance far in life.

She married many times. She had all sorts of husbands, and all sorts of clothes and hats. One day she left America, and with one of her husbands she went to a foreign country. There she lived in a comfortable house as mistress of the most prominent, the most talked-about man in the country: Andrew the first. Andrew was good looking. He never read anything, and he took a walk every day. The affair of Andrew the first and Ida was known and discussed by every one, and every one wondered if they would or would not marry. There were distinguished guests at Ida’s house day in day out, and Ida was well dressed, and she said, “how do you do,” and “yes, do,” and finally she said, “yes.”

So much about the plot. Miss Stein tells it all in her own, highly conscious manner, sarcastically, poetically, absurdly, saying everything precisely as no one else would say it.

It is a curious little book, too thin, too deliberate to be called crazy, and too well done to be laughed off. There is little sense in approaching it from a normal literary point of view. To get hold of its substance seems as impossible as to catch a moonbeam or define the shape of an amoeba. One cannot search for the concrete in the abstract and complain if there isn’t anything to be found.

Nor would it make sense to say critically that Ida is unreal as a person; for unreal is precisely what she is meant to be. Things happen to her and within her as in a dream, and are told as they might be told in a dream. One passes through the story somnambulistically, feeling one’s self once in a while slapped soberly on the back by Miss Stein’s sense of humor. Those moments are the happiest, and the most refreshing, in the book.

When there is nothing else, there is always Miss Stein’s personal style, following its own eccentric rules. To quote some of the weirdest passages would be amusing, yet unjust; almost as unjust as to pick for the sheer fun of it some phrases from
Finnegans Wake
. Miss Stein’s book, however futuristic or surrealistic, is a rounded piece of writing, cleverly balanced in its own way and not to be torn apart. Whether one likes or dislikes
Ida
is a matter of taste as well as patience. This, we admit readily, is quite a commonplace criticism. Yet we also feel it is the only final thing we can say about both the book and the heroine.

New York Times Book Review
(Feb. 16, 1941): sec. 6, p. 7