Ida a Novel (40 page)

Ida
, I find, is full of excitement and drama. It has its own meanings too, even though they are not the kind you can put your finger on. If you approach the book willing to let Miss Stein talk to you, instead of insisting that she present you the kind of writing you are accustomed to, you will find her new novel a stirring pleasure.

[
Springfield Union
?], [Apr. 1941?] (YCAL 28.553)

EARLE BIRNEY

When something happens nothing begins. When anything begins then nothing happens and you could always say with Ida that nothing began.

Nothing ever did begin.

Partly that and nothing more.

The above is a fair sample of the style and material in Miss Stein’s latest little bundle of words. It is also a fair description of what happens. Not, of course, that Miss Stein intends anything to happen. She warned us, in the pseudo
Autobiography Of Alice B Toklas
, that “events should never be the material of poetry or prose. They should consist of an exact reproduction of either an outer or inner reality.” Unless my eyes have deceived me all these years,
Ida
does not even inexactly reproduce any outer reality known to man. As for the inner verities, no doubt the book is chock-full of them, but the dilettantish babble of babytalk which serves Miss Stein for a language got in the way of this reviewer whenever he tried to get his trembling hands on any of them.

This is not written to discourage any
Forum
readers who feel they have steadier fingers for grasping Ida’s soul. Take it simply as the baffled cry of one who would like to get his claws around Ida’s neck. I am all for defending Miss Stein’s right to experiment in literature, and for commending the publisher who, by his own confession on the jacket, doesn’t know what she’s talking about but nevertheless prints her. And it would no doubt be more pleasing to the publisher if I imitated W. H. Auden and other reviewers who have dodged the issue by writing parody-reviews of
Ida
in the hope that their readers would think that they understood it.

Moreover, Mr. Auden says he likes
Ida
and Ida’s ideas alike (this is catching) whereas whenever this reviewer felt that he understood Ida he didn’t like her. She is a chicken-minded self-satisfied enervated self-conscious little bore and so is her imaginary Twin-Ida and her great-aunts and her numerous and shadowy husbands and dogs. And so is Miss Stein.

Miss Stein was a bore when, in 1909, she wrote her one intelligible book,
Three Lives
. But then she was not much more boring than Frank Norris and the other second-rate Americans whom she was imitating. Now, after thirty years practise, she is without doubt the greatest bore among modern writers.

Fiction and Diction,
Canadian Forum
21 (Apr. 1941): 28

KLAUS MANN, “TWO GENERATIONS”

Neither Gertrude Stein nor Carson McCullers needs an introduction to the readers of this magazine. For Miss Stein is certainly not yet forgotten—not at all!—and Miss McCullers has made a rather sensational entry into American Literature with her remarkable first novel,
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
.

It’s not really that they resemble each other—Miss Stein and Miss McCullers—quite the contrary. But since their two slender volumes,
Ida
and
Reflections in a Golden Eye
, happen to lie side by side on my reading table, it allows me to visualize these two extraordinary women walking through the amazing scenery of their capricious imaginations. They don’t look like two sisters, to be sure: the difference of age and attitude is enough to banish such an idea. Nor do they give the impression of being mother and daughter or a couple of intimate friends. Rather, they might be taken for two individuals distantly akin to each other—a well-preserved aunt, perhaps, accompanying her niece on a walk in the darkling plain.

Says Aunt Gertrude, with a toneless laugh: “It’s too funny for words. All those funny things that happened to Ida. There was nothing funny about Ida but funny things happened to her. Dear Ida. So she was born and a very little while after her parents went off on a trip and never came back. That was the first funny thing that happened to Ida. Then, of course, many other funny things happened. And then, of course, all her marriages. Arthur. And Andrew. Andrew never read. Of course not. Ida was careless but not that way. She did read.”

“I read quite a bit, too,” observes niece Carson in a hollow, mournful voice.

“Oh, yes,” Aunt Gertrude says, shrugging her shoulders, impatiently.

“I’m afraid,” says the girl, and she suddenly stands still, as if petrified. “I am dreadfully scared. There is a chill in the air. . . .”

She remains motionless, her obstinate, wan little face bent backwards, staring into space, in the attitude of one who listens for a call from a long distance.

“Don’t get excited, child,” Aunt Gertrude suggests, with the mild and cruel superiority of a sage. “No matter what the day is it always ends the same way, no matter what happens in the year the year always ends one day.”

“The air is full of sordid mysteries,” whispers the younger one, withdrawing into her ominous trance as into a cave. “Private Williams. . . . The mute expression in his eyes—He had never seen a naked woman till he watched Eleonora Penderton. . . . The Captain’s wife, you must know, feared neither man, beast, nor devil; hence all the lively gossip among the ladies of the post. . . .”

“Oh, yes. Thank you.” Aunt Gertrude seems slightly irritated. “What you just said about ‘neither beast nor devil’ sounds rather feeble. Oh yes. Kind of Ibsen-like. So that is the way it sounds. Reminds me of Hedda Gabler.
Femme fatale
. What a bore. Not at all the kind of thing a young person should write in the twentieth century. For the twentieth century is not the nineteenth century. Not at all. Of course not.”

Young Carson, absorbed in her own vision, continues, stubborn and ecstatic: “The air is charged with age-old vices—atavistic trends. . . . Jealousy, hatred, desire, parricidal obsessions—you can feel them, smell them, taste them—even in the stable. Mrs. Penderton, an indomitable Amazon, is dynamic enough to master Firebird, that terrific horse. But look!—she has bitten her lower lip quite through; there is blood on her sweater and shirt. Blood—everywhere . . . murder, madness, decay. . . . What a delightful place is a military post in peacetime!”

“Yes. Of course. Not at all.” Aunt Gertrude is increasingly annoyed by the macabre vivacity of her young companion. “I prefer Ida. Of course I do. Definitely. Why should everybody talk about Ida. Why not. Dear Ida.”

“Oh, those lugubrious dinner parties at the Pendertons!” the delicate niece exclaims dreamily. “The Langdons and the Pendertons, all four of them squatting around the table; all four of them doomed; on the verge of actual lunacy. Private Williams watches the whole set-up from outside. Major Langdon is so shockingly in love with Mrs. Penderton that Mrs. Langdon finally becomes nervous, leaves the room and cuts off the tender nipples of her breasts with garden shears. . . .”

“How utterly ludicrous!” cries the white-haired lady, half-irked and half-amused. “With garden shears! What a joke! Her tender nipples! Think of it! Oh yes! Thank you!”

“I will kill you,” the girl says in a strangled voice, looking very pugnacious, very frail, very young. “I will do it!”

“Oh no you won’t,” the white-haired one assures her, full of merriment and confidence. “Of course not. How utterly amusing. Why should you? You have so much talent. So why should you do such a foolish thing?”

“Do you really think I have talent?” the young visionary asks eagerly.

“Oh course you have,” shrieks the gay old girl. “Obviously so. A terrific lot of it. Undoubtedly. Silly child.”

“I wonder if I ought to believe you,” says the infant prodigy, wide-eyed, with a faint, musing smile. Then she gives her companion a swift, searching glance. “Of course, you are an experienced woman,” she admits respectfully, though not without hesitation. “A real
femme de lettres
. Much more capable as a critic, I should say, than as a creative writer. Your little book on Picasso was full of delightful things. But
Ida
falls short of your essays. Why do you want to seem so primitive? A highly articulate person who tries to talk like a baby! Frankly, your fairy-tale trick is a trifle embarrassing.”

“And how about you?” grins Aunt Gertrude. “Are you so sure that you are not embarrassing, and even more than just a trifle, with your childlike gravity and complicated inventions? An inspired youth that tries to talk like a hard-boiled psychologist! Why do you want to seem so sophisticated? You are always at your best in describing the sky, or landscape, or animals, or the emotions of very primitive beings, such as Private Williams. The Private is unforgettable but the Captain’s wife is a joke. What do you know about Mrs. Penderton, or about her lover, or about her husband? But for some queer reason you
do
know something about Private Williams; just as you knew something about the deaf-mutes, in your first novel. Those lovely deaf-mutes. Oh yes. There, you had an uncanny insight. Something very enchanting. Very frightening. Yes. So you should write about those enchanting and frightening things. Not about the Captain’s wife. So you should write about savage things. New things. Sad things. So you should write about American things. Not this nineteenth century stuff. With the garden shears! Many funny things happened to Ida. Dear Ida. But nothing that ridiculous. Naturally not.”

“But you have your own little mannerisms yourself,” Carson quietly observes.

Aunt Gertrude has a good laugh. “Plenty of them,” she admits cheerfully. “But that’s a different matter. Entirely. My job is done. I have done my job. And you just begin it. So it is very different. Of course it is. All I have to do—having done my job—is to stick to my little habits as a peasant sticks to his superstitions. To stick to my familiar eccentricities. People need regularity. A certain regularity. Something they can depend on. So do I. Something trustworthy. While everything crumbles. Something cosy. In the midst of general turmoil, I am a rock of Gibraltar. I am a very conservative person. So that is the way I am. Very conservative. Oh yes.”

The fragile
enfant terrible
touches the hand of the older woman with a sort of timid tenderness. “Yes, there is something infinitely cosy about you. One always knows what you are going to say next; that makes your line so wonderful. Now you will say . . .”

“
Thank you
,” Aunt Gertrude says, smirking majestically. “But I wonder what
you
are going to say next, strange little creature you are! Kind of incalculable, I suppose. . . . Your next book will be a masterpiece, something overwhelming—or something completely absurd. As for
Reflections in a Golden Eye
, it is an attractive mixture of both.”

“Never mind,” Carson giggles, suddenly casting off her dignity and capering about like a nervous imp. “
Ida
isn’t so hot either, sweet old cosy Aunt! But I like you. You are lots of fun.”

“I know I am.” Aunt Gertrude looks more stolid than ever, half like a motherly matron, half like a wandering sorcerer; at once grim and serene, with her fine, weather-worn, generous face. “Naturally I am. Because I am having fun—always. So that is why I am funny. Because funny things happen to me. The funny things of the twentieth century. Yes.”

She keeps taking vigorous, majestic strides, finding her way without difficulty in the midst of the spooky darkness. Carson, however, has transformed herself into a tiny will-o’-the-wisp, hovering, fluttering, giggling among the bushes and trees. What a wan and attractive light!—wavering and intense, oversensitive, savage, charming and corruptible. The experienced aunt watches her with apprehensive admiration. “Stop this monkey business, child!” she shouts. “You might fall! You’ll break your neck! You’d better be careful, or you will go astray. This is tricky ground, kind of swampy, too, and the abyss is not far! Don’t take a chance, crazy kid! We still need you! Who do you think you are?” thunders the gallant veteran of so many intellectual adventures, the tireless discoverer of authentic talents and amusing fakes. “An elf? A whirlwind? A psychological problem? Not at all, darling. Of course not. You are something much more vulnerable and more important. You are a poet, Carson McCullers. So if you destroy yourself, you destroy a poet. You deprive the twentieth century of a bit of poetry—if you destroy yourself.”

“So then you have the unfathomable heart of a poet. Yes. The intricate splendor. Of course. The madness. The golden eye.

“So then you have the golden eye of the poet.

“(But the title of your book sounds affected.)

“A poet.

“Yes.

“Thank you.”

“Thank God.”

Decision
1 (May 1941): 71–74

Bibliography of Criticism on
Ida A Novel