OFFICE OF
THE EDITOR

The Atlantic Monthly

41 MT. VERNON STREET

BOSTON

December 4, 1919.

Dear Miss Stein:-

I thank you for your letter and for the manuscript, which I shall try to read myself within the next few days.

Your letter, however, seems to show me that you misjudge our public. Here there is no group of *literati* or *illuminati* or *cosnoscenti* or *illustrissimi* of any kind, who could agree upon interpretations of your poetry. More than this, you could not find a handful even of careful readers who would think that it was a serious effort. Pardon me if I say this. I am talking quite seriously, and am trying not to be critical but to be reasonably helpful. You will, however, doubt my statements, as is your right, and so I am inclined to say that I will print your poem on Ireland, together with your letter, and let The Atlantic's public be judge and jury. I have a department in the magazine for discussion, much of it for intelligent discussion, and quite apart from the humorists who will spend their foolish wits upon it, we shall have an opportunity of serious rejoinders. There is, I think, nothing in your letter to the printing of which you will take exception, and it will serve admirably to explain the discussion which has arisen between us.

Thinking it possible that we might have further correspondence on the subject, I took the liberty to have your

OFFICE OF
THE EDITOR

8 ARLINGTON STREET
BOSTON, MASS.

The Atlantic Monthly

11 February, 1933.

Dear Miss Stein:--

There has been a lot of pother about this book of yours,
but what a delightful book it is, and how glad I am to publish four
installments of it! During our long correspondence, I think you
felt my constant hope that the time would come when the real Miss
Stein would pierce the smoke-screen with which she has always so
mischievously surrounded herself. The autobiography has just enough
of the oblique to give it individuality and character, and readers
who care for the things you do will love it.

Did I tell you that I was in Paris last summer for several
lonely days, but did not quite dare to come and see you. Now I would
jump at the chance.

Anything that we can do to help the success of the book,
as well as the serial, will certainly be done.

Hail Gertrude Stein about to arrive!

Believe me,

Miss Gertrude Stein,
27 rue de Fleurus,
Paris,
FRANCE.

OFFICE OF
THE EDITOR

The Atlantic Monthly

- 2 -

five o'clock and the sun was setting. I could not believe it, but it was so. I had forgotten time, forgotten my lunch, forgotten a dozen things I had meant to do that day, so entirely had I been caught by the spell of your words. I rushed at once to Mr. Sedgwick and told him about it. "Such a thing never happened before in this office," he exclaimed, and he was right - it never had.

So we accepted the manuscript, and now it is about to be published. If you could do this to an editor, of all people the least susceptible to the magic of print, what, I wonder, will be the effect of your story on the general public?

Miss Gertrude Stein,
27 Rue de Fleurus,
Paris.

TWO STEINS.

152

In The Atlantic Monthly Mr. B. F. SKINNER has an acute and urbane article on GERTRUDE STEIN or the two GERTRUDE STEINS. One writes good or distinguished English. The other writes involuntary, more difficult, to Mr. SKINNER not "important" and sometimes apparently meaningless English or Steinese. He admires the conscious, he is unable to admire the unconscious, prose. He goes back to the article in The Harvard Psychological Review of September, 1896, and the experiments in "automatic writing" made under the direction of the late HUGO MUENSTERBERG. He prefers the conscious to the unconscious style, "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" to "Tender Buttons."

That is a common preference, though seldom if ever resting on so thorough a study of the less popular method as Mr. SKINNER has made. But the Steinist will ask if Miss STEIN'S automatic writing isn't inspired, Pythian, Sibylline. He will remember what A. E. HOUSMAN has lately told us, that "meaning is of the intellect; poetry is not." Of "Take, oh, take those lips away" he says: "That is nonsense, but it is ravishing poetry." This may have been in the mind of the editor of The Atlantic when he directed that some extracts from "Tender Buttons" be reprinted in "The Contributors Club." Here is a bit of ravishing poetry:

> Lovely snipe and tender turn, excellent vapor and slender butter, all the splinter and the trunk, all the poisonous darkning drunk, all the joy in weak success, all the joyful tenderness, all the section and the tea, all the stouter symmetry.

Mr. SKINNER admits that "there are "certain aspects of prose writing, such "as rhythm, that are not particularly "dependent upon intelligibility." Tear off another Tender Button:

> A real cold hen is nervous, is nervous with a towel with a spool with real beads. It is mostly an extra sole nearly all that shaved, shaved with an old mountain, more than that bees more than that dinner and a bunch of likes that is to say the hearts of onions aim less.

As poetry, that qualifies under Mr. HOUSMAN's test. He tells us that "BLAKE'S meaning is often unimportant or virtually non-existent." Why should "meaningless" poetry be on the eligible list and "meaningless" prose be excluded? Is Mr. SKINNER deaf to music and obdurate to magic?

OFFICE OF
THE EDITOR

The Atlantic Monthly

2 January, 1934.

Dear Miss Stein:--

Happy New Year to you and yours! May your world be bright with Picassos and never shadow of a Hemingway fall across your threshold!

I am sending you a copy of The Atlantic which ought to have gone to you before, and would have but for my obfuscation through violent press of business. Whatever you think of it, Mr. Skinner's analysis is certainly interesting, and if you will glance through this pleasant editorial which I enclose, you will see the attitude which the *New York Times* takes.

It was jolly in a sad year to print your serial, and, again, I thank you.

Whenever I have been in Paris in the past, sudden terror has stricken me at the thought of calling upon you, but some day I shall overcome the last disturbing qualm.

Believe me,

Yours sincerely,