Irresistible dictation. Gertrude Stein: The psychology of writing, the writing of psychology

Stein's work is usually explained in terms of a self-understanding that is essentially psychological in nature. This study begins with a chapter on the resemblances between Stein and Emerson, in particular their similar understanding of psychology's relation to writing. In order for Stein to build upon Emerson's work, however, she had first to come to terms with those elements in her writing which her studies with William James had reinforced. Although James was undoubtedly Emersonian in many respects, at the same time he took issue with Emerson's transcendentalism in both his pragmatism and his scientific psychology. The second through fourth chapters thus chronicle Stein's emerging differences with James, especially with respect to the ways they each tried to demonstrate that the unconscious played no role in either psychology or writing.;The fifth chapter concentrates on a crucial moment in Stein's relation with her readers, when she began to consider in the early 1920s how she could teach them to read her. How might she do so without describing her writing, on the one hand, or addressing her readers, on the other? Writing for Stein, at least between 1912 and 1932, was utterly different from any form of conversation, and was not to be thought of as modeled on speech, even if spoken phrases and exchanges were repeatedly used and parodied.;A critique of the social uses of language does not, however, imply a lack of interest in the operations of society, and the sixth and final chapter examines the extent, and strictness, of the dualism Stein posed between the writer, as representative individual, and society--particularly as this is expressed in the composition of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Overall, an attempt has been made to give a balanced representation of Stein's career as a writer. The aim is to locate Stein at work in her study in Paris rather than in the psychological laboratory she made such an effort to escape from. She liberated herself from the laboratory by means of a complex strategy of rewriting; different aspects of this strategy are examined in each of the chapters.