Chloroform, Melatonin, Lectures and Other Things that Put Me to Sleep (Leah)

Lectures are a strange form of text. They possess a strange power. They can be a powerful sleep aid or an agent in instilling passion in a subject. James charms us with his lectures, even without seeing him present them. What James can’t do is put the concepts of his lectures into practice through the form of his text. The lectures are primarily an informational vehicle; a text to educate. While some wordplay is possible, lectures don’t have the flexibility of, say, poetry.

Gertrude Stein’s work embodies meaning. The form of her writing creates meaning instead of merely conveying information. Stein illustrates the gaps in language in her works. While James can tell us that there is “only a man-made language, a conceptual shorthand, as someone calls them, in which we write our reports of nature; and languages as well known, tolerate much choice of expression and many dialects” Stein can actually make her audience feel the space between the tangible “nature” and the “conceptual shorthand” (100). How little words actually mean. Stein’s work can also show how the form of a literary work can create meaning. Take this excerpt from A Circular Play:

One does not run around in a circle to make a circular play.
Do not run around in a circle and make a circular play.
It is not necessary to run around in a circle to get ready to write a circular play (148).

You can see that the writing is “cycling” to use an improve term. It is going around in a circle and leading to no new information. It is ineffective just as it says running around in a circle would be.
Stein also has more freedom in poetry to play with the way people perceive the written word. James can tell us that “consciousness is constant change” (SoC), but Stein models it, by the repetition of the same words, or phrases in her poetry, by words with similar meanings or sounds. We are different every time we read the word. Time has passed, we have changed, the word has more meaning, and Stein shows us this through action. To look at an example of this repletion see the first two sentences of “A RED HAT.” from the collection Tender Buttons: “A dark grey, a very dark grey, a quite dark grey is monstrous ordinarily, it is so monstrous because there is no red in it. If red is in everything it is not necessary” (252).