Ep 740 - Three Lives, by Gertrude Stein

Summary

Overdue Podcast – Ep. 740: Three Lives, by Gertrude Stein
February 2, 2026 | Hosts: Andrew and Craig

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Craig and Andrew dive into Three Lives by Gertrude Stein, analyzing her debut novel as a key early modernist text. Their conversation explores Stein’s unique narrative style, the structure and content of the three interlinked novellas, and Stein’s complex legacy as a writer and cultural figure. The hosts unpack the novel’s challenging approach to plot, repetition as a literary device, and the depiction of marginalized women at the turn of the 20th century. They also discuss the book’s historical context and the controversies surrounding Stein herself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Three Lives?

• Craig picks Three Lives as an accessible entry point into Gertrude Stein's work, noting its reputation for being more conventional than her later, more experimental writings.
• Stein's modernist style is discussed—especially her use of repetition, incremental description, and a resistance to conventional linear narrative. (07:05–07:28)
• The novel consists of three novellas: "The Good Anna," "Melanctha," and "The Gentle Lena," each focusing on the life of a working-class woman.

2. Who Was Gertrude Stein?

• Andrew provides a comprehensive biography, highlighting Stein’s upbringing, education, and eventual move to Paris, where she became a key figure in the expatriate art and literature scene. (07:31–11:35)
  • Stein was born in 1874 in Pittsburgh, grew up in Oakland, and later hosted salons frequented by artists like Picasso and Matisse.
  • Her literary output often struggled for commercial success until The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas ignited “Steinmania.”
• The hosts discuss her connections to the art world and her efforts to create a literary equivalent to avant-garde art forms like Cubism and Impressionism.
• Notable: Stein was a student of psychologist William James, which influenced her psychological and consciousness-focused writing style. (09:53–10:20)
• Stein’s difficult legacy: Her WWII activities (friendship with Vichy collaborators, translating pro-Pétain speeches, ambiguous political stances) provoke debate about her place in the literary canon. (19:40–23:33)
  • "I think there are people who want to claim Gertrude Stein because of her... contribution to early LGBTQ literature. But they also have to square it with this stuff where she is... friends with Nazi collaborators...” – Andrew [21:15]

3. Stein’s Style: Repetition, Minimalism, and Epithets

• Craig describes how Stein’s writing employs repeated phrasing—“you see that Anna led an arduous and troubled life”—and compares it to poetic epithets in Homer. (17:10–17:34)
• The famous tautological quote, “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose...” is referenced as emblematic of Stein’s focus on the essential qualities of language.
  • “She wrote exactly what she means, and she means what she writes. I think you’ll figure it out eventually.” – Andrew on Alice B. Toklas’s explanation of the “rose” quote [17:10]
• Hosts discuss how repetition builds meaning and feeling, rather than pushing narrative forward.

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Segment-by-Segment Exploration

[23:46–27:09] Which Life is "Best"?—Ranking the Novellas

• "The Good Anna"

  • Inspired by Flaubert’s "A Simple Heart," it centers on Anna, a German maid in Baltimore. She exerts control over those around her, but is ultimately vulnerable and shaped by her deep (possibly romantic, but nonsexual) friendships with women.
  • “The widow Mrs. Letman was the romance in Anna’s life.” – [32:33]
  • Stein’s signature style: frequent returns to phrases, incremental layering of character detail, and resistance to traditional plot arcs.
  • The narrative is less about growth or plot resolution than about the ongoing patterns and power dynamics in Anna’s life.
  • Anna works herself to death—a story marked by cycles of dependency and failed agency.
  • “It's like, here are her three dogs. And... stuff like that will then be punctuated with, ‘You see that Anna led an arduous and troubled life.’” – Craig [30:05]

• "Melanctha"

  • The novel’s centerpiece, and most discussed in literary studies; considered the most "modernist" of the three.
  • Melanctha is a Black woman in fictional "Bridgepoint" (Baltimore), seeking both wisdom and excitement. Her complex relationships with Jane Harden (a friend struggling with alcoholism), Dr. Jeff Campbell (who may be a stand-in for Stein), and Jim Richards (a gambler) structure the narrative.
  • Hosts highlight the controversy and critique: Stein, a white woman, employs racialized language and tropes—both reflecting her attempt to write marginalized lives and exposing problematic, racist dynamics of her era.
    • "The simple promiscuous unmorality of the black people..." and "the wide abandoned laughter that makes the warm, broad glow of Negro sunshine." – both called out as unexamined and damaging (43:35–45:04)
  • The story’s style: dialogue is lengthy, stylized, repetitious, filled with name-and-title variations (“Dr. Jeff,” “Jeff Campbell,” “Dr. Campbell”), illustrating shifting emotional and social registers. (55:28–57:15)
  • “It is easier to appreciate than to enjoy.” – Andrew on the reading experience [65:48]
  • The theme: Melanctha’s never-satisfied searching, ephemeral happiness, lack of agency, and eventual isolation and death from tuberculosis.

• "The Gentle Lena"

  • The shortest and least thematically complex. Lena is an unassuming German immigrant pushed into marriage by societal pressure. She is neglected, bears children, and dies young.
  • “She would be perfectly content to live the life she was living if other people didn’t expect her to hit, you know, societal markers like marriage and children.” – Craig [48:09]
  • Functions as a grim counterpoint to the other novellas, illustrating social determinism and the crushing of individual will.

[45:54–49:14] Thematic Synthesis

• Common threads: All three women are lower-class, and their ability to determine the course of their own lives is limited by external, structural forces.
• The stories reject traditional arc in favor of “accounting a life,” letting cyclical experience and stasis replace transformation.
• Stein avoids portraying neat character growth, instead suggesting that personality and fate are set early and reinforced by social circumstances.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It does seem literally like it’s just trying to be like an accounting of a life, which means that she’s taking it as an excuse to like not have it have a through line, because...if you were just like, yeah, depicting all the stuff that happens in [a life], it’s probably just going to seem like a bunch of stuff that happened because that’s kind of what happens to all of them.” – Andrew [36:38]
• On Stein’s stylistic choices: “She’s interested in figuring out what language can do differently to portray psychology.” – Craig [66:47]
• “I don’t know much about that kind of love yet, Miss Melanctha. You see, it’s this way with me always, Miss Melanctha. I’m always so busy with my thinking about my work I’m doing... Ms. Melanctha, I really certainly don’t ever like to get excited. And that kind of loving heart does seem always to mean just getting all the time excited... And that certainly would never suit a man like me.” – (Reading a passage, Andrew as Dr. Jeff) [60:47–61:26]
• “It is easier to appreciate than it is to enjoy.” – Andrew [65:48]
• “Sometimes the talking about it makes it clearer what the strengths are... Now I understand why the people who like this do like it. I understand why it is taught...” – Andrew [57:26]
• “This book’s weird, man. I don’t know if I’m gonna do it right.” – Craig [23:36]

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Style, Structure & Final Thoughts

• The hosts agree the book’s experimental style (repetitive, looping, sometimes monotonous or frustrating) is challenging for readers, but can create a powerful mood and rhythm when read aloud. Craig notes that some passages became “actually good—poetic” through the act of discussion. (63:09–63:39)

• They wrestle with the author’s distance from her material (middle-class, white, Jewish, writing about working-class Black lives), highlighting both the historic limitations and literary ambitions of Stein’s project.

• Craig ultimately characterizes the novella Melanctha as “too long for what it’s doing,” though he finds Stein’s methods more rewarding by the end of the episode.

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Episode Timestamps for Key Segments

• About Stein’s Biography & Legacy: 07:31–13:49, 19:40–23:33
• On Stein’s Style & “Rose is a Rose”: 15:12–17:10
• The Structure of Three Lives: 27:09–28:20
• Discussion of the Novellas:
  • The Good Anna: 28:20–39:09
  • Melanctha: 39:17–65:48
  • The Gentle Lena: 47:38–49:22
• Style Discussion & Sample Passages: 54:49–61:26
• Thematic Synthesis: 45:54–49:14, 66:13–67:39
• Final Reflections: 65:48–68:17

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Closing Note

Craig and Andrew find Three Lives more important for what it tries to do than for the pleasure it brings—using it as a springboard for broader discussions about what narrative can be, how language can work, and how literary history confronts the complexities and failings of its own icons.

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Next week on Overdue:
Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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I'm trying not to think about February, I'll tell you that much.

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[A]

Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California. And for delivery.

[B]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy.

[A]

Away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

[B]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[A]

My name is Andrew.

[B]

Those are our names. These are our lives. There are only two of them though.

[A]

Two lives.

[B]

Two lives left. Better clear that Mario stage before you run out.

[A]

Every week one of us reads a book that we've never read before and we tell the other person on the on the call about it and record the call and then we release it for everybody else to listen to. So Craig, it's your turn this week it is. What book did you read and who was it by?

[B]

I read Three Lives by Gertrude Stein.

[A]

Oh, now things make sense.

[B]

They know when they're listening, when they've got the little the title on their phone tells them the name of the episode. It's not a surprise what the book is.

[A]

Not all Mario games did this, but Super Mario World had that little moon thing that was worth three. Yeah, three up.

[B]

Yeah. What was that?

[A]

Why can't we get. I mean and then some games after that had moons that did different stuff. But why can't we standardize on a multiple more ups?

[B]

I've never read Gertrude Stein before. I didn't really know what I was getting into when I got into this one. I'm. I'm generally just like trawling around for.

[A]

Trolling is the weird word in reference to this like hundred old year old book.

[B]

That's kind of what I Mean, I'm like, I'm. I'm like, we've been doing this show for a long time and there are still corners of the canon we have yet to explore. And I think some of them are in this modernist window, this early 20th century window, because the works tend to be a little more. Just like reading them for a show can be a little more challenging because what the heck, do I understand it? Do I like it? Does that matter? These are the questions we ask.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And this one came up as I was researching and was like, huh, no, we've never done Stein before and this is her debut novel, her first published work. Anyway, figured that might be a better entry point than the more successful.

[A]

Yeah, the other one to do, if we were going to do one, would be the Autobiography of Alice B. Tookless, which is not written by Alice B. Tooklas, it's written by Stein from the, like, from the point of view of her life partner, Alice B. Tooklas.

[B]

And I figured, yes, that could also be interesting. Would also be a bit more like book as biography, even though it's not explicitly whatever it is. I don't know.

[A]

I mean, that was apparently the one that kicked off her like commercial success as a writer. Kicked off Steinmania.

[B]

Steinmania, that's what the United States.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But no, this was her first novel, so I want to talk about that. It's what I read, so we'll talk about this one.

[A]

That does make it sound a little bit like, well, this is what, this is what we're working with, so everybody buckle up.

[B]

But I also have seen notes that this is a little bit more accessible than some of her later work in terms of style. You can see some of the hallmarks of where she's going. But from what I understand, this is less fragmented than some of her later writing and maybe a little easier to parse, even though we'll test that theory.

[A]

Yeah, you'll be the judge of that. Yeah.

[B]

Andrew, what do we know about Gertrude Stein?

[A]

Gertie Stein to her friends, was born in 1874, died in 1946. She's born in what is now part of Pittsburgh, raised in Oakland, California. She spent like a formative year in Vienna and Paris being educated. But yes, she was born the seventh of seven children to some pretty well off Jewish parents in the States, was educated, traveled around Europe. Her mother dies when she is 14, the father dies like three years after that and one of her older brothers takes over sort of the family holdings and she. Her rise to prominence is kind of, kind of weird. It's just like she and her brother Leo bought, were good at buying paintings by a bunch of like early, like late 19th and early 20th century artists. So you got Cezanne in the mix, you got Picasso, you got Matisse, you got a bunch of other guys. And they eventually just buy enough paintings that they have this really well regarded collection. Like she moves to Paris when she's around, when she's in her early 30s and starts having these salons with all of these artists and writer types who are also living in the area at the time. And it's not until sort of after all of this stuff is happening on the side that she starts really earnestly writing and submitting her works for, for publication. The, the. All, all the paintings and stuff that she, that she bought with Leo like that they split their collection in half when they had, when there was a sort of schism.

[B]

He went to Italy, there was, you know, two popes, that sort of thing. One in Paris.

[A]

And then I guess they both just kind of like sold off most of. Most of everything. They just kind of frittered away their, their respective collections over the, over the course of many years. So that's why there's not like an extant like Stein collection that is still touring.

[B]

Yeah, sure, sure.

[A]

Let's see. What do we want?

[B]

Well, she did study. I also want to shout. She did go to Radcliffe College. Yes.

[A]

Yeah. She was at medical school for a while and she just like wasn't that interested in it. But her, she was called the most promising woman student by one of her professors there.

[B]

I think it's at, I think it's at Radcliffe where she studies with the psychologist William James. That relationship and her work under James gets mentioned in a lot of the writing I saw on Three Lives. Like her particular interest in psychological depictions of people.

[A]

I think some of the sort of like stream of consciousness.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Also that consciousness stuff that she is doing comes from, from that in part.

[B]

But then, yeah, she goes to Johns Hopkins and that's. There's, there's like a whole story about her relationships with women at school that feed into this story as well that she would publish some of or write about some of in QED which would get published later even though it was not published before this one.

[A]

Qed. An early example of a coming out story. She started writing in 1904. I think I've lost the date in my notes, but it's not published until after she died. And then her second thing that she was, the second big thing she was working on called the Making Of a Americans was started in 1903, finished in 1911, not published until 25.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So this is our first, first published thing, but not our first written thing. Even the publication is like she took it around to multiple publishers and was rejected by all of them. And then a friend of hers took it to like a vanity publisher and at her own like personal expense had copies of it published there. And then Stein like mails copies of it around basically to other famous writers and it gets writers talking about it.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And for quite a while her work is, is in this vein. It is like it is stuff that writers know about. I think some like critics know about it and think it's kind of like formally interesting, but it is not meeting with any kind of like commercial success until she publishes this autobiography of Alice B. Tooklas which does sell well, but it does like her brother Leo, who she had collected all the art with, hated it. A bunch of her friends didn't care for it. A bunch of people who she knew were depicted in it and did not appreciate how they were portrayed. But it, but it was, it was published in the Atlantic Monthly first in multiple installments and then Stein and Toklas both embarked on like a successful multi week publicity tour basically in the US after its publication. So this is what kind of gets attention drawn to her earlier work, like retrospectively.

[B]

Yeah, actively, Whatever. Yeah. And she's probably both. And she's done, you know, she was writing essays and some poetry and some of the lectures that like she was like doing kind of bespoke lectures. It wasn't just one talk that she was taking around and she has this like distinct style of prepared speech that is just like, you know, making people go oh, interesting. I just, I just need to.

[A]

And it just, it just, it seems like the reaction like both of this early work and a lot of these lectures is like man, you either like it or you don't.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I do.

[A]

You're into it or you're not.

[B]

I need to say that the Britannica article on her calls her an avant garde American writer, eccentric and self stylish child genius.

[A]

Please. I like the eccentric is. Is accepted and then geniuses self style.

[B]

They do link to the definition of eccentric in the article, which I think is a fun. Just in case you weren't sure what they meant by that. She did reportedly say Einstein was the creative philosophic mind of the century and I have been the creative literary mind of the century. That is a thing she apparently wrote about her.

[A]

Sure, that's fine. You can. I mean, you can. You can think whatever you want of yourself.

[B]

She wrote an essay called Composition as Explanation. This was in 1925 or so, where she talks a bit more. You can read it on the poetry foundation.org website. Generally, she's trying to make an argument for her style as a version, a written response and version of what a lot of the visual artists were attempting to do at that era in time.

[A]

Yeah, that's one of the things I read about this book is that it's sort of inspired by Cezanne in a way, because both his works and this book were trying to get away from like strictly literal depictions of whatever it was that they were, they were trying to depict. And then there are other works of hers that. That take on other sort of. I think there's like a cubist one, right? Like, I think there are other works that take on other kinds of art as well.

[B]

Yes, other work. We haven't mentioned a collection of essays. Geography and Plays and Portraits and prayers. Tender Buttons. Such a great. I just like that it's called Tender Buttons. I think it's fun.

[A]

I'm just thinking about books as like demakes of paintings now. Like, we don't have the graphics to render this painting, but we can render it in words.

[B]

That's true. That's true. There are two big written quotes that get bandied around of hers. One we've talked about on a prior episode. There's no there there in reference to the city of Oakland. That was the inspiration for the title of There There by Tommy Orange, which I think you read for the show a year or so ago.

[A]

There is no there there like that that would go really good on a sort of a old, you know, like a 2010s era Buzzfeed listicle of like, is this a quote from Gertrude Stein or a dumb thing that George W. Bush said once?

[B]

Well, the other quote of hers is Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose or A rose is a rose is a rose. There's lots of like responses from her or her representatives kind of saying that it is a somewhat tautological, poetic phrase about things are what they are. And yet when you kind of say a word, just that word conjures up all sorts of feelings and imagery. You don't need all of the other words around it. And like, I think that is an. If you've heard that before, that is an interesting entry point for this book. There are stretches of this book that feel like they have a purposefully limited vocabulary. It is not an Unwordy book. It's a very wordy book, but at times it doesn't feel flowery. She's instead repeating things or using phrases with kind of like, really just almost leitmotif or kind of epithets. It reminded me of epithets from Homer sometimes.

[A]

I think there's a letter that Alice Bede Tooklas responded to from somebody who wrote in asking about what the roses. Roses, rose thing meant. And she was basically like, yeah, Gertrude Stein just writes exactly what she means, and she means what she writes. I think you'll figure it out eventually.

[B]

Thanks, Alice.

[A]

Thanks, Alice B. Tookless.

[B]

I do.

[A]

I am thinking now, if we do get the merch store going again, can we. Can we make one of those, like, yard signs that says, in this house we believe there is no there there. A rose is a rose is a rose in all different, like, colors and fonts and stuff.

[B]

I think that's pretty good. I'm trying to think that would go.

[A]

I think that would. I think that would move using units.

[B]

I. My edition, it was a Penguin Books edition with an introduction by Ann Charters. Some additional stuff on this book, and the style that's kind of came to me from that forward that she was trying to quote, replace linear narrative with incremental blocks of description chronicling the relationships in her heroine's life. This is a book with three little novellas, essentially three lives stories. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. You might say, yes.

[B]

That in the Toklas book, there is a passage that says that the middle. Some of the middle story. Melanctha. Melanchtha M E L A N C T H A about a black woman in this Stand in for Baltimore may have been inspired by Stein's time working at Johns Hopkins with, you know, clientele from all over Baltimore. And additionally, was the last thing that I had here. Oh, it was originally titled Three Histories, but her publisher at that vanity press, Grafton, got her to change it because he had been publishing a lot of histories and he didn't want people to think it was going to be factual.

[A]

It does also make me, like, if you just call it three histories and then it's actually got history in it, it doesn't make me think it's like kind of a mystery box. Like, what's it like? History of what?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you. I mean, do you want. Do you have anything else you want to get to before, like, the last thing?

[B]

Nope. Let's talk about the end of her life. She dies at what age? 72 or something like that?

[A]

So she dies in 1945 and which means that she's alive during 46.

[B]

46.

[A]

46. Yes. Yeah. No, you're right. I had 46 before. I said 46 earlier. Listen to me. 15 minutes ago. And not me now. But she was alive for World War II. And so Stein and took list. They had been, you know, they'd lived in France for decades, and they continue to do this despite being both being Jewish, despite Hitler's, you know, aggression and the armistice that creates the. The Vichy government in France. So she. Yeah, she. She is kept, it is thought, that she is kept safe from the German persecution of Jews by both of their friendship with this guy Bernard Fay, who is an official in the Vichy government. And then. So, okay, sure, fine. And then also she. Stein translates into English multiple speeches by this guy, Philippe Patain, who is the leader of the Vichy government.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And praised him as the. As the man who made peace with Hitler.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And Alice B. Took less helps fund breaking Faye out of prison after the war where he is, you know, he is sentenced to life imprisonment for being a Nazi collaborator.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's. I think there are a couple of. Like, what makes this complicated is that I think there are people who want to claim Gertrude Stein because of her, you know, her eye for art and her contribution to, like, early LGBTQ literature. But they all also have to square it with this stuff where she is. She's friends with. With Nazi collaborators, and she continues to, like Potain. She continued to praise, like, well, after it was, like, politically necessary for her to do that, to continue to, like, survive.

[B]

Yeah. And I would. It is worth noting this on its own. I also am reading about it in context of some of the stuff in the foreword, some of the stuff in. In this book that is, like, pretty overt racism and, like, just kind of a mishmash of political positions that.

[A]

And she, like. She, like, hates fdr, but she also hates every leader of every country for, like, different reasons. So it's just kind of a. Like, she ends up being a bit of a. Like, a both sides sort of thing.

[B]

Says she's pro immigration, but, like, understands why you want to keep people separate. You know, like, what? Just not. I think it is. Yeah. To your point, like, folks perhaps rightfully want to claim her or claim her contributions to the canon in specific ways, but I think she would resist easy classification on that front and has done some very specific things that might make it hard to have her in your camp sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. It's weird not to get all, like, we don't know what it what's in Gertrude signs heart about it. But like it does bear mentioning.

[B]

Yeah, it does.

[A]

Activities.

[B]

It's the end. I also think it's, it's worth mentioning is like the end of her life. There's no other work after that period that we're like really wrestling with. Right. Like that's, that's the last. That's the foot that's not a footnote. It's the final chapter. So you're not going out of the movie theater with another thing after that to think about. So.

[A]

Sure. So to speak.

[B]

So, yeah. I don't know. This book's weird, man. I don't know if I'm gonna do it right. This is one of those episodes where I'm worried about doing it right.

[A]

I think that if we do it wrong, we just come up with some highfalutin, artsy, fartsy explanation for it and we let that, we let that hang there and speak for itself.

[B]

Thank you, Andrew.

[A]

I think if authors get to do that, then we can do that.

[B]

Okay, well find out on the other side of the break if we succeeded.

[A]

Craig this week's podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. No matter if you need to make three websites for each of your three lives, or fewer websites or more websites, Squarespace is the place that is going to help you out with that. They give you beautiful templates, easy to use, drag and drop tools. They give you 24. 7 customer support. They give you like e commerce stuff, everything that you need to build a cool website. Guess what? Squarespace has it.

[B]

That sounds good to me. I need to live a life. And sometimes on the Internet.

[A]

Yeah, like you could live three lives and never have to learn to code because of, because of Squarespace. Here's some things that we like about Squarespace. The website that helps you make websites. They give you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place. From consultations to events and experiences. Showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Get paid on time with professional on brand invoices and online payments. Plus streamline your workflow with built in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools. Speaking of those with Squarespace email campaigns, all the tools you need to engage clients, promote your services and grow your business are built in. Set up email automations to stay connected, nurture leads and save time while seamlessly integrating your offerings into beautifully designed templates that drive bookings and sales. And then you can also make smarter business decisions. Craig finally, with Squarespace's intuitive built in analytics tools, review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement and track revenue from bookings, invoices, or product sales, all from one place. If any of this sounds good to you, you can go to squarespace.com overdue for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use Offer code overdue to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Offer Code overdue to save 10% off your first purchase of a Squarespace website or domain. Craig. Three lives.

[B]

Uh huh.

[A]

I need a power ranking. Which life. Which life is the is best? Which life is worst?

[B]

Which. Oh, okay.

[A]

Which of the.

[B]

Which one did I enjoy the most? Which one? Who had the best? You categorized.

[A]

You frame it however you need to. But like, what.

[B]

Get.

[A]

What's up with these three lives, though?

[B]

What is up with them?

[A]

All I know about them is that they're lives and that there are three of them.

[B]

Okay. I don't know how to rank them. I can say that the one that folks point to as being the most maybe formally impactful on capital L literature is the middle one, Melanctha. I think that is also the one that might be toughest at times because of its style to read. So we'll get to that one. I think the one that's easiest to read is the shortest one, the Gentle Lena. She seems fine and it's unfortunate what happens to her.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But it's not as arduous as the other two. And the first one, the Good. The Good Anna, is like, pretty straightforward. I found that one, the like, most engrossing, I suppose, because I was able to get in there and was not wrestling with the pros as much and was like, okay, this is a tale. This is something I can kind of wrap my brain around and I can look for some of what people are saying is like, unique about Stein's writing, even though it's not off the deep end yet. So we'll start with the Good Anna, which is based on a Flaubert story we have not read. Good old Gustav. I don't think we have, but he had a collection called Three Tales.

[A]

Yeah. Isn't this one like. I think she started writing this because her brother encouraged her to translate that. Right. And that's what kind of inspired her to jump off and do the Three Lives.

[B]

I think she'd done a translation in particular. Did she do one of all three? I know she did Un Care simple, which was a similar story about a servant and her, you know, her death. There's also a parrot in that story as well. And she is like, oh, I could write kind of a riff on that. And so we have this German maid, Anna Federer, who loves to boss people around, but also is quite capable of being boss herself. She likes. She prefers to work for men because they like to be bossed around in the way that she likes to boss them around. Though she does like women and would prefer to boss around a woman who was sufficiently passive. And keeping in mind she's doing this, like, as an in house maid or servant or something like that, she's living in this kind of stand in for Baltimore that Stein has created. And so her and Lena, the maid in the third story, are both German immigrants kind of trying to make their way in this town. Okay. And a thing that we. That we hear a lot, three times in the setup of Good Anna is you see that Anna led an arduous and troubled life. And Stein will just drop this in after several paragraphs of like, kind of set up storytelling.

[A]

Yeah. It's like, I know the repetition is a thing with her.

[B]

Yes. And it's like, here are her three dogs. And they are here. All the. The different personalities of her different dogs. Baby, Peter and Rags.

[A]

And those are pretty good dog names.

[B]

Pretty good dog names. And she works for this woman, Ms. Matilda, and she likes working for Ms. Matilda, but Ms. Matilda likes to kind of go off on her own sometimes. But things seem to be working. The servants, she's had trouble keeping a good servant. They all.

[A]

I mean, who has.

[B]

I know. Well, like, she. She needs an underservant who will do what she wants. Anna does. And that's kind of the problem. Not everybody gets along with her well, though. The current servant, Sally, I think at the start of the story, is a young little girl. She just doesn't really know what she's doing. She's fooling around with a boy in town that Anna at one point deduces that he has been in the building because she saw Sally buying a replacement banana because the band. And she was like, I know the banana in the kitchen was not as modeled as the one that is there now.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

Like. Okay. And like, stuff like that will then be punctuated with. You see that Anna led an arduous and troubled life.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I guess for some definitions of arduous and trouble.

[B]

Exactly. And like, I think the. The effect there is to either put you in Anna's shoes, it's probably both. It's putting you in Anna's shoes being like, this is kind of my life is arduous. And troubled sometimes, but also, like, making fun of her, but making fun of her a little bit. Yeah. And we get this opening chapter, and then we move into this middle chapter, which is her life and how she has worked for this woman, Ms. Mary Wadsmith, a bunch. And this is like, she liked working for this lady. This lady's niece pushed her around a lot. And she didn't like this lady's niece. She threatened to leave Miss Mary if she was not going to be able to get along with the niece. And it made Miss Mary pass out.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

And so the niece was like, okay, I'll back off. Here's a parrot. Gives her a parrot. But then later, the niece is married, and rather than work for the new head of house, she leaves. And Anna. And this is. Here's a theme for all three of the stories, I guess, least of all Lena. So maybe the first two, these women have relationships with other women. Not overtly romantic relationships, though. The phrase in this one is, the widow Mrs. Lentman was the romance in Anna's life.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

They are never. It's never depicted as any. Any sort of physical or sexual relationship, but they are the most important people in each other's lives. Right.

[A]

Yeah. And, like, even, you know, within a book of this vintage, like, would it even have been depicted that way if it weren't physical? It doesn't. It's not really important.

[B]

But that it is. Yes. Anna, there are parts of the book where maybe she is going to get involved with a man and Mrs. Lentman gets involved with men, one of whom everyone says is evil. And the book doesn't really explain why he's evil or what he does that's bad, except that he does evil and bad things, which makes his Lenman unlikable. I mean, okay, yeah, but that phrase, the widow Mrs. Letman was the romance in Anna's life. Some version of that crops up a lot often, you know, once it's dropped in, once when we introduce this character. And then anytime in this story that Anna is, like, kind of folding for somebody who is so. Who likes being in control of other people. Like Mrs. Lettman can just kind of twist her heartstrings or whatever such that she will always fold. And it often has Stein going be qua. You know, she was the romance in Anna's life. So. Yeah. And it's like she never. Stein is always content to use some version of the same wording from before rather than express the idea a new way in that kind of rose is a rose is a rose way. Where she's like, I'll just say the thing you heard before because you know what it means.

[A]

Yeah. And it's like, you know, it drives it home, maybe more directly even.

[B]

And it's. It's poetic.

[A]

See the same phrase repeated.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like have a new one come up.

[B]

It's gains power by repetition. That.

[A]

Yeah. A Homeric quality to it. I suppose. She does have not to be all boss baby about.

[B]

No, I said earlier what I did too. There's one in the second story where they refer to Melinka having breakneck courage in a way that is very like, gray eyed or, you know, some other Homeric epithet. But there's a big fight with Mrs. Lettman because Ms. Lettman adopted a random baby despite barely caring for her own teenage kids.

[A]

Huh. That seems suboptimal.

[B]

Ms. Letman likes to take in wayward young women and, like, help them.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Book is very unclear on what that means. But one wayward woman had a baby and didn't want to keep it anymore, and Ms. Lemon said she would keep it. And, well, her daughter doesn't know what to do. So my daughter will just kind of take care of it. That'll be fine, right?

[A]

Sure, yeah. Sounds great.

[B]

And they get in a big shouting match about it. Ultimately is not the end of her friendship with Ms. Letman, but it is like a big turning point in it. I do sometimes the. The writing is kind of good. I'll just say. And then they're like, she's yelling at her and none of nothing is landing. And Mrs. Lent, like, this is what Stein says of Mrs. Letman. And then too, Mrs. Letman could not really take in harsh ideas. She was too well diffused to catch the feel of any sharp, firm edge. Just like her personality makes her neo dodge, like all insults. You can't actually land a punch on this woman. But no, this doesn't go well for them. Ultimately, Ms. Lemon opens up like, a halfway house using a bunch of Anna's money. Anna, like, likes to give all her money to people who need it. Rather than save it herself, she saves it such that it can be, like, kind of frittered away for people in need. Sure, there's a doctor that she wanted to work for who then gets married. And then his new wife doesn't like Anna, so he gets rid of her. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I feel like I'm losing the train of thought on this one. But it's. Well, because it, like, it doesn't have a plot. Like, that's what that's What I was.

[A]

Going to say is, like, it is. It does seem literally like it's just trying to be like an accounting of a life, which means that she's taking it as a. As an excuse to, like, not have it. Have a through line, because who's. Whose life has. You know, you could pick out a through line in a life, but you're. If you were just like, yeah, depicting all the stuff that happens in it, it's probably just going to seem like a bunch of stuff that happened because that's kind of what happens to all of them.

[B]

Yep, you're exactly right. She says, like, Stein wrote at some point the. That there's a similarity to Cezanne's like, theories of composition in that, like, yeah, everything can be important at the same time. Which then means, like, what are you doing? But so, like, there isn't. There is a plot in the sense that there's a sequence of falling outs and reconciliations and then falling outs with her and Mrs. Lentman, but it is not as rendered. Like, and then Anna learned this, and then, like, at most they kind of learned that they do or don't need each other. But it is not like, oh, I'm a different person now, per se. Right. There are some characters who change in the second story, but it seems like she's kind of against, like, showing character growth as a. As a. As being worth her time. Like, she's interested in other stuff we get.

[A]

Because it seems that, like, just based on how you're. How you're telling me about it and how it's repeating things, it's like this character is sort of fully formed at a certain point and is not going to be doing a lot of growing and learning and changing. Yeah, of course. Of the story.

[B]

Yeah. And so it's. Here's a story about what happened to this lady who was this way. Right. And like, even from being 20, she was this way. So finally she does wind up working for Ms. Matilda. She gets to have her dogs and boss Ms. Matilda around. And then the second half. The second part of this story ends with her dog dying and Matilda leaving her to go to Europe. So then she's running a boarding house where she gets to boss around men all the time, which is fun, but she doesn't really have time for any. Any of her friends and she can't make enough money and she works herself to death and then she dies. And that's it.

[A]

Yeah, that would be the thing to do after you worked yourself to death.

[B]

That's how it Ends, unfortunately. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. So that one's kind of fun and uplifting. It's like a. Like a light, airy little tale of. Yeah, okay.

[B]

Melanctha.

[A]

That's one life.

[B]

Melanctha is a lot. This book is a lot, as we said.

[A]

Is it a melanchthy section of. Wow. Of the. Of the book?

[B]

It is. It's the longest section of the book. It's pretty late. It is somewhat of a retelling of part of her life, her relationship and falling out with May Bookstaver, who she had a relationship with in college. There's. There's two characters of note here. Melanctha as woman in this fictional Baltimore black woman and. And Dr. Jeff Copeland.

[A]

No, it's a Mary booksaver.

[B]

Mary. I guess maybe Mary or May.

[A]

I just looked it up and I'm looking at it right now.

[B]

Yeah. I'm also seeing May in another article that I read. So she probably had a nickname, I.

[A]

Guess widely known by the nickname.

[B]

There we go, people, where we're trying to get things right here for the listeners at home.

[A]

Yeah, I know. We're just trying to do live fact checking. I know. I'd read about Mary books. Daver. That's a cool approach to a nickname, though.

[B]

It's just like one letter gone.

[A]

What's. What's a letter? I can. What's a. What's a non load bearing letter in my name that I can just kind of knock out?

[B]

Welcome to Overdue. My name is Craig.

[A]

My name is. Your name is Craig.

[B]

Hi, I'm Andre.

[A]

I had a teacher who called me Andre because my full name in last name, first name on the attendance sheet, one character too long. And so I was down there as Andre and so he called me Andre.

[B]

Does that work out? Are you friends now?

[A]

No, I like. No, I like that teacher. I haven't talked to him in a couple of hot couple of decades, but I liked him a lot.

[B]

Stein is understood to be the character Jeff, who we will talk about Dr. Jeff, talk about him more in a bit. And Booksaver is understood to be the model for Melanctha. Booksaver would later say that some of the dialogue, some of this like really run on overwritten, I think would be one criticism, kind of looping dialogue where characters just go. They just talk. Sure. She said that some of it sounded like transcripts of their conversation. So we'll get to the part where I have some passages to share. But stylistically it is like. Oh, it is. It's a lot of repetition. Or what feels like repetition and like characters uttering the same thing over and over again with very minute variations in a way that sometimes is how real people talk and sometimes at. Certainly as concentrated as this. It is a heightening of speech or a deliberate way to depict speech. It was mentioned by authors like Richard Wright as she was sharing this book, you know, across the Atlantic to be like, hey, look, authors of note, check out my book. And he was like, yeah, I would. I read passages with some of, you know, communities where I come from, and some folks are saying this reminds them of black dialect that they're familiar with. And it's not quite written that way.

[A]

It got. It got some mixed. Some a mixed reception on that front.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

People were like, yeah, this does sound right. And some people were like, this could just be anybody.

[B]

Well, and I believe one editor was like, oh, is this woman not an English speaker? Like, it is. Some of it is so specifically not the way you would think someone would speak that if someone just thought it was like, you know, a translation issue, perhaps.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the book, this story just has the foreword mentions a lot of scholarship and criticism on how Stein in this story is perhaps working through some of her own Jewishness in Europe and feelings of otherness and getting there by writing about marginalized black folks in America.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

If you take that and like actually put it into practice with the story, then there is like kind of a black facing thing happening. If this is her own love story. Right. So there's that to work through and then there's just like turns of phrase that I would hope would not get put in a book published today. Like when you meet a character that the author, that the author is trying to tell you is like, maybe not a great person. And Rose is mentioned as having, quote, the simple promiscuous unmorality of the black people. And you're like, I don't think that's a great.

[A]

Yeah, like that way to probably not like cool shorthand.

[B]

Probably not to use. There's. I found a really interesting.

[A]

Unless you're the Vice President of the United States or something, there's a.

[B]

There's an interesting article in the Paris Review. I read the American sentence on Gertrude Stein's Melanctha by Edwin Frank from 2024. A lot of really good context on this story. I think that, you know, anybody who is, like, interested in it from this conversation should go read that article. This phrase stuck out to me, though blank, that is full of vague sentences filled out with conventional descriptions and polite nothings and sentimental or racist Turns of phrase. Like the wide abandoned laughter that makes the warm, broad glow of Negro sunshine. You're like, I.

[A]

It's just sunshine.

[B]

It's just sunshine.

[A]

It's the same sunshine for everybody.

[B]

How can you be like, so saccharine? I guess you get. People can Gone with the wind, baby. You can be saccharine and racist at the same time. Like it just is possible. Possible. And so the whole story is about black characters living in Bridgepoint. And there's some really compelling stuff in here. Felt the need to make sure people know that there's some wax stuff in here.

[A]

Do you. I mean, do you want to. Because I hear you sort of not knowing where to go. Like, do you want to keep doing sort of blow by blow, here's everything that happens in each one of the lives, or do you want to try and like zoom out to thematic. More thematic similarities or like, you know, if there's not a through line necessarily to each individual life, can we draw one between all three of the lives in here in some way?

[B]

Or all three of them is that they are lower class women who do not have full agency over their lives. So if. Or maybe any.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And that the ways in which they don't have agency are different. I think Anna feels like she has the most melanctha in some ways. Also feels like she has a lot of moment to moment agency over her life. But I think Stein's kind of what she's working with is that as a black woman not of means in the States at this time is like incredibly limited, even in just what parts of society she's allowed to participate in and is going off on what she says is like a search for both excitement and wisdom at various times.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And embarks on a relationship. The one key relationship in Melanctha with this guy Dr. Jeff that we'll talk about that is like, is she trying to fall in love? Is she just trying to learn about the world and what that means? I can't tell you, but it's like a turn of phrase that's used in this book a lot where she is like seeking knowledge. Nobody else in the book is seeking knowledge the way Melanctha is. Okay. And Lena in the third story, which is the one we'll talk about the least, that's a. That's somebody who is kind of content to just be a maid in a house. And then someone is like, no, you should get married. And it just kind of ruins everything for her.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Like, we don't need to. We don't need to spend a lot of time with the gentle Lena other than she's meek. A meek man gets forcibly married to her, and then she bears his children, and he loves his children but neglects her. And then she dies having his fourth child, and then the story's over.

[A]

Okay, are we going to spend the least amount of time with it because it's like the least complex or it's like the shortest or both.

[B]

And both or. That is most of it. There's like, some interesting stuff at the beginning of that story where she, you know, as another German immigrant. There are other folks who are kind of mocking her for being simple and things like that, but it seems to be like, no, she would be perfectly content to live the life she was living if other people didn't expect her to hit, you know, societal markers like marriage and children. Could she just kind of be the simple person that she is? And instead she has to be forced along this conventional social story which leads to her untimely death? And sure, the. The ending image of that story is that her husband is, like, so happy to have three kids and, like, I guess his wife died and, like, that's. That stinks. But yeah, there's. There aren't.

[A]

I found people are just optimists, man. Like.

[B]

I found people just find the.

[A]

Bright side in everything.

[B]

I found less, like, like, really compelling turns of phrase or kind of character sketches in that one than the other two.

[A]

Sure. That makes.

[B]

So we can kind of even just sit. That's. That. That's what I'm gonna say about Gentlelina.

[A]

Okay, cool. We got that one.

[B]

Got one that. Got that out of the way.

[A]

One life down.

[B]

We got two life. So that's.

[A]

That's. That's number three.

[B]

Here we go.

[A]

On your power ranking.

[B]

That is number three. I think, personally, Anna's number one.

[A]

As Anna's number one, I think so there's number two.

[B]

I think Malenka is number two. Melanchtha. Quote, Melanctha had not made her life all simple like Rose Johnson. Melanctha had not found it easy with herself to make her wants and what she had. Agree. Melanctha Herbert was always losing what she had and wanting all the things she saw. Melanctha was always being left when she was not leaving others. So it's a little bit of an essence of her. Yeah.

[A]

Just kind of dissatisfied by nature.

[B]

By nature, yes. Not naughty by nature. Dissatisfied by nature, yeah.

[A]

It's different.

[B]

And this is another. Similar to the first story, we get an initial portrait of her with her current friend or relationship. And then we go back and meet her as a kid, and then we kind of zoom forward. He comes from a very unhappy family. The Herberts were a silent family with their troubles, but somehow everyone who knew them always knew everything that happened. So they think they are kind of being very quiet.

[A]

Stiff, stiff upper lip.

[B]

Yeah. And everybody can see what's not working out. Her dad is a very angry person. Her mom is a very passive person. And it, you know, goes poorly because of that. The. The main thing with her dad is that, like, she is hanging around some horse stable, and the guy who runs the horse stable who plays cards with her dad, makes an offhanded remark. It's not even meant to be creepy. He's just, like, trying to say, this guy's daughter is nice. But, like, as he says it, he knows it's not a great thing to have said. And then they get into a knife fight, and then her dad tries to, like, you know, take that out on her. And she refuses to be broken by that punishment. And that, like, whatever that. Whatever that means kind of refusing to be broken by it is not explained other than she survived being assailed by him in punishment. And he learned that he does not have power over her. She learned that she has some sort of power over men. And then she spends time wandering.

[A]

Andrew, where's she wandering?

[B]

Mostly to, like, train yards and docks. To, like, see men. Just, like, look at them. She's a teenager. She's just looking at them sometimes. She's talking to them, flirting with them. I think it's sexual. The book seems to think that it's. Takes time for her to say at certain points that it is not. She is trying to, quote, unquote, gain wisdom and knowledge.

[A]

Yeah, she was trying. Maybe she's trying to learn a trade. Maybe that's. She's trying to talk to all the working people.

[B]

Yeah, that's what she's trying.

[A]

Figure that out. Yeah.

[B]

She spends time with this chick, Jane Hardin. Who?

[A]

A chick, you say?

[B]

Yeah. I don't know. She's got chick energy. I don't know.

[A]

This is.

[B]

This broad. Yeah. I don't know. The main thing with Jane Harden is she has. Unfortunately, she has a drinking problem, which the novel tells you at every page that it mentions Jane Harden. But Jane tells melanctha stories and helps her do more learning and wandering. And this, of course, leads to Jefferson Campbell. Dr. Jefferson did not come from a troubled background, and he thinks that, like, he should just lead a quiet, regular life and that this is a way to kind of. Stein is not really interested in or equipped to get into this, I don't think. I did not find it to be perfectly, like, not perfectly to be particularly compelling on this front, but there is a. Like, we are downtrodden black folks here in America. Should we be trying to, like, live our passions and get what we can out of life, or should we put our heads down and just do the best we can, work hard?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, try to make. Not cause trouble, not get into trouble. And I think I found Melanctha a little underwritten on that front. When she is in conversation with Jefferson Campbell, knowing that that might be the Stein insert, that Campbell is the Stein insert makes it make more sense to me that she's like kind of devoted more of her time to what Jefferson is thinking about. But, Andrew, I'm just going to send you this. Some of this is repetition maybe. Okay. I don't know why. I don't know why it's like this. I don't know why it's like this.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

This is looking.

[A]

Am I reading this you just loud, or am I just kind of.

[B]

Just read this aloud and let me know what you notice.

[A]

Okay. The Campbell family had been very good to him, and it helped him on with his ambition. Jefferson studied hard. He went to a colored college, and then he learned to be a doctor. It was now two or three years that he had started into practice. Everybody liked Jeff Campbell. He was so strong and kindly and cheerful and understanding. And he laughed so with pure joy and liked to help all his own colored people. Dr. Jeff knew all about Jane Harden. He had taken care of her and some of her bad trouble. He knew about Melanctha, too, though until her mother was taken sick, he had never met her. Then he was called in to help Melanctha to take care of her sick mother. Dr. Campbell did not like Melanctha's ways, and he did not think that she would ever come to any good.

[B]

Whoa, what is this?

[A]

There at the end?

[B]

I was just. What's this man's name? Is it Dr. Jeff? Is it Dr. Campbell? Is it Jeff Campbell?

[A]

It's Dr. Jeff. It's Dr. Jefferson Campbell.

[B]

It's like she does this. This is like a real kind of rat, a tat version of this. But also when these characters are talking to each other, they say each other's names every other sentence. And there's a lot of Jeff. Jefferson. Jefferson Campbell. Dr. Jeff. Dr. Campbell. This is a pretty clear passage where I get kind of get what she's.

[A]

Doing kind of getting to kind of Tolkien levels on the. On the number of names this guy has, though.

[B]

Well, it's like, everybody liked Jeff Campbell. Like, that. I. I can close read that, and I understand why it's, like, more familiar than Jefferson. Right.

[A]

Or Jefferson or Jefferson or even Dr. Jeff.

[B]

Dr. Jeff is the one that really confuses me.

[A]

Dr. Jeff is the name of, like, a. Like a vet on TV who gives people advice or something.

[B]

I. There's like, each time she chooses a different name for him, there's, like, a different level of formality, I suppose, as I've. As I share this passage, I like it more. As I was reading it, I felt like I was losing it a little bit. Like, I didn't know.

[A]

Yeah. Because I. Yeah, I get it. Like, Jefferson, his full name. That's the name of a name of a kind of guy who would study hard and go to college.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And everybody like Jeff Campbell. I mean, Jeff Campbell is just a likable guy. Dr. Jeff is, you know, a doctor who you would trust to take care of you and to, you know, to be kind of friendly to you in a way. Dr. Campbell is a man who you are sent to. To get in trouble and who looks.

[B]

Down on you about something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. Again, I think I'm gonna wind up coming away from this discussion able to enjoy this story more than sometimes.

[A]

Sometimes the talking. The talking about it makes it clearer what the. What the strengths are. Yeah. Which does not. Does not change that the reading experience was a bit of a slog, I guess. I don't know if you would. You would say that's a fair characterization of what your experience was. But I have had that, too, where I've read something and been kind of whatever on it or just, like, encountered it mostly as, like, homework, but then talking about what it does. Well, I'm like, okay, now I can. Now I understand. Understand, like, I understand why the people who like this do like it. I understand why it is taught when it is taught.

[B]

Like, yeah, I get it a little.

[A]

Bit more, given the additional, like, time and context to unpack it with.

[B]

Yeah. The middle of this story is a lot of back and forth between Dr. Jeff and Melanctha. And it starts when he is caring for her dying mom. They spend at least, like, one night up all night with each other, like, monitoring her kind of talking at length. Every dialogue scene in this story, people speak for a page at a time, like. And it is. I'm gonna give you another quote that you can read in just a second.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But it, like, it is. It is what I struggled with while reading it was parsing. The parsing why some things were being repeated, why some things weren't, what was always to. And to that end, what is new information in some of these repetitions or not. And. And also structurally, I think I was getting frustrated because they have so many mini fallings out over, oh, I went to meet you somewhere and you weren't there. That, that wore out on me. Like, there's like the big conflict between them is the initial thing of like, how should we live our lives? And then he kind of learns about her wayward past, going to the train yards or whatever she was doing, getting involved with men at a young age. And he feels like he can't trust her, but he's falling for her. He thinks he's actually like learning to feel deep feelings and, you know, can't just lead that quiet life that he was aspiring to. And she's wrapped up in that. And she keeps being like, I love you, but I love you that much. And like they go. They do that dance like three times before she finally says the version of it that makes him leave town. And I was struggling with the lengthy dialogue even as though I can maybe appreciate sentence by sentence what she's doing with the little grammarical shifts of like. But why do they need to. Why do they need to fight this way? There's no. Because there's no plot. The like scenario of it got repetitive.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Even if I can appreciate why the language is repetitive. But here's. Here's a passage here, Andrew. I'll read it. Oh, you could. Do you want to read it? I was going to give you a break.

[A]

That's. I thought that's why you were sharing it.

[B]

Yeah. Why don't you.

[A]

Talking a bunch.

[B]

Why don't you read.

[A]

You need a break.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't know much about that kind of love yet, Miss Melanctha. You see, it's this way with me always, Miss Melanctha. I'm always so busy with my thinking about my work I'm doing. And so I don't have time for just fooling. And then too, you see, Ms. Melanctha, I really certainly don't ever like to get excited. And that kind of loving heart does seem always to mean just getting all the time excited. That certainly is what I always think from what I see of them that have it bad, Ms. Melanctha. And that certainly would never suit a man like me. You see, Ms. Melanctha, I'm a very quiet kind of fellow. And I believe in a quiet life for all the colored people. No, Ms. Melanctha, I certainly never have mixed myself up in that kind of trouble. Huh, Ms. Melanctha?

[B]

Yeah. And it's like when you say. It actually works for me more when you say it out loud, like it's spoken dialogue.

[A]

Well, because it sounds more like somebody throwing in filler words to collect their thoughts when you read it out loud than it is when you read it on the page, I think.

[B]

Yep. There's one thing that he says later. He's like talking about how he can never really understand her because she seems like two different people. And he says, I certainly know now. Really how. I don't know anything. Sure. At all about you, Melanctha. You're like, wait a second, sir.

[A]

That's. I mean, you know, there is something to be said for taking the most number of words that you can to convey a simple idea. And I think that Gertrude Stein puts herself in the running with that.

[B]

She certainly does. Yeah. And if there is, like, this is the story that has the most, I think, like character growth or change or at least introspection through Jeff in particular, Melanctha, I don't think gets as much of that, but they. They fall out when she says that she, you know, doesn't really love him. I ain't certainly got no hot passion anymore now in me. She says, oh, boy.

[A]

Yeah, that'll happen. Like that happened.

[B]

Like that. So he leaves. She meets Jim Richards, a gambler. That's his whole deal is he's a horse gambler. He's known as being a good one. He's good at it. And he repays his debts.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The shoe will never drop. I'm sure this will never.

[A]

A gentleman. A gentleman gambler. Yeah. He's got a. He's got a system that's good.

[B]

To your point about finding complicated ways to say simple things and that leading to poetry. Stein does write. All this time, Melanctha was always being every now and then with Jem Richards. I turned that one over into my noodle so many times. I came to love it, actually. Always being every now and then with him.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It means. It means something. It does.

[A]

It's.

[B]

It is.

[A]

And if you were just to say, like, sometimes she was with him.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It would not convey quite the same sense of.

[B]

She's always looking for an every now and then with him.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's got her friend Rose. While she's seeing Jem, Rose is going through her marriage, about to have a baby, which she will unfortunately lose. And Rose is like, I don't know about this Gem guy. I don't think it's gonna work out. I know he proposed to you. I know you want to get married and you want to love him, but he seems like he's hitting the skids and he's getting ready to break it off. And Rose ultimately breaks it off as a friend with Melanctha first, because Melanchtha, her main thing is like, I don't know, man. I just suffer all the time. I feel like I need to get saved by love. I need a good friend to save me too.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And I don't know what to do about it. And Rose is like a. I don't believe you. Or I don't believe that I'm the right person to help you, and I don't believe in these choices. But we get a lot of Rose actually in monologues to her husband. We barely ever hear from her husband, ever. And I kind of like the device of Rose has these extended dialogue sequences, but they're just to her guy. They're like, not to anyone. And she'll be like, I don't know, Sam. I don't know about this. I think this is gonna go bad. But no, she tells.

[A]

Once in a while, you hit it. You hit a character in a story where it's like, is this. Is this character supposed to be like a ghost or something? Like a guy that the viewers can't or what?

[B]

And no, Melanchtha does not take her own life, but she does die alone of consumption in a home for people with consumption after place to do it. The gambler leaves her and her friends leave her, and she is not well. So Melanchtha. Melanchtha. It is an interesting piece of writing that I can talk about why it is interesting. I'm finding my sea legs on it.

[A]

It's easier to appreciate than it is to enjoy it sounds like that's.

[B]

That was my reaction.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As it felt longer than it needed to be, I think I could appreciate. We've been. We've read stuff like that before where it's like, I get what it's doing, and if it were two thirds as long, I might not feel as tired by the gimmick or by the style or by.

[A]

Yeah. And then, you know, and then you get people who. Who want to come in and say, well, the fact that it's longer than it needs to be is the, it's like part of the point. And like maybe, maybe so.

[B]

But not to say this is a long book. It's not a long book.

[A]

Yeah, but it is. I mean by, just by the passages that we've read on the air, like it is clearly longer than it would strictly need to be just to convey the information.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If that's all you're reading a book for is like optimum information transfer.

[B]

No, I am not. I'm not some like C suite, like only read self help books person.

[A]

So like summarize who moved my GS for me.

[B]

AI, because Stein is here to tell you that like that's, you know, she's interested in writing in a different way. Right. She's interested in figuring out what language can do differently to portray psychology. And I think there is something missing for me in these stories. For a work about a lot of a number of lower class women, I think there's just Stein's method of engaging with the like their political realities is just like not to my taste because she's like not tacky because what does.

[A]

She know about it?

[B]

Well, there's a little bit of that.

[A]

Like to some extent, like that's not, that's never been her life. Like she has. She sells art and like self publishes books for a living.

[B]

And so there is like an element for me of. I can see how it still hits on those things by the characters she's chosen to write about in the situations she's chosen to write them in. But there are other works that like engage me more on those topics, I suppose. But she is occasionally funny and sometimes I really like returns of phrase. So yeah, that's what I got for you. I'm really going to be thinking about that every now and then forever or whatever that line was.

[A]

Well, thank you for reading this book and for telling me about it.

[B]

My pleasure to lead three lives for you, Andrew. If you, the listener at home want to send me a rambling email about your time collecting art in Europe or.

[A]

Whatever you do, if you always sometimes want to be emailing us, you can.

[B]

Send me an email overdue pot gmail.com or send it to Andrew. You can do that to same address. You can find us on social media at Overdue Pod. Our theme song is composed by Nick Lauren Just Andrew. Folks want to know more about the show. Where do they go?

[A]

Overdue Podcast.com's Internet website. We have the books that we have read. The ones we are going to read our February schedule. I'll let Craig tell you about in just a sec. But all that's up on the website. We also have the links that Craig mentioned and a link to our patreon page. That's patreon.com overdue pod. If you give us money, then we give you stuff. Including access to our Discord server, our monthly newsletter, dusty bookshelves, our ad free feed, long reads, including the Silly Merillion, which we just wrapped up, and Tokyo Drifters, our long read series on the manga Akira Akira that we are embarking upon currently. Like, the first episode of that is up over on Patreon now. And the like, the intro episode of it where we do like author research and stuff is up on Patreon and on the main feed. So if that teaser does anything for you, patreon.com overdpod consider tossing us a little bit of money and you'll get the eps. Baby, baby, what are we doing in February?

[B]

Oh, I should do the whole schedule, shouldn't I?

[A]

Do this February. It's February 2nd.

[B]

February 2nd.

[A]

It's February 1st. As we record this.

[B]

Three Lives by Gertrude Stein, Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers is next week. Happy Valentine's.

[A]

That is both Monk and robot stories.

[B]

That have been published.

[A]

It's like one volume that they put together.

[B]

Yes, it is a prayer for something and a prayer for something else.

[A]

That's not right, but it's close enough.

[B]

Okay. A psalm for something and a prayer for something else. Heated Rivalry Game Changers Number two by Rachel Reed will be our Valentine's Day story. Then the sellout by Paul Beatty closes out the month. Beatty can't wait to find out how to sell out with me. Oh, yeah, Andrew. That's how we sell out. Yeah.

[A]

All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. Everybody stay safe. Keep yourself as grounded as you can, and please try to be happy. That was a Headgum Podcast.

[B]

Hi, I'm Drew Afualo. And I'm Dason Afualo. And we host the Headgum Podcast, Two Idiot Girls. Each episode we're discussing plenty of topics that you would be giggling at at.

[A]

A sleepover with your weird cousins.

[B]

We talk about all kinds of things, like weird dating, horror stories, maybe a really bad wedgie you had once, or even a show you're loving and anything in between. So you can listen to Two Idiot Girls on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube. New episodes will be posted every Tuesday.