Useful Knowledge

Useful Knowledge is a book of short stories and poems written by famed novelist Gertrude Stein. It was published in 1929, making the book one of Stein's first 10 published works of her career which consisted of over 40 such volumes. In an advertisement for the book, Stein described Useful Knowledge as being "pleasant and therefore it is very much to be enjoyed." In lockstep with much of Stein's other work at the time, Useful Knowledge was unique in the way it placed and worded text, making it a vital work of the early stages of the modernist literary movement. A first-edition copy of the book is stored at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts.

Background

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein wrote novels, poems, plays, as well as collected art over the course of her 72-year life span. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, but was raised in Oakland, California. In 1903, Stein moved to Paris, France, and remained in France for the duration of her life. The Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University alumnus hosted a Paris salon, where famous modernist artists in the fields of literature and art would meet. The list of names of people who attended included Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse. With over 40 published works over the course of her lifetime, Stein became known as "the mother of modernism" for the distinctive way in which she crafted her prose.

Modernist Literary Movement

During the early 1900s until the early 1940s, a new form of literature arose in the form of modernism. The style, of which Gertrude Stein employed in much of her writing, was known for the way in which it tinkered with the common traits of linear narrative. Modernism arose in response to the horrors perceived during World War I. The form allowed artists to portray the fragmented, unsettling world around them by largely tossing reason and normalcy aside. In Stein’s case, much of her writing adhered to this style in the way in which she would use repetition. In her poems and short stories alike, Stein would often repeat the same word or set of words over and over again. In poetry, this is not entirely out of the norm, but within the short story format, Stein’s writing bucked the standard conventions through her usage of continual repetition. Additionally, instead of the traditional left-to-right style of printed text, Stein’s writing, particularly in Useful Knowledge, would often start on the right side or start on the left and skip the middle portion of the allotted space. This modernist feature made her printed text more dynamic than that of much of her counterparts. Outside of Stein, other modernist artists during the early 20th century included author Virginia Woolf as well as painter Pablo Picasso.

Material Analysis

Cover

In the Kislak Center, the first-edition copy of Useful Knowledge possesses a solid black cover with no words or images. The spine of the book contains the title as well as Stein’s last name. As such, the cover of the book does not reflect the subversive properties that exist within it. However, on the title page of the book, Stein’s modernist qualities are reflected through its unique structuring. A rectangle is lined from top to bottom with repetitions of the title, Useful Knowledge, and lining the rectangle are red repetitions of the author’s name, Gertrude Stein. The usage of repetition is a clear tie-in to the book’s continual usage of the same effect, in which Stein often repeats words, even lining entire pages with the same set of them. In addition to reflecting the rest of the book, the title page is a modernist interpretation of a standard cover page. Instead of a generic singular printing of the title and author, Useful Knowledge’s cover page subverts this and is as fragmented and unsettling as many other pieces of modernist text. This modernist contrast is illustrated by the way in which the page also mentions Payson & Clarke Limited, the book’s original publishing company. Their name is thrown in at the bottom just once. In doing so, Stein (or whoever else came up with this title page) eloquate that Stein and the book itself are modernist and subversive, while the book’s publishing company is merely a separate entity not engaging with this convention-breaking.