Well, I said I was going in a different direction today, didn’t I….?

The 1940 book I want to talk about today is one by an author who can be considered quite divisive – a Marmite writer, really, one you’ll probably either love or hate. The title is “Paris France” and it’s by American author Gertrude Stein. She’s appeared on the Ramblings before: I wrote about her “Blood on the Dining Room Floor” back in 2013, and more recently enthused over a small indie edition of her “Vacation in Brittany“. Pre blog I’d read several of her works, most notably of course “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”; and there are a number of her works on the shelves which I picked up in my 20s which I of course can’t be sure if I’ve read or not…

After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really.

“Paris France” is one I’m unsure about, here in a Brilliant Books Plain Edition from 1983, and I can’t say if it’s new to me or not; which means I’ve either forgotten reading it or never did! But it was obviously ideal for our 1940 reading week, and poignantly it was first published on the day Paris fell to the Germans. Stein was a Jewish American lesbian who managed to stay in France unharmed during the Occupation; and she’s written more about this time in “Wars I Have Seen” (of which I believe I have two copies…) “Paris…”, however, is something different, a kind of collection of musings on France, its countryside, its traditions, her neighbours and the general life which is going on around her. The blurb trumpets this as one of Stein’s more accessible books, and it certainly is that!

Dogs which are not useful dogs are a pastime, as one woman once said to me, one has a great deal of pleasure out of dogs because one can spoil them as one cannot spoil one’s children. If the children are spoiled, one’s future is spoilt but dogs one can spoil without any thought of the future and that is a great pleasure.

Although the Wikipedia entry on the book confusingly refers to it as a novel, it is in fact a memoir, opening with Stein’s earliest memories of France from a visit as a child. She then weaves in recollections of anything French from her childhood in San Francisco, and moves on to explore French culture and its influence on her. She obviously has a deep love and admiration for France and its people, discussing the country’s fashions, traditions and civilisation, all in very stream of consciousness prose which wanders from subject to subject, presumably rather like Stein’s grasshopper mind! Her style, with its repetitions, its meandering quality and its tongue in cheek humour, is something of a treat and the often musical quality of her prose really draws you along. Friends like Picasso get a mention, and pets feature strongly.

England had the disadvantage of believing in progress, and progress has really nothing to do with civilisation, but France could be civilised without having progress on her mind, she could believe in civilisation in and for itself, and so she was the natural background for this period.

As I hinted in yesterday’s post, this is a book that is patently written during the War, as the conflict is a regular thread running through the book. There is a most poignant section where she makes up a story about a girl called Helen and her dog Button; this is completely grounded in the fact of war and is very touching. In fact, the whole book is a moving one, really a kind of tribute to the country Stein loved and which was now undergoing a cataclysmic experience.

Stein was 66 when the book was published, and would only outlive the end of WW2 by one year, dying in her beloved France in July 1946. She left behind her an impressive body of innovative work, though, and this simple little book definitely deserves its place amongst her best. It’s an entertaining, humorous and poignant look at the world around Stein, and I would say the perfect book to give you a taste of her writing. Wonderful stuff, and definitely worth the £2.50 I paid for it back in the day!!