Praise for Making of Americans

  “This sober, tender-hearted, very searching history of a family’s progress, comprehends in its picture of life which is distinctively American, a psychology which is universal.”—Marianne Moore, Dial

  “The Making of Americans is historically a break with nineteenth-century fictional conventions beyond almost any others taken at the time by any other American.”

  —Commonweal

  “The Making of Americans is the first announcement of what would be Stein’s greatest legacy—to reclaim the world of the nineteenth-century woman from such weird, smutty interlopers as Flaubert and, later, Joyce, and transform it into the most exalted ground of human potentiality available to us.… It is monumental, horribly flawed, and a joy to read if you just give up and drown in it.”—Matthew Stadler, The Stranger

  “Read slowly and with intelligence, this book clarifies what all the word grenading has been about.”—Chicago Tribune

  “The sooner you read The Making of Americans, this word sonata of an American family, this Michael Angelesque structure of your native history, the sooner will be your realization that all the talk of the obscurity of the style of Gertrude Stein’s writing is nonsense. Her style is no more obscure than tomorrow is obscure. Yesterday’s book is clear reading today. Tomorrow’s book, then, needs but the progress of thought to elucidate a common wealth.”—Boston Transcript

  “Stein’s unusual, speedy, high-pressure style, which varies its rhythm according to the characters she is describing, gives the impression of life being woven on noisy, ceaseless, yet mysterious shuttles—and again, of the household sounds and the noise of ordinary life by which we are surrounded and in which our existences are rooted. “—Criterion

  “The Making of Americans will not be read by many; we are too impatient a people, and it cannot be comprehended with one eye on the baby and half a mind on the radio; but the serious lover of the art of expression in words will go back to it again and again, seeking to penetrate its inner significances.”—Dallas News

  “Although the difficulty of style and material insure that this work will never be a best-seller, its inquiry into the nature of human character reveals insights which are rewarding for the serious reader and assure this work a permanent place in American literature.”—Virginia Woolf Quarterly

  “On this book the reader floats easily and pleasantly … for Gertrude Stein has a lively sense of rhythm.”—Greenwich Villager

  “There is intelligence in the book and there is sometimes foolishness, there is humor and kindness and there is no contempt. It is the kind of book that is never quarreling with itself, that is always sure what kind of book it wants to be.”—Centaur

  “What the reviewer felt when this stein splashed into the stream of consciousness: Gertrude Stein verbosity boldness nonsense originality intelligentsia claque paid advertising furors vogue prestige excitement critics friendly public buffaloed sales pressure booksellers happiness.…”—Catholic World

  “Essential for all literature collections.”—Library Journal

  “Indubitably the most monumental fiction to be given since the publication of Ulysses.”—Saturday Review of Literature

  “Thanks, Dalkey, for bringing it back into print!”—Feminist Bookstore News

  The Stein family ca. 1881, East Oakland, California.(Stein indicated by the X.)

  The Making of Americans

  Being a History of a Family’s Progress

  Gertrude Stein

  Foreword by William H. Gass

  Introduction by Steven Meyer

  Dallas, TX / Rochester, NY

  Deep Vellum | Dalkey Archive Press

  3000 Commerce Street, Dallas, Texas 75226

  www.dalkeyarchive.com

  Deep Vellum is a 501c3 nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013 with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature.

  Originally published in English as Th e Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress by Contact Press, Paris, France, 1925. First American edition published by Albert & Charles Boni, 1926. Second American edition published by Something Else Press, 1966.

  Foreword copyright © 1995 by William H Gass

  Introduction copyright © 1995 by Steven Meyer

  First Dalkey Archive Press Edition, 1995

  Subsequent printings in 1999, 2006

  First Dalkey Archive Essentials Edition, 2025

  The front piece is reproduced courtesy the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

  All rights reserved.

  Support for this publication has been provided in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, the City of Dallas Offi ce of Arts and Culture, the Communities Foundation of Texas, and the Addy Foundation.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Stein, Gertrude, 1874-1946, author. | Gass, William H., 1924-2017, author of introduction, etc. | Meyer, Steven, 1959- writer of introduction.

  Title: Th e making of Americans : being a history of a family’s progress / Gertrude Stein ; foreword by William H. Gass ; introduction by Steven Meyer.

  Description: First Dalkey Essential edition. | Dallas, TX : Dalkey Archive Press, 2025.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2025006984 (print) | LCCN 2025006985 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628974669 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781628974935 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Immigrants--Fiction. | LCGFT: Domestic fiction. | Novels.

  Classification: LCC PS3537.T323 M3 2025 (print) | LCC PS3537.T323 (ebook) | DDC 813/.52--dc23/eng/20250221

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025006984

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025006985

  Cover art and design by Justin Childress

  Interior design and typeset by Kaija Straumanis

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by William H. Gass

  Introduction by Steven Meyer

  The Making of Americans

  [The Dehnings and the Herslands]

  [The Hersland Parents]

  [Mrs. Hersland and the Hersland Children]

  Martha Hersland

  Alfred Hersland and Julia Dehning

  David Hersland

  History of a Family’s Progress

  FOREWORD

  by

  WILLIAM H. GASS

  The computer on which I am writing these words has a function which allows me to examine the layout of the page I am readying for the printer. Since this look at my text is so wide-eyed I cannot read a line, only view the lineup, a magnifying glass which I can draw down out of its shy place in the corner is provided to enlarge and make comprehensible some chosen bit. Because Steven Meyer deals so wonderfully with the development and general themes of The Making of Americans, I thought I might take a moment to microscope a single sentence, one which he quotes, since that is convenient, and since it would be my contention that almost any sentence would yield the same results.

  It should no longer be necessary to argue Gertrude Stein’s importance or insist upon her artistry, but I would like to highlight some of the remarkable aspects of Gertrude Stein’s prose; aspects which, if the reader pays attention to them, will slow her pace, but perhaps quicken her sense of the journey. The passage begins: “A man in his living has many things inside him …” (162). If we listen to this line, we shall discover how a real artist proceeds. If we look at this line (not merely read it), we shall find out how important looking as well as listening are to the understanding and appreciation of prose.

  In one sense Gertrude Stein’s style is very plain, and she uses a severely limited vocabulary, but she also insists upon a colorless, somewhat vague language which is almost always oddly phrased—just far enough out of the ordinary to disconcert. If we hear that “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” we know that the speaker is using this generalization to refer to himself (unless he is being ironic). Here the narrator is referring to David Hersland, and through him to the rest of us. Earlier the text has distinguished between home life, business life, midlife, and so on, but the categories have been expressed in a progressive way as “business living,” “middle living,” and “home living.” This usage is not customary. So the placement of the phrase “in his living” makes an otherwise straightforward sentence somewhat strange.

  She does not write “A man through his living” because that would imply that a man’s way of life made him what he is. By emphasizing the preposition “in,” Stein suggests submergence and containment. A man’s living is larger than he is. “A man in his living has many things inside him …” Amanin, the music begins. Then the is and the ms and the ns take over. “A m an in h is l iv in g has man y th in gs in s id e h im.” The “in” in “living” and in “things” is not pronounced, but must be seen. The “man” in “man” changes to “men” in “many.” “A man in his living has men (ee th ings) inside him.” Both the look and the listen of the language matter. The “in” in “inside” and the “in” in “living” look alike but, in terms of sound, go their separate ways.

  It is also typical of Gertrude Stein to employ quite colloquial expressions as technical terms. “Does Merriweather have it in him to cross the country?” That is, does he have the gumption. Our selection continues (using a comma where a colon would normally be): “A man in his living has many things inside him, he has in him his i
mportant feeling of himself to himself inside him.” The schoolteacher would be expected to delete the “in him,” because it is redundant, however this “in him” will be followed by ten more, as well as two that are submerged slightly in “inside him,” with the total number of “him”s reaching seventeen. One way or another the passage will beat away on im im im like a drum.

  “A man in his living has many things inside him.” What things? “He has in him his important feeling of himself to himself inside him.” What’s that? “He has in him the kind of important feeling of himself to himself that makes his kind of man.” “In” looks its way out of “kind,” which sounds the “I”—kEYEnduh. “Kinda” is the colloquial form. Meanwhile, against the in ims, and the narrow slit-shaped vowels, are increasingly placed the open os of “-port-” as well as the look-alike os of “of’ and “to” with their uv oo music, and the rhyming of “come” and “some” and “from,” as here: “this comes sometimes from a mixture in him of all the kinds of natures in him, this comes sometimes from the bottom nature in him, this comes sometimes from the natures in him that are in him that are sometime in him mixed up with the bottom nature in him.” You couldn’t spell “bot tom” better than it is.

  We have shifted from “im” to “om”—that is, um, I’m. The function of “sometimes” (as common as “kinda”) changes, as the passage moves shrewdly from “himself” to “themselves.” “Sometimes in some men this other nature or natures in him are not mixed with the bottom nature in him at any time in his living.” The rhetoric has recaptured the opening formula. “Many of such men have the important feeling of themselves inside them coming from the other nature or natures in them not from the bottom nature of them.”

  The sound shifts throughout follow and reinforce the sense. The sound connections link the language into one melodic line, and the repetitions return us in the manner of the baroque to early elements over which we pass again like swifts in flight.

  In this spindle diagram (so named because we can run our eye, the way one used to be able to thrust a knitting needle through holes punched in IBM cards, down common points of verbal return to see how the sentence revolves), eighteen “in”s and thirteen “him”s line up on the right side, and these “him”s are not the half of it, since four more can be found in the expression “important feeling of himself to himself,” giving “him” those seventeen appearances I mentioned, while “nature” has to be satisfied with eight, “sometimes” with five, and “bottom” four. The “his/this” combination is also frequent (eight).

  We could easily draw up a phrase diagram, which wouldn’t split “in his living” and other grammatical combinations the way the spindle layout does, arranging the groups as the paragraph balances them throughout its length. Assonance, consonance, rhyme, rhythm, repetition, phrase placement, the movement of singulars to plurals, the elaborate colloquial vagueness of reference, the careful distinctions which underlie the meaning, are used together to give emotional weight to the journey—in this case a short passage of analysis, but one which mimics the movement of life itself—a trip which trips over itself, aims at a target reflected in a mirror, returns, redoes, as habits do, when we shave ourselves, or powder our cheeks and comb our hair again, though one more day has passed, because life belongs to the progressive present, it is living, but living is “same after same,” it is variations on a theme, a deep theme, made of the mixtures of natures, it is a round, it is fugal, like the ring which Gertrude made to round her roses, and it gives rise to the feeling that, as automatic as habit is, as if it were in charge of each action, and therefore of most of life—our clamorous family of familiar, customary gestures, squalls and bites—it is nevertheless we who run the comb’s teeth through our hair, it is we who grimace in the glass, feeling always who we are despite the mechanics of our motions, the repetitions which sum a life: “Some can remember something of some such thing,” she writes; however just how does this feeling arise while scraping carrots, preparing dinner, kissing, as always, with puckered lips, so as not to get too intimate—the whore’s reserve—how does it happen that we feel we are present in a present our reruns make us absent from? shifting gears, poking in a purse, lighting up, the same creases from the same sheets in the same sleep wrinkling our bare back, so that we recognize even the rare as regular—that’s the danger—not even sighing when someone says: your voice sounds better through the mail; and we continue simply to continue, continue to feel a sip’s a sip, the same as always, yet just this one, cool and pale, though another, cool and pale will follow, as we’ve always done, wine at five in a fine glass, because if it didn’t arise, if the feeling failed to materialize, we’d be good as dead, a phonograph, rounding on itself silently, making no music, though the needle wears and the grooves deepen and the table’s turning slows to let us know that something’s happened, something of notably no importance.

  In the sentence which follows the one which Steven Meyer and I quote and comment on, another variation on the same words, another teasing of meaning out into the open, another singing of the nearly same song, occurs:

  Many men have sometime in their living the important feeling of themselves to themselves inside them, some men have always this feeling inside them, most men have such a feeling more or less in them, perhaps all men and mostly all women have sometime in them a feeling of themselves to themselves inside them; this comes sometimes from a mixture in them of the kind of natures in them, this comes sometimes from the bottom nature of them, this comes sometimes from the natures in them that are mixed up with the bottom natures of them, sometimes in some of them the other nature or natures in them are not mixed with the bottom nature in them, many of such of them have the important feeling of themselves inside them coming from the other natures not from the bottom nature of them.

  In the great dirge which concludes The Making of Americans, in the surge of life in the ending of it, the answer is given, and we can hear it: consciousness is like the music of the words, for in them, and in their pace, and in their arrangement, their rhetoric, their repetitions, the patterns they lay down, in their prolonged investigation of nuance, of the subtle differences in sameness, in the in of “in” itself, lies the wonderful, the saving rainbow of awareness, the presence of force and feeling; but what should anyone expect me to say, except to say “style”—style is consciousness, arising from relation, from the way this syllable connects with that, or cell with cell until the brain bursts into seeing, with sentences whose shape is their understanding, like one which declares, as Stein might: my knowing that I am going, though I go, is never gone, if my going, and my knowing, are strongly sung. She says:

  Family living can be existing and any one can come to be a dead one and every one is then a dead one and there are then not any more being living. Any old one can come to be a dead one. Every old one can come to be a dead one. Any family being existing is one having some being then not having come to be a dead one. Any family living can be existing when not every one has come to be a dead one. Every one in a family living having come to be dead ones some are remembering something of some such thing. Some being living not having come to be dead ones can be ones being in a family living. Some being living and having come to be old ones can come then to be dead ones. Some being living and being in a family living and coming then to be old ones can come then to be dead ones. Any one can be certain that some can remember such a thing. Any family living can be one being existing and some can remember something of some such thing. (1022)

  A routine—a rite, a rigamarole—of this kind is a recognition, a recognition which is one of a kind, though every word is old and overused and done, each perception trite, and each sorrow common. Any and every one of us will die, but only a few, a small sum at any time, can remember—really remember—something of some such thing: when our organs no longer peal, when our words no longer rhyme.

  INTRODUCTION

  by

  STEVEN MEYER