Submitted by Tracy Karon, Oct 4, 2007 17:40

I enjoyed Adam Kirsch's article about Gertrude Stein, published online on October 3, 2007. I've read a fair amount of Stein's work, especially poetry, and have had many thoughts about it over several decades. She was an iconoclast in the use of language and forms of poetry and narrative prose. She also commented on the social order of her time, and did so in many ways. She was a lesbian, and that alone put her in a very different place even to observe the social order, which I call the patriarchal one. I'm also a lesbian, self-identified since early teens, perhaps even in childhood before I had words and concepts for that.

However, this article failed to mention that Gertrude Stein as well as her longtime mate Alice B. Toklas ingested a lot of marijuana. Toklas wrote about that in a book also, mentioned having baked it in brownies they frequently ate. I smoked some marijuana decades ago, while drinking a little wine, and it changed my mental functioning, gave me short-term memory problems, clouded my judgment, and I quit doing that after a couple of times.

I cherish much of Stein's work, own much of it, and have long wondered what effect her marijuana use had on her writing? Perhaps she also ingested a lot of alcohol, had other organic problems that contributed to her style. The excerpt noted in this piece by Kirsch is an outstanding example of what I'm talking about. What value does that segment have to anybody, including Stein? None. She was a famous writer, and likely publishers fought over who got to publish anything she wrote. The same happens throughout history, as far as I can see. I feel that her marijuana use, perhaps alcohol, and also organic changes in her brain contributed or caused the inane content of some of her work, and that includes the so-called style that sometimes worked to create deeper meaning. She went way overboard in that, and surely many have agreed with me.

Thanks for letting me have my say.

Tracy Karon Wright

Seattle, Washington

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