Stein on War

WARS I HAVE SEEN--Gertrude Stein --Random House ($2.50),

"Not many people," observed Gertrude Stein's U.S. publisher, Bennett Cerf, in his best-selling Try and Stop Me, "even claim to understand the intricacies of Miss Stein's prose style. But millions admire her rugged and magnificent personality." Pennsylvania-born Gertrude Stein has now lived out one world war and most of a second in her adopted France, viewed many another war from afar in the course of her 71 years. Wars I Have Seen, which she claims that even Publisher Cerf should be able to understand, is mostly about the present war. It is, naturally, very different from other war books. Few terrible things happened in the quiet villages of Bilignin and Culoz, where she lived for four years before returning to liberated Paris. But Miss Stein noticed and pondered almost everything that did happen. Though more lucid than usual, her peculiar prose will probably still baffle most plain readers.

But those with the patience to read Wars I Have Seen slowly may discover an uncommon charm and perception. Some excerpts:

P:Of the French: "In one war they upset the Germans by resisting unalterably steadily and patiently for four years, in the next war they upset them just as much by not resisting at all. . . . Well that is what makes them changeable enough to create styles."

P:Of unconditional surrender: "Nobody in Europe had ever heard of that, there are always conditions there have to be conditions, life in Europe is conditional. [The Europeans] are just fascinated and find it very original and the meaning of it does not really penetrate, it is a new form of jazz, unconditional surrender. . . ."

P:Of the U.S. Army, which she saw when it liberated her village: "They had a poise and completely lacked the provincialism which did characterize the last American army, they talked and they listened and they had a sureness, they were quite certain of themselves, they had no doubts or uncertainties and they had not to make any explanations."

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