Indeed, Stein’s work is fundamentally an interrogation of the process of knowing and communicating. Long before Academia got the self-reflexive bug, her project was to tame the very nature of discourse. It perhaps too obvious to refer to her as a proto-post-modernist. I say “too obvious” because, as I stated in the initial post, her essential aims were that of the modernist – to capture essentials and environment in a authoritative gesture.

The incongruity of a team in our post-post-modern moment tackling this arch-modernist was, I suppose, the point of my post. She may have aimed to “capture the present moment,” as you state, but she also aimed to calcify and preserve it. This was the element missing from Gatto and Scheib’s performance. This of course is to be expected, for attempts at calcification have been out of fashion for a half-century or more.

And the snow thing isn’t that big of a deal. It’s the cold thing that’ll get you.

Yes, to read Gertrude Stein’s nearly 1000-page novel is to jump into deep water without knowing how to swim. Still, I see with your use of words like “teleogical” that you have it in you to find some water wings. Stein was a student of the eminent Harvard professor, philosopher, psychologist William James. He can teach anyone willing to read him how to swim in Stein’s waters.

Also Stein’s repetitions are about creating the present moment. She was a pragmatist and always had a plan and strategy for her work. Her creations are not about story, they are always about process.

At scene4.com, I plan to review what Gatto and Scheib have so deftly created in their opera The Making of Americans. Suffice it to say, I felt that the money invested to get me to Minneapolis was worth every penny. Also I think Minneapolis would be a waay cool place to live, the snow thing notwithstanding.