Carole Maso - Break Every Rule - Essays on Language, Longing, & Moments of Desire

And so forth…

They finally did not continue to interest themselves in description.

Chapter Derision just the other day one of The Famous Postmodern Novelists says when asked about The Great American Writers: Oh not Gertrude Stein, no, no not Stein.

Joyce

Picasso on Joyce: He is an obscure writer all the world can understand.

Stein drains the text of psychological and mythical overtones thank you very much. She cannot be solved and thank you.

Leave me leave something to confusion.

And I thank you.

The central theme of the novel is that they were glad to see each other.

Susan Howe: In the college library I use there are two writers whose work refuses to conform to the Anglo-American literary traditions these institutions perpetuate. Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein are clearly among the most innovative precursors of modernist poetry and prose, yet to this day canonical criticism from Harold Bloom to Hugh Kenner persists in dropping their names and ignoring their work. Why these two pathfinders were women, why American — are questions too often lost in the penchant for biographical detail that “lovingly” muffles their voices.

A novel of thank you and not about it.

It is a much more impressive thing to anyone to anyone standing, that is not in action than acting or doing anything doing anything being a successive thing but being something existing. That is then the difference between narrative as it has been and narrative as it is now. And this has come to be a natural thing in a perfectly natural way that the narrative of today is not a narrative of succession as all writing for a good many hundreds of years has been.

A space of time filled with moving.

To want everything at once. To write everything at once.

Susan Howe: Writing was the world of each woman. In a world of exaltation of his imagination, feminine inscription seems single and sudden.

Chapter Alice, Chapter Jane, Chapter Karen, Chapter Gina. Chapters in the middle

Notes to myself: The plays conceived as painting. To be apprehended all at once. Meditations inviting dreaming, dalliance. Yet filled with internal movement. Living in itself. Intensity and calm. Mystery and joy. Surprise, delight. Robert Wilson’s Four Saints last summer. Bliss. Joyous. Well fish.

A novel is a continual surprise.

Chapters as literary device rather than the natural division of novelistic time.

Listening to the Baltimore aunts telling the same stories over and over but each time a little differently.

Ricotta with a pear. This is a story of that in part. Don’t forget the pecorino. In part.

A novel of thank you in chapters and saints. Children and fish.

Thank you for desire. Reverence and Irreverence. Repeating.

Saints I have definitely seen so far.

Saint Catherine

Saint Francis

Saint Clare definitely

I am calling from Italy to say that there is smoke coming out of my computer and she says is there still a picture when you use the battery and I say yes and she says don’t worry it will all be OK wait until I get there. And I tell her I will meet her in the fortezza and I do, and it is.

The central theme of the novel is that they were glad to see each other.

A very valentine.

An arrangement of their being there and never having been more glad than before…

I will wait for you in the fortezza for as long as it takes.

Chapter written in the very hot sun while waiting.

Seeing Saint Catherine’s Head. (Siena)

Loving repeating is one way of being. This is now a description of such being. Loving repeating is always in children. Loving repeating is in a way earth feeling. Some children have loving repeating for little things and storytelling, some have it as a more bottom being. Slowly this comes out in them in all their children being, in their eating, playing, crying and laughing. Loving repeating is then in a way earth feeling. This is very strong in many, in children and in old age being. This is very strong in many in all ways of humorous being, this is very strong in some from their beginning to their ending.

Chapter Emily Rose and Katie Grosvenor

Again and again and again

A very valentine

How are the cats?

Thank you

Go red go red, laugh white.

Suppose a collapse in rubbed purr, in rubbed purr get.

Little sales ladies little sales ladies

Little saddles of mutton.

Little sales of leather and such

beautiful beautiful, beautiful beautiful.

Most tender buttons.

Trembling was all living, living was all loving, someone was then the other one.

Please may I have a piece of your Pecorino di Pienza thank you very much.

We have been planning a little trip to Italy in June.

Any time is the time to make a poem. The snow and sun below.

A short novel in cats

She loved her little black and white.

She loved her orange very much.

She loved her gray.

She loved her brown stripes.

But she loved her gray the most. Fauve.

It is because of this element of civilization that Paris has always been the home of all foreign artists, they are friendly the French, they surround you with a civilized atmosphere and they leave you inside of you completely to yourself.

An inner language

Merci beaucoup.

How many more than two are there. (I miss gossiping with you)

And I was once or twice in Vence and loving you very much. Chapter J and Z.

And on the rue de Fleurus.

The Germans were getting nearer and nearer Paris and the last day Gertrude Stein could not leave her room, she sat and mourned. She loved Paris, she thought neither of manuscripts nor of pictures, she thought only of Paris and she was desolate. I came up to her room, I called out, it is all right Paris is saved, the Germans are in retreat. She turned away and said, don’t tell me these things. But it’s true, I said, it is true. And then we wept together.

And then we wept.

How muffled the world suddenly — as if walking through snow

to the last village of Zenka, perched on a hill

where forever resides, and hasn’t it been nice?

Having gone to London in the month of May and roses to say good-bye.

Already I miss you very much.

Chapter 5

And how to thank you.

It was very nearly carefully in plenty of time.

Could if a light gray and heart rending be softer could it and light gray be paler could it and light gray be paler. Not the least resemblance between that and that.

Once more. Thank you very much. Once more. Once. Twice.

Once more. I shall miss you. The things we used to do and say.

And how we will not get to the Lago Giacomo Puccini this time.

The patience of a saint.

Not this time.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. If a bird or birds fly into the room is it good luck or bad luck we will say it is good luck.

A novel of thank you and a travel diary. With and without birds. Looking for an Agritourismo late at night. How many saints have we seen so far?

Saint Francis definitely all over the place, and Saint Clare and

Saint Catherine from before.

And how many parts of saints?

Pray to the rib of the saint for strength. The leg of the saint.

It was not a mistake.

Allowed to watch composition. Witness creation. Thank you thank you.

Written in Venice on “honeymoon”: A sonatina. Pussy said that I should wake her in an hour and a half if it didn’t rain. It is still raining what should I do.

Secrets, gossips, hopes, disappointments, household life, erotic life, artistic doubts, apologies, jokes, intimacies.

And if not the real story, then what the story was for me.