Description
Book SynopsisBefore Gertrude Stein became the twentieth century's preeminent experimental writer, she spent a decade conducting research at Harvard's psychological laboratory and the Johns Hopkins Medical School. This book shows how her extensive scientific training continued to exert a profound influence on the development of her extraordinary literary practices.
Trade Review"
Irresistible Dictation is dazzling, original, and wonderful. A major work about Gertrude Stein and her radical creativity, it also brings together literature and science in compelling ways. Steven Meyer writes with lucidity, freshness, and authority, and I am very glad he has written this book."—Catharine R. Stimpson, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University, and editor of
Gertrude Stein: Writings, 1903-1932 and
Writings, 1932-1946"What has been missing from the vast body of Gertrude Stein studies is an approach so holistic that it sheds light not only on the literary tradition of which she was a part, but the early neurological and philosophical background that contributed so much to her thought. Along comes Steven Meyer, who has somehow mastered the science and the philosophy so throughly that he presents us with exciting, dramatically new, and beautifully lucid concepts that are sure to fascinate scholars for decades to come." -- Sherwin B. Nuland * M.D., Clinical Professor, Yale Medical School, and author of
How We Die,
How We Live,
The Mysteries Within, and
Leonardo Da Vinci *
"
Irresistible Dictation is a fascinating new view of science, literature, and the art of writing. I suspect that Steven Meyer has outdone his protagonist, Gertrude Stein, in the subtlety of his philosphical and literary analyses and in his penetrating insights into the limits of the contemporary neurosciences. A marvelous tour de force."—Israel Rosenfield, author of
The Invention of Memory: A New Theory of the Brain,
The Strange, Familiar, and Forgotten: An Anatomy of Consciousness, and
Freud's "Megalomania""This groundbreaking work enters areas of Gertrude Stein research that once were considered marginal, but now must be considered central. Steven Meyer brings Stein back to science, reclaims her for good sense, and widens our understanding of her no longer peculiar originality." -- William H. Gass * author of
The World Within the Word,
Habitations of the World,
Finding a Form,
The Tunnel, and
Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas *
"[A] landmark study." --
Choice"[An] informative, meticulously researched study of Gertrude Stein's scientific training." --
Modernism / Modernity"[Meyer's] discussions of [Stein's] writing are consistently superb. In his hands, 'Bee Time Vine' charms us all over again and 'Mrs. Emerson' yields new linguistic possibilities . . . .Meyer expertly shows how Stein attends to every aspect of writing: space, spelling, negation, sonority, sequence, psychology, intonation, rhythm, punctuation . . . .Well-written, cogent, and enlightening,
Irresistible Dictation opens up areas of investigation long overdue in Stein scholarship while it returns us to the irresistible pleasures of Gertrude Stein, who confronted fate and rose—rises—to the occassion." --
TheBoston ReviewTable of ContentsIllustrations A note to the reader Preface Part I. The Neurophysiological Imagination: 1. Ecstatic science: natural history of the soul 2. Beyond organic form: Gertrude Stein and John Hopkins neuroanatomy Part II. The New Organism: Introduction: irresistible dictation 3. Line of divergence: Emerson and Stein 4. At the Whiteheads': science and the modern world Part III. Stein and William James: Introduction: the will to live 5. Writing psychology over: toward a more radical empiricism 6. Every field incomplete: mapping 'the very abysses of our nature' 7. 'The physiognomy of the thing': sentences and paragraphs in Stein and Wittgenstein 8. Conclusion: 'sentences singing themselves' Coda in three voices Notes Index.
