Gertrude Stein was 66 when she published Paris France (in 1940). (I just noticed there is no comma in the title, which makes sense because Gertrude often avoids commas, in sentences like:
By the way the Austrian croissant was hurriedly made at the siege of Vienna in 1683 by the Polish soldiers of Sobieski to replace the bread that was missing and they called it the crescent the emblem of the Turks whom they were fighting.
) Her point — if it isn’t obvious — is that the croissant is not naturally French; it was brought from Austria by Marie Antoinette: "they took it over completely so completely that it became French so completely French that no other nation questions it." This is part of the digression on cooking, if it’s possible for Gertrude Stein to have a digression.
Gertrude is attempting to define the Frenchness of France, a place she had lived for 37 years, through two great wars — but really the second one was just beginning. Gertrude is very stoic about wars. (Paris France was written just before my most beloved Gertrude Stein book, Wars I Have Seen, a book I grew up with (it was my father’s); and the same copy just perished in my recent flood.) The best part of Paris France is the story of Helen Button (she is a young French girl whose name is really Hélène Bouton, but Gertrude calls her by her Anglicized name):
Helen Button started out with her dog William. As they were walking along suddenly William stopped and was very nervous. He saw something on the road and so did Helen. They neither of them knew what it was at first and at last as they approached very carefully they saw it was a bottle, a bottle standing up right in the middle of the road. There had been something in the bottle but what, it looked dark green or may be blue or black, and the bottle was standing up in the middle of the road not lying on its side the way a bottle on the road usually is.
William the dog and Helen the little girl went on. They did not look back at the bottle but of course it was still there because they had not touched it.
That is war-time.
So you see, she does use commas sometimes.
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