Cooking with Tender Buttons Food: Roastbeef. Stanzas 1-3. Discussion 2

THE BOOK ..........................-           TENDER BUTTONS

THE SUBBOOK ...................-           FOOD

THE SUBPOEM ..................-            Roastbeef

WORD COUNT (Total)……..-           1757

STANZA(S)............................-           37

THE LEADER........................-           THE STEINY ROAD POET

CO-LLABORATORS.............-            MODPO STUDENTS/THE BUTTONS

Because every word in Tender Buttons can open a universe of possibilities and the entire subpoem is composed of 1757 words, the challenge for approaching and discussing “Roastbeef.” is daunting. To the Buttons Collective (a group studying Tender Buttons with the ModPo MOOC discussion forum), the Steiny Road Poet served the longest subpoem of Tender Buttons as a diet of six portions. Even now after the discussion threads on “Roastbeef.” have sat dormant for many months, Steiny still feels the hugeness and the difficulty of how to organize and “make sense” of the commentary. So she will proceed by making at least seven separate posts (including the post on the title alone) and she will chew the fat of “Roastbeef.” as she goes. Most likely Steiny will see things that were not discussed. This is what happens when anyone rereads Stein’s work but especially Tender Buttons.

Thus we begin with the first three stanzas of “Roastbeef.”, which has a 395-word count, including the title. Among the topics addressed in this post are boats, cows, Old Testament and Shakespearean reverberations, and Stein’s lexicon including dirt and meadow.

ROASTBEEF.

In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. All the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling. This makes sand.

Very well. Certainly the length is thinner and the rest, the round rest has a longer summer. To shine, why not shine, to shine, to station, to enlarge, to hurry the measure all this means nothing if there is singing, if there is singing then there is the resumption.

The change the dirt, not to change dirt means that there is no beefsteak and not to have that is no obstruction, it is so easy to exchange meaning, it is so easy to see the difference. The difference is that a plain resource is not entangled with thickness and it does not mean that thickness shows such cutting, it does mean that a meadow is useful and a cow absurd. It does not mean that there are tears, it does not mean that exudation is cumbersome, it means no more than a memory, a choice and a reestablishment, it means more than any escape from a surrounding extra. All the time that there is use there is use and any time there is a surface there is a surface, and every time there is an exception there is an exception and every time there is a division there is a dividing. Any time there is a surface there is a surface and every time there is a suggestion there is a suggestion and every time there is silence there is silence and every time that is languid there is that there then and not oftener, not always, not particular, tender and changing and external and central and surrounded and singular and simple and the same and the surface and the circle and the shine and the succor and the white and the same and the better and the red and the same and the centre and the yellow and the tender and the better, and altogether.

“The first thing that strikes me is that there's very little mention of food in it, little to do with roast beef.” Peter Treanor

WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR …

Stanza one could depict a riverboat traveling from night into dawn. Because there is sleeping on the inside contrasted with reddening on the outside, one gets the feeling there could be some illicit sex involved. Possibly it could be sex between Gertrude and Alice. Is someone like Gertrude embarrassed? Anything is mounting and pinching (pinching as in the slang meaning of stealing) also seems to support this idea of something unlawful going on. All the standards have steamers may be flags (standards) flying on these riverboats which have paddlewheels that circle and stir up sand. If the yellow represents the sun, then in the light of day comes discrimination (against a same sex couple?), especially as the text moves in stanza three to the land.

In the ModPo discussion forum, Karren Alenier [a.k.a. Steiny] stated the following:

“So if the last sentences of stanza 1 refer to a riverboat with a paddle wheel. The second stanza resonates with water (well) and some kind of measurements related to the navigation of the boat. Those boats were run in the summer and lots of gambling took place on them as well as entertainment including singing.”

Peter Treanor added, “there were passenger steam boats in Paris on the Seine at this time too, although they were dwindling in popularity as the railways and Metro were replacing them.”

Steiny finds it interesting that Stein begins the Food section with text that seems to indicate a boat because her table of contents does not include the subpoem entitled “Chain-boats.”. A chain boat is a modified paddleboat that ran in shallow waters and was used on the Seine River to transport such items as food.

STEIN’S ACTIVE LYRICISM

What immediately struck Steiny when she read the first stanza was the lyricism that Stein creates with repetition and the use of ing words. Here’s how Alenier mapped that:

In the--5X

In feeling --5X  (feeling--7X)

there is --28X (in the first 3 stanzas)

ing--19X (first stanza)

sleeping

reddening

morning

meaning

evening

feeling

evening

feeling

feeling

anything

resting

feeling

anything

mounting

feeling

feeling

feeling

pinching

circling

IS STEIN IMITATING THE BIBLE?

Alenier said that possibly Stein was “imitating the Bible which uses repetition, particularly the word and. Alenier offered the following passage from Genesis [King James version]:

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Existence was a dominant theme for Stein ever since she had learned that she and her brother Leo were replacement children after the fourth and fifth Stein children died in their infancy. While the order of the Tender Buttons sections—“Objects”, “Food”, and “Rooms”—was selected by Stein’s Claire Marie publisher, the power of beginning Tender Buttons with “A carafe, that is a blind glass.” and its many intimations of birth and its shadings that point to a Jewish Biblical landscape made Steiny rethink how significant the tone of “Roastbeef.”’s stanza one is relative to the passage of Genesis as stated above.

This thought made Steiny do some bean counting through out the entire 37 stanzas of “Roastbeef.” Here is what Steiny saw:

Words Repeated     Number of times

and                             107

there is                        72

there are                        9

With the repetition of the word feeling, Stein has expanded the conception of the verb to be—as a baby born or not, considering that Gertrude may not have been born except for the death of other siblings—making to be bigger than birth with emphasis on union. Union depends heavily on the conjunction a-n-d, where A or a throughout Tender Buttons stands for [A]lice Toklas. Tender Buttons is thus the sacred covenant or bible of Gertrude Stein’s clandestine marriage to Alice Babette Toklas.

As Genesis repeats and to make the text flow like the waters God creates in conjunction with the firmament, stanza one of section two “Food”/ subpoem one “Roastbeef.” not only creates fluidity by repeating and four times but also by repeating there is nine times and by using ing words 19 times.

In discussing the crossover words with Judy Meibach, Alenier noted that, in stanza three, words like dirt [The change the dirt, not to change dirt means that there is no beefsteak] and meadow [it does mean that a meadow is useful and a cow absurd] might be stand-ins for firmament while dividing [every time there is a division there is a dividing] and exudation [it does not mean that exudation is cumbersome] correlate to birth (birth of planet Earth and humankind that God eventually creates). Alenier also referred to this passage of Genesis:

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Alenier continued, “Stein was vocal about procreating. She said she believed in it though she never thought of herself as a woman who would bear children. I believe she was vocal about this when she was in medical school [where she went into the African-American community and assisted with the delivery of children].”

IN THE RURAL HAVEN WITH THE ABSURD COW

For the moment, Steiny will put Stein’s lyricism on hold to address the physicality and literalness of these introductory 395 words. Do these three stanza have anything to do with the food called roast beef?

Here’s what Treanor observed:

“Reading it, the piece as a whole, standing back and squinting my eyes a bit, the first thing that strikes me is that there's very little mention of food in it, little to do with roast beef. There’s the mention of beefsteak and the absurd cow grazing in the meadow and converting dirt to grass to meat and maybe milk (a cumbersome exudate from the memory/ mammary, cows udders get very cumbersome before they are milked). Seems like there is more to do with producing tender meat on the cow than there is to do with killing, cooking, and eating it.

“But what comes over to me is the sense of being in a sunny summer day, people sleeping inside and getting suntanned (reddening) outside. The yellow, circle has circling, and to shine seem like the sun. There is sand as well.

“All seems very well, there is singing. The dirt is changing to grass in the meadow, the grass is not entangled, it’s lush meadow, cows are eating and growing producing meat and milk. The white could be more milk and the better could be butter. It’s a time of plenty—there’s a lot of dividing and repeating in the text indicating fruitfulness, growth, and the rhythm of the days. She points to this repeating and dividing having to do with—surface, suggestion, silence, languid (rest), tender(ness), change, being external and central. And there’s warmth and support (succor). It all feels very relaxed and productive, a rural haven, a Forest of Arden.”

DIRT, DIRTIER, DIRTY

The change the dirt, not to change dirt means that there is no beefsteak and not to have that is no obstruction, it is so easy to exchange meaning, it is so easy to see the difference. The difference is that a plain resource is not entangled with thickness and it does not mean that thickness shows such cutting, it does mean that a meadow is useful and a cow absurd.

Allan Keeton said, riffing on the passage above from stanza three “Roastbeef.”:

It is so easy to exchange meanings—

dirt -> meadow -> cow -> roastbeef -> human

it is so easy to see the difference.

Not to change the dirt means there is no beefsteak.

Without changing the grammar

there is no poem

ROASTBEEF.

Steiny sees this Great Chain of Being interpretation (where everything has its place) as Stein shaking up the universe with her revolutionary grammar. Keeton equates dirt to Stein’s grammar revolution. In Stein’s rules of grammar, she juxtaposes contrasting words as well as picking them apart. Therefore, in close proximity, Stein gives us change the dirt and exchange meaning.

Alenier also pulled out these words from stanza three because they seemed to create a dialectic for Stein about whether she should accept the union between herself and Toklas:

obstruction (vs. exchange)

mean-ing (vs. difference--I am dividing the word to show its negative behavioral side)

a choice

a reestablishment

escape

exception

a division

tender and changing

altogether

However, the appearance of dirt would not be complete without a look at how Stein refers to dirt in various subpoems of section 1 “Objects”. Here’s what Alenier compiled in the ModPo discussion forum:

“Casting out the net from Food to Objects (dirt)”

“Food”—“Roastbeef.”:

The change the dirt, not to change dirt means that there is no beefsteak and not to have that is no obstruction, it is so easy to exchange meaning, it is so easy to see the difference. 

“Objects”

A SUBSTANCE IN A CUSHION.

Callous is something that hardening leaves behind what will be soft if there is a genuine interest in there being present as many girls as men. Does this change. It shows that dirt is clean when there is a volume. 

A PIECE OF COFFEE. (excerpt)

A single image is not splendor. Dirty is yellow. A sign of more in not mentioned. A piece of coffee is not a detainer. The resemblance to yellow is dirtier and distincter. The clean mixture is whiter and not coal color, never more coal color than altogether. 

DIRT AND NOT COPPER. (excerpt)

Dirt and not copper makes a color darker. …

A RED STAMP. 

If lilies are lily white if they exhaust noise and distance and even dust, if they dusty will dirt a surface that has no extreme grace, if they do this and it is not necessary it is not at all necessary if they do this they need a catalogue. 

A PIANO. (excerpt)

... If there is no dirt in a pin and there can be none scarcely, if there is not then the place is the same as up standing. 

A CHAIR. (excerpt)

If the chance to dirty diminishing is necessary, if it is why is there no complexion, why is there no rubbing, why is there no special protection. 

“Dirt, dirtier, dirty is used in Objects 8 times and 11 times in Food.

“Dirt pertains to appearance for Stein and it seems to be fraught with negative connotations but not always as in ‘Dirt and not copper.’  and ‘A red stamp.’, which pertain to natural elements. Probably ‘A piano.’ is not negative but just a fact.

“Often Stein is contrasting dirt with what is clean. This seems to fall into the Jewish frame of what is kosher and what is trayfe (unclean). Relative to kosher ritual, one can make a knife kosher by plunging it into dirt. If a Torah (holy scripture written on a sacred scroll) is retired, it is buried with the kind of honors given a deceased person.”

Treanor reacted to Alenier’s dirt study by saying:

“Dirt baffles me. It’s such a strange word to use.

Is it dust, earth/ mud /soil or an uncleanness? Or is it just dirt?

Is it the same meaning when used each time? It doesn’t seem like it can be in the contexts it is used.

“Dirt is so brief and curt, and there seems to be a disparaging moral / judgmental aspect to it also. To be dirty seems to be morally questionable somehow.”

Alenier responded:

“I agree it's curt, cruel  and very judgmental when it is not just the element of the earth. I think it is tied to being judged for the same-sex union.

“and look at the root meaning:

[Middle English, variant of drit, excrement, filth, mud, from Old Norse.]

“I think it goes with death, dearth (scarcity, paucity, inadequate number).

“But still we come from the earth and go back to the earth.”

Cooking with Tender Buttons Food: Roastbeef. Discussion 1

THE BOOK ..........................-           TENDER BUTTONS

THE SUBBOOK ...................-           FOOD

THE SUBPOEM ..................-            Roastbeef

WORD COUNT (Total)……..-           1757

STANZA(S)............................-           37

THE LEADER........................-           THE STEINY ROAD POET

CO-LLABORATORS.............-            MODPO STUDENTS/THE BUTTONS

Before the Steiny Road Poet gets to the first discussion of the “Roastbeef.” stanzas, she will address the title “Roastbeef.” “Roastbeef.” is the first subpoem of section 2 “Food”. Therefore, by position alone, Gertrude Stein has given a lot of weight to the food item that she calls roastbeef.

THE JEWISH TAKE ON ROAST BEEF

Here’s what Judy Meibach had to say, “Jews love roast beef as they do food—and for most Sabbaths and holidays, roast beef will be the main course.”

Karren Alenier [a.k.a. Steiny] answered,

“How you are so right about the role roast beef plays in the Jewish diet. Isn't it so that the Sabbath meal is often made with beef that is put into a pot before Sabbath starts at sunset? Cholent, as the Ashkenazi Jews call it. There are similar dishes to Ashkenazi cholent, including Moroccan skheena, Tunisian bekaila, Sephardic sofrito, and Iraqi thbit.

“Gertrude came from assimilated German Jews who immigrated and landed in Baltimore. I know some of her family went to schul when she was a child. Anyway I'm sure she knew about such dishes as cholent.

DIGGING INTO THE ROOTS OF BEEF

However, the question arises about why she runs the two words roast and beef together?

Alenier rolled up her sleeves and dug into the root words:

“There is an English-French connection to the word beef and it is closely aligned with the word cow.”

Resource 1:  http://www.thefreedictionary.com/beef

[Middle English, from Old French buef, from Latin bs, bov-; see gwou- in Indo-European roots.]

Word History: 

That beef comes from cows is known to most, but the close relationship between the words beef and cow is hardly household knowledge. Cow comes via Middle 

English from Old English c, which is descended from the Indo-European root *gwou-, also meaning "cow." 

This root has descendants in most of the branches of the Indo-European language family. Among those descendants is the Latin word 

bs, "cow,” whose stem form, bov-, eventually became the Old French 

word buef, also meaning "cow." 

The French nobles who ruled England after the Norman Conquest of course used 

French words to refer to the meats they were served, so the animal called 

c by the Anglo-Saxon peasants was called buef 

by the French nobles when it was brought to them cooked at dinner. 

Thus arose the distinction between the words for animals and their meat that is also found in the English 

word-pairs swine/pork, sheep/mutton, and deer/venison. What is interesting about cow/beef is that we are 

in fact dealing with one and the same word, etymologically speaking.

Resource 2:  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Beef

“In looking for the history of the slang term what's the beef, I found that beef is related in slang parlance to all sorts of sexual terminology so maybe this solves the mystery for me about why Stein starts the "Food" section with   and maybe why she runs the two words together.

ROSBIF—WHAT THE FRENCH CALLED THE ENGLISH

Here Steiny will interrupt what was said above in the ModPo forum to note that the French derogatorily called the English rosbifs because they associated the English with eating roast beef cooked a certain way. So perhaps Stein is signaling something about being judged. One would suspect that had to do with her relationship with Alice Toklas, who was the cook (roast) in this illicit union and Stein, the beef because of her excessive weight.

HOT BEEF OR RATHER STOP THIEF

Resource 3: http://www.quora.com/Slang-Origins/What-is-the-history-of-beef-as-a-term-for-feuds

Beef meaning ‘to complain’ is a coinage of the mid-19th century.

This quote comes from an anonymous burglar's memoir, published in

New York in 1865 (though the burglar himself was English and had fled from London):

1865 Leaves from the Diary of a Celebrated Burglar: With the intention of 

finding out whether he was likely to ‘beef’ or not, Tom asked his sister

 Til how much his ‘poke’ was ‘up to’.

'Poke' here means a wallet (which had been pickpocketed), and 'up to' means worth,

i.e. whether he complained (to the authorities) depended on how much the wallet

contained. (Leaves is a fascinating book and a boon for the lexicographer -

every instance of slang, and there are at least 1000, comes neatly bracketed in quote marks.)

As regards the etymology of beef, it seems to go back to the cry of hot beef! meaning ‘stop thief!’

(quasi-rhyming slang but more by coincidence than design, since it is far older than rhyming slang's first widespread use in the 1820s-30s); thus the 18th century cry hot beef, to raise a hue and cry. This became ‘to raise an alarm’ or ‘make a fuss’ - the presence of crime was now irrelevant - and thence ‘to shout’. The 'complain' use followed that. Then (both in the late 19th century) came ‘to argue’, ‘to give someone away to the authorities’, and so on.

So, do we Buttons think Stein came by her word play with historic sturdiness?

I do. I do. Let's see, we can point to the Bible, Shakespeare, English slang, probably more.

Now Steiny thinks it is safe to discuss the opening stanzas of “Roastbeef.”. Stay tuned for the next post.

Cooking with Tender Buttons Food: table of contents

THE BOOK ..........................-            TENDER BUTTONS

THE SUBBOOK ...................-           FOOD

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...................-          

WORD COUNT......................-          56

STANZA(S)............................-           N.A.

THE LEADER........................-           THE STEINY ROAD POET

CO-LLABORATORS..............-          MODPO STUDENTS/THE BUTTONS

“As food is the essence of life, the table supports the act of eating and the act of thinking where food for thought plays. A subset of Stein’s diet is the table of contents which points to the all important production of books, the babies made by Gertrude Stein and her life partner Alice Babette Toklas.” Karren Alenier

ROASTBEEF; MUTTON; BREAKFAST; SUGAR; CRANBERRIES; MILK; EGGS; APPLE; TAILS; LUNCH; CUPS; RHUBARB; SINGLE; FISH; CAKE; CUSTARD; POTATOES; ASPARAGUS; BUTTER; END OF SUMMER; SAUSAGES; CELERY; VEAL; VEGETABLE; COOKING; CHICKEN; PASTRY; CREAM; CUCUMBER; DINNER; DINING; EATING; SALAD; SAUCE; SALMON; ORANGE; COCOA; AND CLEAR SOUP AND ORANGES AND OAT-MEAL; SALAD DRESSING AND AN ARTICHOKE; A CENTRE IN A TABLE.

Or

ROASTBEEF ......MUTTON ......BREAKFAST ......SUGAR 

CRANBERRIES ......MILK ......EGGS ......APPLE ......TAILS 

LUNCH ...CUPS ...RHUBARB ... SINGLE  FISH ... CAKE ... CUSTARD 

POTATOES ...... ASPARAGUS ...... BUTTER ...... END OF SUMMER 

SAUSAGES ...... CELERY ...... VEAL ...... VEGETABLE ...... COOKING 

CHICKEN ...... PASTRY ...... CREAM ...... CUCUMBER ...... DINNER 

DINING ...EATING ...SALAD ... SAUCE ... SALMON ... ORANGE 

COCOA  AND CLEAR SOUP AND ORANGES AND OAT-MEAL 

SALAD DRESSING AND AN ARTICHOKE ... A CENTRE IN A TABLE.

Before the Steiny Road Poet begins blogging the subpoems of “Food”, the second section of this long love poem that Gertrude Stein wrote to celebrate her clandestine marriage to Alice Babette Toklas, a few words on the table of contents that introduces “Food” seem necessary.

THE FORMATTING OF THE FOOD TOC

In Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition, editor Seth Perlow explains that the First Edition of Tender Buttons published by Donald Evans for his Claire Marie press used semi-colons between the strung-together items of the table of contents that precedes “Food”. Only section 2 “Food” has a table of contents.

Perlow, who studied all the formatting presentations of Tender Buttons, returned in The Corrected Centennial Edition to the typescript prepared by Toklas, which has no punctuation between the items. However, unlike the typescript and Stein’s original manuscript written in her scrawling hand, which was formatted in sentence case, Perlow keeps the block capitals. In Stein’s manuscript, the table of contents appears with the elements contained in four columns.

FOOD IS CENTRAL; TABLES ARE CENTRAL

Like the entirety of Tender Buttons, there is nothing ordinary about her table of contents. Whatever Stein’s intention was in arranging the items of the table in columns was never explained by the author as far as Steiny knows. As Stein’s publishing editor, Evans liked things tidy for as much as this was possible with this highly experimental artist. He wanted his order of the sections: “Objects”, “Food”, and “Rooms” published. Toklas, according to Joshua Schuster in “The making of ‘Tender Buttons’: Gertrude Stein’s subjects, objects, and the illegible”, bound the typescript starting with “Rooms”. Schuster also says that archival evidence points to “Objects” as the last section. So one might conclude as does Stein’s table of contents,  which ends the item “A CENTER IN A TABLE”, that the author considered “Food” central to what she hoped to achieve by putting together Objects”, “Food”, and “Rooms”. Originally and for whatever reason unknown to us, Stein considered the three sections separate works and Schuster notes that this tri-part structure was similar to the three short stories that make up her earlier self-published work Three Lives.

PUNNING ON EIGHT ATE

What the non-columnar layouts of the table of contents (as seen above) look like to Steiny is a spacious prose poem. However, the fact that Stein does not faithfully list every subpoem of “Food” but instead occasionally indicates a category that may have several subpoems clearly signals that Stein meant the table to be informational and not sonic as a poem might be. Not all the items of the table are categories. The categories are:

milk for “Milk.” which appears twice and for "Cream." which also appears twice

potatoes for “Potatoes.”, “Potatoes.”, and “Roast potatoes.”

vegetable for “Vegetable.” and “Way lay vegetable.”

chicken for “Chicken.” which appears four times

eating which appears twice

orange for “Orange.”, “Orange.”, “Oranges.”, and “Orange in.”

cocoa and clear soup and oranges and oat-meal, which appears twice

salad dressing and an artichoke, which appears twice

Could Stein with her eight “Food” categories being punning on the word ate? All the categories except eating are food. Because not all the items of the table of contents are food (e.g. “Cups.”, “Cooking.” “Dining.”), Steiny thinks Stein meant to say something significant by inserting a category for eating as opposed to making categories of cooking and dining. One theory that Steiny will explore in talking about the subpoems of “Food” is Stein is playing with Jewish numerology.

CHAIN BOATS & FOOD?

One additional thing to note is the table of contents does not acknowledge a subpoem titled “Chain-boats.” What does a chain boat have to do with food? During Stein’s time chain boats were used to haul goods on shallow rivers like the Seine in Paris.

FINDING ALICE B. TOKLAS IN TABLE

Here’s what Peter Treanor had to say about the “Food” table of contents:

“I saw somewhere, someone (maybe you, Karren [a.k.a. Steiny]) saying how she [Stein] had laid her food out in and on a table. Before she even started writing about the foods in the Food section, she has a table of contents. And that TABLE seems a very constant and important theme for her throughout TB.

“And I was looking at A CENTRE IN A TABLE at the end of her table of contents. I don’t know if this has been stated before, but in TABle I saw TAB or ABT, good old Alice B Toklas. Is she the centre of table, the centre of the table?. Is she the surface that GS can spread her feast on, the holder of the food and fruits, the centre of the scene of social entertainment?

“The other thing I noticed was that only some of the things on the table were food. some are meal related—BREAKFAST; LUNCH; CUPS;  COOKING; DINNER; DINING; EATING;  A CENTRE IN A TABLE—and one seems less directly so but could be associated with harvest time and the time of most fruitfulness END OF SUMMER.


She seems to be coming at food from many different many different angles.”

Karren Alenier responded:

“I know Xactly what you are saying about not knowing where things have gotten posted and when you talk about Stein setting things out on the table as she prepares to write about them, what I remember is that we talked about this first in ModPo 2013.

“So let's just agree to double and not worry where something might have been posted before.

“Now back to the table. It's a huge big deal because we have all sorts of tables possible beyond the writing-eating table (Stein used the dining room table at night as her writing table as I understand it. So there is an interest double that has value for writing and for eating.)

“Yes, there is the Table of Contents prefacing the "Food" section. 

“I have been marveling that her ToC lists breakfast lunch dinner in chronological order. And I hear you that some of the items are not food but aspects of eating and food. That quirkiness makes her chronological listing of breakfast lunch dinner more remarkable to me.

“As to finding ABT in TABle, I think Alice gives Gertrude stability— ABT helped GS with her writing by typing it and she took care of feeding GS.”

FOOD, A STRATEGIC ROAD MAP

In a way, the table of contents for “Food” provides a strategic road map for the journey through section 2, which is denser and possibly more metaphysical than section 1 “Objects”.  And while Stein provides ample food for thought, she still depends on physical objects like tables and cups.  She also is intent in keeping the discipline of bookmaking in sight. So she provides her unorthodox table of contents.