{"id":1404,"date":"2009-12-24T10:32:55","date_gmt":"2009-12-24T10:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=1404"},"modified":"2014-03-06T12:03:14","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T17:03:14","slug":"did-gertrude-stein-invent-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=1404","title":{"rendered":"Did Gertrude Stein invent the Web?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading the Marcus and Sollors A New Literary History of America<\/b><\/a> article by article, and this morning came athwart Daniel Albright’s on Gertrude Stein (“1903: Gertrude Stein moves to Paris, and neither is ever the same again”), in which is quoted this bit from Stein’s Three Lives<\/b><\/a>:<\/p>\n

…there was a constant recurring and beginning<\/b> there was a marked direction in the direction of being in the present<\/b> although naturally I had been accustomed to past present and future, and why, because the composition forming around me was a prolonged present<\/b>… I created then a prolonged present naturally I knew nothing of a continuous present but it came naturally to me to make one<\/b>. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmmm, I thought, how very like the Web in which we live more than a century later.<\/p>\n

Albright ends his article with this food for thought, quoting an unknown-to-me <\/p>\n

peculiar piece from Jonathan Swift called A Compleat Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation<\/i><\/a> (1738), full of passages such as this:<\/p>\n

Neverout.<\/i> Miss, what spells b double uzzard<\/a>?
Miss.<\/i> Buzzard in your teeth, Mr. Neverout.
Lady Smart.<\/i> Now you are up, Mr. Neverout, will you do the the favour to do me the kindness to take off the tea-kettle?
Lord Sparkish.<\/i> I wonder what makes these bells ring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Gertrude Stein had never been born, this would seem a freakish and incomprehensible text. It still seems freakish and incomprehensible, but as an anticipation of Stein it is made familiar, assimilated into a canon that she caused to exist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmmm, I thought again, how very like the Web in which we live more than a century later…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading the Marcus and Sollors A New Literary History of America article by article, and this morning came athwart Daniel Albright’s on Gertrude Stein (“1903: Gertrude Stein moves to Paris, and neither is ever the same again”), in which is quoted this bit from Stein’s Three Lives: …there was a constant recurring and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2355,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404\/revisions\/2355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}