Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/280

 ple flame." "Drink gloriously" struck me as a little too close to "gloriously drunk," which is of course a cliché; but even there the hortatory note adds a kind of foaming and exuberant novelty to the concept. Life had leaped from my parts of speech in tongues of flame. By a mechanical manipulation I had recreated life in words. And when I compared my specimen of it with Gertrude Stein's exhibits, it appeared to me indisputable that the vividness, the color, and the abounding energy of my "work" made hers seem gray and protoplasmic.

It is necessary, therefore, to discard the theory that her book was written by any kind of mechanical device. It seems almost impossible by any unimpeded mechanical process to assort words in such a fashion that no glimmer of mind will flash out from their casual juxtapositions. The thing can be done only by unremitting intelligence of the first order—if it can be done at all. Now we know on the high testimony of Mr. Anderson that Gertrude Stein possesses intelligence of this order. The work before us leads me to believe that she has attempted precisely the difficult feat which my scissors and shuffled parts of speech failed to accomplish. And so far as the perfection of the enterprise is humanly possible, her efforts have been crowned with success.